I took up the child, covered him with my cloak, and soothed him; and the poor little harassed thing hid his face in my bosom. Will lay quivering and struggling like ane in a dream, or under the influence of the night-mare; and, after I had rolled him three times over, he awoke in the most horrid consternation. "Charlie, where are ye? Speak to me, Charlie, and tell me where I am." Then a whole string o' saints and angels were a' invoked, one after another, ower and ower again. "Mercy on us, Charlie! I hae had sic a dream as never mortal man had; and a' sae plain and sae particular, I could amaist swear it was real. What do ye think, Charlie? Didna this bairn's mother come to me in my sleep? and she says to me, 'That bairn's mine.'--Na, that wasna what she said first. 'Ye dinna ken me,' says she." And then Will began and told me all that I had heard pass between them before, and all that I had seen, and some part that I had not seen; but a' that I could do, I couldna persuade him that it wasna a dream. And it was better it was sae; for if he had kend and believed that he had conversed with a spirit, it wad hae put him daft. It pat me clean out o' my judgment; and for that day, and mony a day and night after, I kend nae mair what I was doing than ane dreaming, and remembered nae mair what I had been doing than if I had been asleep all the time. I can therefore gie but a puir and a lame account o' what followed, for it is maistly from hearsay, although I was tauld that I bure a principal hand in the fray. We started at the scraigh o' day, and drove on. There were always four or five light horsemen, well mounted, who rode before our array to see if the coast was clear; and as we went round the head of the Gowan Burn, about mid-day, ane o' these came galloping back, and told us that the English were awaiting us at the fords of Keilder, with an army of a thousand horse. "Aha!" quo' Habby Elliot! "I thought we warna to get hame this way. We hae just twa choices, callants, either to fight or flee." There was not a man in all our little army that could think of scampering off for bare life, and leaving such a prey behind him; so, with one assent, we rode forward in a body to the brow of the hill that overlooks the fords of Keilder. The English were stationed on a rising ground to the west of the river, and that being passable only by one ford, which was very rough, we could not attack them without the certainty of being cut to pieces; so we kept our station on the steep brae over against them, and sent some few of our oldest and weakliest men to be moving the prey out toward Keilder-head.