The rebel cavalry were off at once. According to the account of Lord George Murray, on the Scottish side, “our horsemen, on seeing the enemy, went to Penrith”: an innocent phrase, which rather obscures the prudent, if inglorious, fact that they “bunked,” as a schoolboy would say, or “did a guy,” as the slangy would remark: leaving the Highland infantry to do the best they could. It was a haphazard hurly-burly that ensued. No one could see any one. The Highlanders were quite invisible, and the English dragoons only to be seen by the gleam of their buff belts in the darkness. Mr. Thomas Savage, a Quaker, whose house was in the thick of the encounter, was anxious for himself, and for his cattle, which interposed between the combatants, but he had really little cause for alarm; for both sides fired so high and so wide that not even a cow was killed, and after all the shooting and the hacking was done, and the rebels had fled, leaving the more or less stricken field in the possession of the enemy, it was found that but twelve (or according to one account, five) Highlanders had been killed and some forty to seventy made prisoners. On the English side, eleven dragoons were killed, and twenty-nine wounded. Many a railway accident has wrought more havoc. The registers of Clifton church bear witness to this event, in the following entries: “The 19th of December, 1745, Ten Dragoons, to wit, six of Bland’s, three of Cobham’s, and one of Mark Kerr’s Regiment, buried, who was killed y^e evening before by y^e Rebels in y^e skirmish between y^e Duke of Cumberland’s army and them at y^e end of Clifton Moor next y^e town.” “Robert Atkins, a private Dragoon of General Bland’s Regiment, buried y^e 8th Day of January, 1746.” This last was obviously one of the wounded. The Duke of Cumberland wanted a lodging for the night, and stayed accordingly in the house of Mr. Savage, who, during the progress of the affair, had locked himself in, while his daughter-in-law hid in the kitchen cupboard. The Quaker’s account of the Duke was, “pleasant agreeable company he was—a man of parts, very friendly, and no pride in him.” [Sidenote: _A CHARMED LIFE_] None came so well out of that fight as Colonel Honeywood of Howgill, who seems to have been a host in himself, and would have done even better had it not been for an accident by which even the bravest of the brave might be brought ingloriously to earth. His prowess was vouched for by a Highlander, who, asked how his people got on, quaintly replied: “We gat on vary weel, till the lang man in the muckle boots cam ower the dyke, but his fut slipped on a turd, and we gat him down.” The Highlanders nearly did for the “lang man,” for they gave him three sword cuts on the head, and then left. He seems to have lived a charmed life, for he was at that time invalided home from Continental warfare, in which, at the Battle of Dettingen, he had received no fewer than twenty-three broadsword cuts and two musket balls.