Presently the Craufords came on with their horsemen first and the pikemen behind. But the mounted men came not far, for the bog laired their horses, and they sank deeper and deeper at every step. Then the footmen came between them and charged up to our foremost lines, so that we were hand-to-hand and hard at it in a trice. It was not, however, the work of many minutes to gar them turn about and run, for our front was solid and broad, while the hackbutt shooters had fine rests for their guns, so that on a still day they could bring a man down at thirty yards or more. A good many Craufords were already splattering like wounded waterfowl in the moss which protected our front. After this we had time to look across the Doon Water, from which there was a crying. And lo! there on the bank stood our late guest, Maister Robert Bruce, the Minister of Edinburgh. But our Earl was now too hot to think of courtesy, so he bade the minister stop where he was, or come over and take a pike by the end; and this greeting made me sorry, for he was a grand-looking man, with his long black cloak and his noble black horse, which, they say, had once been the King’s own charger. So I took the great risk of drawing the Earl aside, and urged upon him that he should call a parley and see what the Minister wanted. This, very reluctantly, he did, and we could hear Master Bruce speaking from over the Doon Water clearly, as if he had been in his own pulpit. ’In the King’s name I bid you cease,’ he cried; ’and in God’s name I debar and forbid you. If ye persist, I shall deliver you to Satan, so that ye may learn that it is dangerous to despise authority. ’Hoot toot, Maister Bruce, the days of curses are by with,’ said the Earl, ’and, besides, the most of us have ta’en a heap of risks afore noo. We can e’en afford to take another.’ ’I wish to speak,’ said the Minister, ’with Crauford of Kerse.’ ’Then gang farther up the waterside and gie a cry. There’s nae Craufords here except dead anes!’ said the Earl, who had his daft coat on him that day, so that we feared he had been bewitched. But the young men of the Craufords would have nothing to say to him, having, as I suspect, no goo for a Minister meddling in the bickerings of men. So he returned and asked Cassillis for one to take him to Kerse. ’Go, Launcelot,’ said the Earl,’ and guide him. We will manage somehow to keep the battle up among us till you return.’ So, nothing loath to get away from gruntling horror on the knowe top, I set Dom Nicholas’s breast to the river, and was beside the Minister in a trice. As I passed up the waterside I came quite near to David Crauford the younger. He stelled up the cock of his pistol to shoot at me, but I held up my hand. ’I am going to the Kerse to see your father. Have you any word?’ I cried to him. For in these quaint times the friendliness and complaisance with which killing was done will scarce be believed—often with a jest, and, as one might say, amicably.