The monastery; The abbot.

THE MONASTERY. 2:45
had collected a body of men almost equal in number to those of the English
Warden, but less practised in arms. They were united under the command
of Julian Avenel, and it was apprehended they would join battle upon the
banks of a small stream which forms the verge of the Halidome.
"Who knows the place?" said Murray.
"I do, my lord," answered Glendinning.
"'Tis well," said the Earl; "take a score of the best-mounted horse -
make what haste thou canst, and announce to them that I am coming up
instantly with a strong power, and will cut to pieces, without mercy, whichever party strikes the first blow.-Davidson," said he to the gentleman who
brought the intelligence, "thou shalt be my guide. - Hie thee on, Glendinning-Say to Foster, I conjure him, as he respects his mistress's service,
that he will leave the matter in my hands. Say to the Abbot, I will burn
the Monastery over his head, if he strikes a stroke till I come - Tell the
dog, Julian Avenel, that he hath already one deep score to settle with meI will set his head on the top of the highest pinnacle of Saint Mary's, if he
presume to open another. Make haste, and spare not the spur for fear of
spoiling horse-flesh."
"Your bidding shall be obeyed, my lord," said Glendinning; and choosing those whose horses were in best plight to be his attendants, he went
off as fast as the jaded state of their cavalry permitted. Hill and hollow
vanished from under the feet of the chargers.
They had not ridden half the way, when they met stragglers coming off
from the field, whose appearance announced that the conflict was begun.
Two supported in their arms a third, their elder brother, who was pierced
with an arrow through the body. Halbert, who knew them to belong to
the Halidome, called them by their names, and questioned them of the state
of the affray; but just then, in spite of their efforts to retain him in the
saddle, their brother dropped from the horse, and they dismounted in haste
to receive his last breath. From men thus engaged, no information was to
be obtained. Glendinning, therefore, pushed on with his little troop, the
more anxiously, as he perceived other stragglers, bearing Saint Andrew's
cross upon their caps and corslets, flying apparently from the field of battle.
Most of these, when they were aware of a body of horsemen approaching
on the road, held to the one hand or the other, at such a distance as precluded coming to speech of them. Others, whose fear was more intense,
kept the onward road, galloping wildly as fast as their horses could carry
them, and when questioned, only glared without reply on those who spoke
to them, and rode on without drawing bridle. Several of these were also
known to Halbert, who had therefore no doubt, from the circumstances in
which he met them, that the men of the Halidome were defeated. He became now unspeakably anxious concerning the fate of his brother, who, he
could not doubt, must have been engaged in the affray. He therefore increased the speed of his horse, so that not above five or six of his followers
could keep up with him. At length he reached a little hill, at the descent
of which, surrounded by a semi-circular sweep of a small stream, lay the
plain which had been the scene of the skirmish.
It was a melancholy spectacle. War and terror, to use the expression
of the poet, had rushed on to the field, and left only wounds and death
behind them. The battle had been stoutly contested, as was almost always
the case with these Border skirmishes, where ancient hatred, and mutual
injuries, made men stubborn in maintaining the cause of their conflict.
Towards the middle of the plain, there lay the bodies of several men who
had fallen in the very act of grappling with the enemy; and there were
seen countenances which still bore the-stern expression of unextiniguishable
hate and defiance, hands which clasped the hilt of the broken falchion, or
strove in vain to pluck the deadly arrow from the wound. Some were
wounded, and, cowed of the courage they had lately shown, were begging
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