Kings of Carrick

THE TRAGEDY OF THE BROCKLOCH BURN. 35
mortally ; and though struggling rivals still strove in angry
encounter, the fray was all but terminated. Auchendrane,
failing to turn the right flank of the enemy, had, by this
time, reached the scene of the main combat, and, under his
direction, an orderly retreat was made. A few shots were
fired from both sides in parting ; but each was so anxious to
carry off its own wounded that no attempt was made to pro-
long the fray.
It was with heavy hearts that Auchendrane, Mure of
Cloncaird, and the Master of Stair sought the cold couch on
which Bargany was lying. They undid the steel helmet
which he wore on his head, and loosened the collar of his
iron-fronted jacket, and, lifting his head from the ground,
exposed him to the chilly, snow-particled wind, which still
blew a pitiful requiem over the scene. They bound up, with
such rude bandages as they could command, the wound in his
neck, from which blood continued to flow, and without loss of
time improvised a horse litter on which they laid the dying
chief. It was with sad hearts that they set about the return
journey to Ayr. Nature's aspect was of the dreariest, but it
was none the less in keeping with the melancholy cortege.
All the way the blood dripped slowly from the wound, and
one might have tracked their path by the crimson spots upon
the snow. Behind them came a series of similar companies.
Over a score of Bargany's followers bore traces of the fight ;
some of them, grim pictures of conflict, with battered helmets
and blood-begrimmed faces, sitting erect in their saddles, and
enduring their sufferings with the stoicism of Scotsmen ;
others, more hardly hit, hanging limp and senseless across
their saddles, supported on either side by sympathetic hands.
And behind them rode the company of the dead, eighteen in
number — men who had fought their last battle, who would
never again hear the call to arms, nameless warriors who had
sacrificed their lives in a cause in which they had no direct
interest, and with which they had, in any possible results,
nothing to do.