I do not know well how I was got from the fray. I think I would have been killed, had not the Ruthvens, whose best men were wounded, given way a little after. Their trick of surrounding the enemy, by spreading wide their wings, was not wise and met with sorry success. For it left their middle so weak, that when Kennedy and the valiant Earl had been mastered, there remained no resistance. So when my friends made haste to push with me to the back they found their path none so hard. And after all that there was nothing but confusion and rout, the one side fleeing with their wounded, the other making no effort to pursue, but remaining to rest and heal their hurts. As I have said, I was unconscious for some time, and when I revived I was given a sleeping draught of the gipsies’ own making. It put me into a profound slumber, so that I slept for the rest of the day and night and well on to the next morning. When I awoke I was in a rough cart drawn by two little horses, in the centre of the troop who were hurrying westward. I felt my body with care and found that I was whole and well. A noise still hummed in my head and my eyes were not very clear, as indeed was natural after the fray of the day before. But I had no sore hurt, only little flesh scratches, which twinged at the time, but would soon be healed. But if this was my case it was not that of the rest of the band. The battle had been like all such gipsy fights—very terrible and bloody, but with no great roll of dead. Indeed, on our side we had not lost a man, and of the enemy Kennedy alone had died, who, being a big man and a full-blooded, had been suffocated in his fall by the throng above him. It was just by little that I had escaped the same fate, for we two at the time had been in death-grips, and had I not been thin and hardy of frame, I should have perished there and then. But the wounds were so terrible on both sides that it scarce seemed possible that many could ever recover. Yet I heard, in after days, that not one died as a result of that day’s encounter. Even the Earl of Hell and his daughter Jean recovered of their wounds and wandered through the country for many years. But the sight of the folk around me on the march was very terrible. One man limped along with a great gash in his thigh in which I could have placed my open hand. Another had three fingers shorn off, and carried his maimed and bandaged hand piteously. Still a third lay in the cart with a breast wound which gaped at every breath, and seemed certain ere long to bring death. Yet of such strength and hardihood was this extraordinary people that they made light of such wounds, and swore they would be healed in three weeks’ time. Perhaps this tenacity of life is due in some part to their excellent doctoring, for it is certain that these folk have great skill in medicaments, and with herb-concoctions, and I know not what else, will often perform wondrous cures.