The whole country appeared deserted; he saw no one, and heard not even a dog bark; thus the stillness became oppressive after the storm of war, the strife of wounds and agony, the carnage and horrors of the day that was past. He soon reached the boor-tree thickets at the Craig ward, and saw the beautiful river with the Clackmannan hills and old Alloa rise before him in the moonlight, with the King's ships at anchor in the stream, with courses loose and a spring upon their cables. Half a bow-shot from the beach were several well-oared boats, full of armed men, and by their garb Falconer recognised his own arquebussiera and the King's seamen, while the royal standard drooped from the boats' sterns, and swept the water. "Ho--boat yoho!" cried he, leaping from his horse. "David Falconer, at last!" cried a number of distant voices, as the oars dipped, and the boat shot in. "Welcome in safety, messmate o' mine," said the bluff admiral, who was clad in his helmet and suit of steel; "we heard you had parted your cable in yonder devilish field." "Only unhorsed, Sir Andrew." "Any planks stove in, or timbers started?" "None, thank Heaven! though I received a blow that must have killed me, had I not----" "Like most Scotsmen in these troublous times, been well used to cuts and blows," interrupted Barton. "So the battle was fairly fought?" "Yea, fairly as the Ball of Scone, as the saw hath it--fairly fought and most unhappily lost. Alas! yonder field of battle is the very garden of Death!" "And what of the king?" asked several voices. "The king--is he not on board the _Yellow Frigate_?" "No," said the admiral; "I would to God he were, for then he would be in safe anchoring ground. Which way did he ride?" "I know not, for I fell by his side in the middle of the battle----" "Happy thou, my good Falconer, to share that day's vengeance with the king," said the admiral; "but that I had other ropes to splice, I had assuredly been with thee. Well?" "The lord Lindesay gave him a horse of matchless blood and speed, whereon, if evil happened or the day were lost, he might reach you here at the Craigward----" "We have never sighted him once, though many a fugitive hath crossed, for we have been little better than ferrymen since the gloaming fell. The auld Earl of Menteith, in his battered harness; the Preceptor of Torphichen, with three other knights of Rhodez; and many of the Ogilvies, as we knew by their tartan plaids and the hawthorn in their helmets; and Murrays, with the juniper twig;--most of them pricked with spears or slashed by sword cuts, have we taken across the river; but nought have we seen of the king, though the Preceptor averred that he saw him ride towards the north." "What if he should have fallen from the Lindesay's fiery steed, and now be lying in the Torwood?" "St. Mary avert it!" said Falconer. "Yet, when I bethink me now, I saw more than one dead man lying in his armour on the sward, between this and the field."