Dougal, finding himself forgotten in the scuffle, had wisely crept into the thicket which overhung the road, and was already mounting the cliff with the agility of a wild-cat. Frank hastily followed his example. For the spattering fire, directed on the advancing party of soldiers, the loud reports of muskets, and the explosion of the grenades, made the path no comfortable place for those without arms. The Bailie, however, had only been able to scramble about twenty feet above the path when, his foot slipping, he would certainly have fallen into the lake had not the branch of a ragged thorn caught his riding-coat and supported him in mid-air, where he hung very like a sign in front of a hostelry. Andrew Fairservice had made somewhat better speed, but even he had only succeeded in reaching a ledge from which he could neither ascend nor yet come down. On this narrow promontory he footed it up and down, much like a hen on a hot girdle, and roared for mercy in Gaelic and English alternately, accordingly as he thought the victory inclined toward the soldiers or went in favour of the outlaws. But on this occasion it was the Highlanders who were destined to win. They fought altogether under cover, and, from the number of musket flashes they held also a great superiority in point of numbers. At all events Frank soon saw the English officer stripped of his hat and arms, and his men, with sullen and dejected countenances, delivering up their muskets to the victorious foe. The Bailie was, however, rescued by "the Dougal cratur," as the magistrate called him, who cut off the tails of his coat and lowered him to the ground. Then, when at last he was somewhat appeased, on account of Frank's seeming desertion, he counselled that they should be in no hurry to approach Mac-Gregor's wife, who would certainly be most dangerous in the moment of victory. Andrew Fairservice had already been espied on his airy perch, from which the Highlanders soon made him descend, by threatening him with their guns and even firing a stray shot or two over his head, so that presently he fell to the earth among them. The outlaws stood ready to receive him, and ere he could gain his legs, they had, with the most admirable celerity, stripped him of periwig, hat, coat, doublet, stockings, and shoes. In other circumstances this might have been amusing for Frank to watch. For though Andrew fell to the earth a well-clothed and decent burgher--he arose a forked, uncased, bald-pated, and beggarly-looking scarecrow. And indeed Frank and the Bailie would soon have shared the same fate, had not Dougal appeared on the scene in the nick of time, and compelled the plunderers to restore their spoil. So to Helen Mac-Gregor they were taken, Dougal fighting and screaming all the way, evidently determined to keep his captives to himself, or at least to prevent others from claiming them.