THREE:The consternation of the city may be imagined. The inhabitants, who had, at first, treated the rumour of the Young Pretender's landing with ridicule, now passed to the extreme of terror. On Sunday night the Highlanders lay between Linlithgow and the city, and on Monday morning Charles sent forward a detachment, which, on coming in sight of the pickets, discharged their pistols. The dragoon pickets did not wait to return the fire, but rode off towards Coltbridge, nearer to Edinburgh, where Gardiner lay with the main body of horse. No sooner, however, did this commander perceive the advancing Highlanders, than he also gave the order to retreat, and the order was so well obeyed, that from a foot's-pace the march quickened into a trot and presently into a gallop, and the inhabitants of Edinburgh saw the whole force going helter-skelter towards Leith, where they drew bit. The valiant troops mounted again, and galloped to Preston, six miles farther, some of them, it was said, not stopping till they reached Dunbar. This "Canter of Coltbridge," as it was called in derision, left the city at the mercy of the Highlanders, except for about six or seven hundred men mustered from the City Guard, the volunteer corps, and some armed gentlemen from Dalkeith and Musselburgh, who took post at the gates.[Pg 22] FORE:"He was, but he isn't. I sent for him about some business, and he is a very decent sort of a fellow. He has a little ranch on the reservation."But she sat up suddenly, with one of her quick movements of conscious strength and perfect control over every muscle, clasped her hands about her knees, and went on. "It was very curious," and there came on her face the watchful, alert, wild look, with the narrowing of the eyes. "It was very curious, I could not[Pg 84] have stayed indoors that night if it had cost me my life��and it very nearly did, too. I had to get out. So I took my revolver and my knife, and I went the back way, down to the river. While I was standing on the bank and thinking about going home, an Indian stole out on me. I had an awful struggle. First I shot. I aimed at his forehead, but the bullet struck his shoulder; and then I fought with the knife. As soon as I could slip out of his grasp, I went at him and drove him off. But I didn't know how badly he was hurt until the next day. The shot had roused them up here, and they went down to the river and found him bleeding on the sand.

THREE:On the 6th of March the first blessings of war began to develop themselves in the announcement, by Pitt, that his Majesty had engaged a body of his Hanoverian troops to assist the Dutch; and, on the 11th, by his calling on the House to form itself into a Committee of Ways and Means to consider the propriety of raising a loan of four millions and a half, and of issuing four millions of Exchequer Bills, in addition to the ordinary revenue, to meet the demands of the year. Resolutions for both these purposes were passed; and, on the 15th, a Bill was introduced, making it high treason for any one to sell to the French any muniments of war, bullion, or woollen cloth. Fox and his party opposed this Bill, but it was readily carried through both Houses.With the sublime indifference to the mockery of the world, characteristic of his race, Cairness kept at it. It was ridiculous. He had time to be dimly aware of that. And it certainly was not war. He did not know that they were affording the opposing forces much enjoyment. He had not even observed that the firing had stopped. But he meant to catch that much qualifiedly impudent little beast, or to know the reason why. And he would probably have known the reason why, if one of the Apache scouts, embarrassed by no notions of fair play, had not taken good aim and[Pg 233] brought his youthful kinsman down, with a bullet through his knee. FORE:Whilst Clive had been reducing our enemies in Bengal and Oude, a more powerful antagonist than any whom we had yet encountered in India was every day growing more formidable in Mysore, and combining several of the petty chiefs of the different States of Madras as his allies against us. He was now far more considerable than when he had appeared against us as the ally of the French general, Lally, in the neighbourhood of Pondicherry. Hyder Ali was a self-made man. He was originally the grandson of a wandering fakir; then the captain of banditti; then at the head of an army composed of freebooters; continually growing in the number of his followers, and in the wealth procured by plunder, he at length became Commander-in-Chief of the Rajah of Mysore. Soon rising in his ambition, he seized the Rajah, his master, pensioned him off with three lacs of rupees, and declared himself the real Rajah. In 1761 he was become firmly established on the throne of Mysore, but this distinction did not satisfy him. He determined to be the founder of Mysore as a great kingdom, and extended his power to near the banks of the Kistnah. There he was met and repulsed by the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who crossed the Kistnah, defeated him repeatedly, seized some of his newly-acquired territory, and levied on him thirty-two lacs of rupees. Hyder returned to Seringapatam, which he had made his capital, and had strongly fortified, and he thence conducted an expedition against Malabar, which he conquered, and put the chiefs to death to make his hold of it the more secure. It is unnecessary to go minutely into the history of the next few years. Hyder organised an army of 100,000 men, officered by Frenchmen, and sometimes in confederation with the Nizam of the Deccan, sometimes in conjunction with the Mahrattas of the Western Ghauts, waged perpetual war on the English. In 1769 Indian Stock fell sixty per cent. The resources of the Company were fast becoming exhausted, when Hyder Ali, by an artful feint, drew the English army, in the spring of 1769, a hundred and forty miles to the south of Madras. Then, by a rapid march, he suddenly appeared, with a body of five thousand horse, on the heights of St. Thomas, overlooking Madras. The whole of the city and vicinity, except the port of St. George itself, lay at his mercy. The terrified Council, in all haste, offered most advantageous terms of peace, which it was the very object of Hyder to accept, and that, too, before the English commander,[321] Colonel Smith, could arrive and intercept his retreat. Hyder gladly consented to the terms, which were those of mutual restitution, and of alliance and mutual defence: the last, a condition which, with Hyder's disposition to aggrandisement, was sure to bring the English into fresh trouble.

THREE:She was given no time for the comment. Leaving her with the white-faced stewardess and the pilot, whose injuries prevented him from being of much use due to his evident weakness, the others, under Mr. Everdail, were grouped into parties. Given a definite territory, each set out, one group to search the grove under Jeff��s leadership, another to cover the shore section, boathouse and boats, with Captain Parks and his men in the party. Others, under the mate and engineer, divided the rest of the searchers to beat the further and less cultivated woods on the estate and to walk the roads, while Miss Serena gladly agreed to telephone to outlying estates, and to the nearby town to have a watch kept for any unknown person, woman or man. FORE:137