Marching in single file, after the Highland fashion, and in perfect silence, they had got near the house before the Cameron sentinel observed them. ‘Having discovered us, he did run to the house, and we after him, so near that he had not leisure to shut the gate of the court behind him. All the vantage that he had before us was to win the house, and shut that door behind him, which chanced well for both parties; for if we could have entered the house with him, we should have killed every one another, for we were in great fury to be revenged of them, and they could do no less than defend themselves, selling their lives at the dearest rate they could, as men in despair should do. They would have had a great advantage upon us, for they, being in a dark house, would have seen us well, and we, coming in from the snow, would have been blind for some length of time, in the which they might have done us great skaith, before we could have done them any, not seeing them. But God provided better for us. [Sidenote: 1639.] ‘How soon we were in the court, I said with a loud voice: “Every one to his post;” which was done in the twinkling of an eye. Then I went to the door, thinking to break it up with my foot: but it was a thick double door, and the lock very strong. Whilst I was at the door, one of them did come to bolt it, and I hearing him at it, did shoot a pistolet at him. He said afterwards that the balls did pass through the hair of his head; whether he said true or not, I know not. I did go from the door to the windows, and back again, still encouraging them, and praying them at the windows to hold their eyes still upon our enemies, and to kill such as would lay their hands to a weapon; and to these at the door to have their guns ever ready to discharge at such as would choose to come forth without my leave. And I still threatened to burn the house, and them all into it, if they would not render themselves at my discretion, which they were loath to do, until they saw the light of bits of straw, that I had kindled to throw upon the thatch of the house, although I did not intend to do it, nor burn our friends with our foes. But if Malcolm Dorward, and his wife and servants, and his son George Dorward, and John Cordoner, all whom the Highlanders had lying in bonds by them, had been out, I would have made no scruple to have burned the house and all the Highlanders within it, to give terror to others who would be so brutal as to oppress ladies who never wronged them.