In a quarter of an hour one of the
five troopers comes back galloping and hallooing, and tells us his
lieutenant had, with his small party, beaten a party of twenty of the
enemy's horse over the river, and had secured the pass, and desired my
lord would march up to him immediately.
Tis a strange thing that men's spirits should be subjected to such
sudden changes, and capable of so much alteration from shadows of
things. They were for running before they saw the enemy, now they are
in haste to be led on, and but that in raw men we are obliged to bear
with anything, the disorder in both was intolerable.
The story was a premeditated sham, and not a word of truth in it,
invented to raise their spirits, and cheat them out of their cowardly
phlegmatic apprehensions, and my lord had his end in it; for they
were all on fire to fall on. And I am persuaded, had they been led
immediately into a battle begun to their hands, they would have laid
about them like furies; for there is nothing like victory to flush a
young soldier. Thus, while the humour was high, and the fermentation
lasted, away we marched, and, passing one of their great commons,
which they call moors, we came to the river, as he called it, where
our lieutenant was posted with his four men; 'twas a little brook
fordable with ease, and, leaving a guard at the pass, we advanced to
the top of a small ascent, from whence we had a fair view of the Scots
army, as they lay behind another river larger than the former.
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