John Smith's spirit was undaunted, so that, seeing he had no one else to stick to, he now resolved to stick to his foes, to the last drop of life's blood that was within him. Furiously and fatally did he cut and thrust, and turn and cut and thrust again, at all who opposed him; but he was so overwhelmed by opponents, that in the midst of the blood, and wounds, and death which he was thus dealing in all directions, he received a desperate sabre cut, which, descending on him from above, entirely across the crown of his bared head, felled him instantaneously to the ground, and stretched him senseless among the heather, whilst a deluge of blood poured from the wound over both his eyes. When John began partially to recover, he rubbed the half-congealed blood from his eyelids with the back of his left hand, and looking up and seeing that the ground was somewhat clear around him, he griped his claymore firmly with his right hand, and raising himself to his feet, he began to run as fast as his weak state would allow him. He thought that he ran in the direction of Strath Nairn, and he ran whilst he had the least strength to run, or the least power remaining in him. But his ideas soon became confused, and the blood from the terrible gash athwart his head trickled so fast into his eyes, that it was continually obscuring his vision. At length he came to a large, deep irregular hollow hag, or ditch, in a piece of moss ground, which had been cut out for peats, and there, his brain beginning to spin round, he sank down into the moist bottom of it to die, and as the tide of life flowed fast from him, he was soon lost to all consciousness of the things or events of this world. Whilst John was lying in this senseless state, he was recognised by one of the fugitives, who, in making his own escape, chanced to pass by the edge of the ditch in the moss where the poor man lay. This was a certain Donald Murdoch, who had long burned with a hopeless flame for black-eyed Morag. With a satisfaction that seemed to make him forget his present jeopardy in the contemplation of the death of his rival, he looked down from the edge of the peat hag upon the pale and bloody corpse, and grinned with a fiendish joy. "Ha! there you lie!" cried he in bitter Gaelic soliloquy.--"The fiend a bit sorry am I to see you so. You'll fling or dance no more, else I'm mistaken.--Stay!--is not that the bit of blue ribbon that Morag tied round his neck, the last time that we had a dance in the barn? I'll secure that, it may be of some use to me;" and so saying he let himself down into the peat hag, hastily undid the piece of ribbon,--and then continued his flight with all manner of expedition.