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 1570-3 THE RISING OF THE NORTH. 215 to cross, except at the bridge, would be extremely dangerous, and he was obliged to follow the brink of the ravine to recover the road again. Dacres had fol- lowed him at a distance, foreseeing his difficulty. There was a ridge of broken ground to be passed, from which the cliff fell sheer to the river, and where defeat would be destruction. At that spot, as his men were struggling along draggled and weary with their night's march, the Borderers came down on them ; and even Hunsdon himself could not withhold his admiration at the brilliancy of their onset. ' They gave the proudest charge/ he said, ' that ever I saw/ .Retreat being im- possible, the Berwick men stood to their arms; they were trained marksmen, as the time then was, and, at close quarters, their harquebusses gave them a terrible advantage. The Borderers staggered under the fire, and, before they could recover themselves, Hunsdon fell on them with a squadron of horse, cut up some hundreds of them, and drove them back in confusion. Having eo largely the advantage in numbers, they might still have thrown themselves across the bridge and held the passage of the river ; but Dacres of the crooked back, so bold in conspiracies, was faint-hearted in the field. When Hunsdon charged, ' he fled like a tall gentleman, and never looked behind him till he was in Liddisdale/ A trooper seized him by the arm and had almost secured him, but a party of Scots came to his rescue and snatched him from capture and the scaffold. 1 Their leader gone, the Borderers scattered to their homes. Two hundred 1 Hunsdon to the Queen, February 20 : MSS. Border