On the Friday morning Buchan sent his superior officer a report of the stirring incidents of the previous day. After Claverhouse had left him, he had met a man from whom he learnt that there were numbers of rebels in arms in the heart of the hills, on the Clydesdale side, and who gave him a description of the two leaders—one a lusty, black, one-eyed man, with a velvet cap; the other a good-like man, who wore a grey hat. Buchan at once made for the place which had been indicated. On the way to it, a party of foot, that he had sent out on his right, accidentally came upon the armed Covenanters. Four soldiers, who formed a kind of advance-guard, were fired on by seven men that started up suddenly, out of a glen, and one of them was wounded. The other three, after discharging their pieces without effect at their assailants, thought it safer not to venture in pursuit over the treacherous ground. Hastening back, they informed their colonel of the encounter; but, though Buchan made all possible diligence, he could not succeed in even catching sight of the fugitives. He could only learn that they had made for Cumnock, and he himself proceeded with all speed in the same direction, in the hope of preventing their passing into Galloway. By noon that same Friday, Claverhouse had again taken a hurried leave of his bride, and was on the road to Ayrshire. From that point his movements may best be narrated in his own terse words: ‘I went immediately to Mauchline, and from this to Cumnock, where we learned that on Thursday night they had passed at the bog-head, near Airdsmoss, and were then only fifty-nine in arms. They were running in great haste, barefooted many of them, and taking horses in some places, to help them forward. We heard they went from that to a place called the Hakhill, within two miles of Cumnock, and from that to the Gap, which goes to the hills lying betwixt the Sanquhar and Moffat. But we could never hear more of them. I sent on Friday night for my troop from Dumfries, and ordered them to march by the Sanquhar to the Muirkirk, to the Ploughlands, and so to Straven. I sent for Captain Strachan’s troop from the Glenkens, and ordered him to march to the old castle of Cumnock, down to the Lorne, and through the country to Kilbride, leaving Mauchline and Newmills on his left, and Loudon-hill on his right. By this means they scoured this country, and secured the passages that way.