Occasionally, however, the light that burned somewhere in the town cast glimmerings over the garden, and then I could see dark figures that crouched and scudded behind bushes and sheltered ayont the trunk of every leafless tree. After that God-sent illumination grew brighter, I think it is not too much to say that each time I got a fair chance at an enemy, there was one rascal the fewer alive—or at least one that had a shot the more in him. It cheered me to see them crawling out of the range of my ordnances as if they had been few and I a host. Most of all I aimed, with the deadliest and most prayerful intent to kill, at the tall man in the cloak, whom I had seen from the first directing the ploy. Time and again I believed that I had him, but upon each occasion it was some meaner rogue that bore the brunt. Thus I held my own with Sir Thomas’s French pistol laid aside ready for them if they came with a rush, and my own for common use to load and fire again withal, till the barrels almost scorched me with the heat. Also I kept my sword ready to my hand, for when it comes to the edge of death, I put more confidence in my blade than in all the ordnance in the land. Though Heaven forbid that I should speak against the pistolet, when that very night I had so often owed my life to it. My chief hope now was that the Provost of the place, who had been a guest with Sir Thomas, might escape and rouse the townsfolk. The people of Maybole loved not the Barganies greatly, but, on the contrary, were devoted to the service of my master Culzean, because of his kindliness of disposition, and the heartsome way he had of calling them all ’Sandy’ and ’Jeems,’ according to their Christian name, a thing which goes a far road in Scotland. It so happened just then that the fire that did me so much good—which, as I afterwards learned, was lighted by one of my enemies for frolic in the wood-yard of one Duncan Crerar, millwright—burned up a little and cast a skarrow over the garden where I was. When it was at its brightest, there came four fellows running up the brae all with their swords bare in their hands, so that it seemed that I was as good as dead, for it was manifestly impossible that I could withstand them all. But I minded the saying of a great captain of the old wars, ’Stop you the front rank, and the second will stop of itself.’ So I took good and careful aim with my pistols at the two fellows that led the charge, and fired. The first of them tossed his blade in the air, spun about like a weathercock and fell headlong, while the other, lamed in his leg, as it appeared, tried to crawl back down the hill again. The two that came behind were no little daunted by this fall. Nevertheless, they still came on, but I cried out as loud as I could, ’Give me the other pistols, Sir Thomas, and I shall do for these two scoundrels also!’