It was a singular and most impressive spectacle, that meeting. It was, as it were, the fearful pause between life and death--the moment of breathless silence that precedes the first crash of the thunderstorm. Every eye was riveted in either army on those two groups; every heart beat thick, and every ear tingled with excitement. And, even independent of the appalling interest of the crisis, there was much to mark, much to admire, in the handful that had come together to speak the doom of thousands; to decide whether hundreds and tens of hundreds of those living creatures, who stood around them now, so glorious in the pride, the beauty, and the strength of manhood, should, ere the sun might sink, be as the clods of the valley; to decree, with their ephemeral breath, whether the soft west wind, that wafted now the perfumes of a thousand hills to their invigorated senses, should, ere the morrow, be tainted like the vapor from some foul charnel-house! On the one side, on his light and graceful Arab, champing its gilded bits and shaking its velvet housings, sat the gay and gallant Frenchman--his long, dark locks uncovered, and his fair proportions displayed to the best advantage in his rich garb of peace. No weapon did he bear--not even the rapier, without which no gentleman of that period ever went abroad--but which, the more fully to manifest the candor and sincerity of his instructions, a handsome page held by his master’s stirrup. Behind him, with pale visages and anxious mien, Marchmont, and Bute, and Islay, and the lion King, awaited the result of this their last resource. On the other hand, distinguished from their followers only by the beauty of their powerful chargers, and their own knightly bearing, halted the rebel chiefs. Plain almost to meanness in his attire, with his armor stained and rusty, and his embroidered baldrick frayed and rent, Lord Lyndesay of the Byres was foremost in the group. Morton was there, and Murray, all steel from crest to spur; the best warrior, where all were good, the noblest spirit, the most upright man, Kirkaldy of the Grange.