At the appointed signal, Bertram and his companions rushed upon Hatteraick. The ruffian, who instantly saw he was betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he discharged a pistol. She fell, with a piercing shriek, muttering, "I knew it would be this way." A terrific struggle ensued between the smuggler and his assailants, in which Hatteraick contrived to discharge a second bullet at Bertram, which only missed its mark by a lucky accident. Strong, however, as the ruffian was, he was not equal to the joint efforts of the three men, and at length he was fairly mastered, disarmed, and tightly bound. Hazlewood, whose horse was outside the cave, then rode off for assistance, and after some time returned with several others. The prisoner was carried out, still firmly bound, and also Meg Merrilies, who was still living, though desperately wounded in the chest. They wished to take her to the nearest cottage, but she refused to be moved anywhere but to the Kaim of Derncleugh. Accordingly they bore her to the vault in the ruined tower. The alarm had now spread through the countryside that Kennedy's murderer had been taken on the very spot where the murder had been committed years before; and a crowd of people, with a clergyman and a surgeon, had flocked to the place where the dying gipsy lay. She, however, refused all offers of assistance, and called for Harry Bertram. When Bertram approached the wretched bed on which she lay, she took his hand. "Look at him," she said to those about her, "the image of his dead father. And hear me now--let that man," pointing to Hatteraick, "deny what I say if he can." And then she told the story of how the young boy had been carried off from Warroch Wood; how she saved his life from smugglers who would have murdered him; and how she swore an oath to keep the secret till he was one-and-twenty, and vowed that if she lived to see the day of his return she would set him again in his father's seat, though every step was on a dead man. "Dirck Hatteraick," she said, "you and I will never meet again until we are before the Judgment-seat--will ye dare deny it?" And as Hatteraick refused to open his lips, she added: "Farewell! and God forgive you! your hand has sealed my evidence." And shortly after, as she heard the crowd about her greet Bertram with enthusiastic cheers as the true Laird of Ellangowan, her troubled spirit passed peacefully away.