"I _will_ let him alone, my good Lord," replied the young nobleman; "but I think it a duty to myself and to all, to do what I can to remedy the mistake which has been committed. You keep the men to their work, and I will be back in a minute or two. That great cart, if it could be brought down, turned over, and filled with stones and earth, would make a very good defence at the corner there." "What are you going to do?" asked Lord Derwentwater, seeing Smeaton resume his coat and turn away. "I am going to seek for Captain Hunter," replied Smeaton. "He is a man of activity, resource, and shrewdness, and will, I doubt not, lend me a few of his marksmen, if he can spare them, to occupy those houses down below, so as both to keep them for ourselves, and to gall the enemy in their advance up the street. Where do you think I shall find him?" "He is up with Miller and Douglas on the Liverpool road," answered Lord Derwentwater. "Add my request to your own; the idea is a very good one." And, while Smeaton remounted his horse and hurried away, the other nobleman continued to animate the men, not only by his own personal exertions, but by distributing amongst them all the money he had about him. In ten minutes, Smeaton returned with a body of some fifty men and Captain Hunter, the borderer, whose moss-trooping propensities and experience had rendered him a very serviceable man of action in any great emergency. Passing the barricade, without speaking to any one, they hurried on down the street till they reached the first turning out of it, where, dividing into two bodies, the one dispersed through the neighbouring houses on either hand, taking post at the windows, while the other body, consisting of about twenty men, advanced some way down the narrow lanes, which led out into the fields near the entrance of the high road to Wigan. In the meantime, Brigadier Macintosh had remained watching the operation with his arms crossed on his chest; but the moment he saw the men enter the mouth of the lane, he despatched a messenger after them, to order them instantly back. They returned unwillingly, with Hunter at their head; but those in the houses were suffered to remain, and did good service throughout the day. At some period during the morning, and before the attack actually commenced, Captain Innes, with a body of about fifty Highlanders, was thrown into the tall house belonging to Sir Henry Haughton which the young Earl of Eskdale had pointed out; but they were recalled almost immediately, and the house left to its fate. In the confusion and hurry of that fatal day, it was not known who gave the order for their advance, or that for their recall.