With their chargers shod with felt, the knights rode softly on, and as challenger, Scrimegeour, the royal standard-bearer, was a bowshot in front of Sir John Drummond. By the first blast of his bugle the erne was roused from its eyry among the cliffs of Kinpurnie; by the second the warder at Bailie-Craig was wakened from his sleep, and the hirsels lowed on the hills; but the third had scarcely been tossed among the mountain echoes by the wind, when between him and that midnight sky, which every instant was reddened by the bright but silent lightning, the valiant Scrimegeour saw a gigantic figure arise as if from the ground, with its long hair waving wildly, while it brandished a mace, which was furnished with a studded ball of steel, that swung at the end of an iron chain. "Ewain Gavelrigg--man or fiend--come on!" exclaimed the knight, and though every pulse in his body for a moment stood still, he dashed forward to the combat. By one blow of this iron mace, which descended like a thunder-bolt, the brains of the horse were dashed back into its rider's face, and the rider himself hurled prostrate on the path. Then the vampire or demon of Uach-dair Tir strode over him, brandishing his tremendous weapon, and uttering a succession of wild shouts of laughter. Grasping by the throat the half-stunned constable of Dundee, and compressing his gorget of steel as if it had been a lady's ruff of lace, he would have slain him there but for the valour of his companion, and a vow he had made to build a chapel in honour of St. John, if he escaped. Moreover, it is related, that he was almost suffocated by the inconceivable odour that pervaded the body of his herculean conqueror. While the latter, exulting in his victory, and laughing like a hyæna, was half strangling and half dragging the discomfited Scrimegeour towards the pine woods, he neither heard nor saw Drummond, who with his light Barbary courser, shod by soft felt, advanced over the velvet sward that bordered the wayside, but noiselessly, like the tall shadow of a man and horse. The long sharp lance of Drummond was in the rest, and urged by the full force of a galloping steed and the thrust of a powerful arm, the head of steel and a yard of the tough ash pole, were driven through the body of the midnight marauder, who expired with a frightful cry. When day broke and the body of this strange man was examined, it was found to be vast in its strength and proportion, but terrible in aspect; and multiplied by a hundred-fold, the odour of dead carrion pervaded it. When stripped, it was found to have _four_ wounds, from all of which the black blood had been freely flowing; viz: those where Drummond's lance had pierced the back and breast, and those inflicted by the barbed shaft of the arrow-maker, and the sword of the dalmascar.