"He has ta'en the table wi' his hand,
He garr'd the red wine spring on hie--
'Now Christ's curse on my head,' he said,
'But avenged of Lord Scrope I'll be!
O, is my basnet a widow's curch?
Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree?
Or my arm a ladye's lilye hand,
That an English lord should lightly me?'"

No time was lost in making an appeal to King James, which resulted in an
application to the English Government. But while the English authorities
quibbled, paltered, and delayed--with a little evasion, a little extra
red-tapism, a little judicious procrastination--the days of Kinmont
Willie were being numbered by his captors. The triumph of putting an end
to the daring deeds of so bold a Scottish reiver when they had him
safely in chains in Carlisle Castle, was one that they were not likely
lightly to forego. It would be indeed a merry crowd of English Borderers
that flocked to Haribee Hill on the day that Will of Kinmont dangled
from the gallows.

Buccleuch saw that he had no time to lose. He himself must strike at
once, and strike with all his might.

The night of April 13, 1596, was dark and stormy. All the Border burns
and rivers were in spate; the winds blew shrewd and chill through the
glens of Liddesdale, and sleet drifted down in the teeth of the gale.
The trees that grew so thick round Woodhouselee bent and cracked, and
sent extra drenching showers of rain down on the steel jacks of a band
of horsemen who carefully picked their way underneath them, on to the
south. Buccleuch was leader, and with him rode some forty picked men of