“I as nearly as possible caught Cromwell,” Colonel Macleod said, riding up to Harry.  “We got confused among the tents and ropes, or should have had him.  We entered his tent, but the bird had flown.  We cut down some scores of his infantry, and spiked four guns, I have not lost twenty men, and his cavalry must have lost at least a hundred from your fire, besides the damage I did at their camp.”

Obtaining a stock of supplies sufficient for some days from the ships at Dunbar, Cromwell advanced to Musselburgh, within striking distance of Edinburgh.  Leslie had strongly posted his army in intrenched lines extending from Edinburgh to Leith, a distance of two miles.  Colonel Macleod with his detachment rejoined the army on the same day that Cromwell reached Musselburgh.  Upon the day after the arrival of the English there was a sharp cavalry fight, and Cromwell would fain have tempted the Scotch army to engage beyond their lines.  But Leslie was not to be drawn.  He knew that if he could maintain himself in his intrenchments the English must fall back, as they had the sea behind them and on their right, Edinburgh in front of them, and a devastated country on their left.  At the urgent request of Cromwell the Parliament strained every nerve to send up provisions by ships, and so enabled him to remain before Edinburgh for a month.

A few days after his arrival Harry received orders to take a hundred and fifty men of his regiment, and to post himself at Kirkglen, which blocked a road by which it was thought Cromwell might send foraging parties westward.  Harry asked that a detachment of cavalry might accompany him, but the request was refused.  Kirkglen stood fifteen miles south of Edinburgh, and somewhat to its west.  Harry left Jacob to command the main body of the regiment, and took with him the companies of Donald Leslie and Hugh Grahame, in the latter of which William Long was lieutenant.  They sallied out from the western side of the camp at daybreak.

“I like not this expedition, Colonel Furness,” Donald Leslie said.  “The refusal to send cavalry with us is strange.  Methinks I see the finger of that crafty fox Argyll in the pie.  His faithfulness to the cause is more and more doubted, though none dare wag a tongue against him, and if it be true that he is in communication with Cromwell, we shall have the Roundheads, horse and foot, down upon us.”

“There is a castle there, is there not,” Harry asked, “which we might occupy?”

“Assuredly there is,” Leslie replied.  “It is the hold of Alan Campbell, a cousin of the man you pinked.  It is that which adds to my suspicion.  You will see, unless I am greatly mistaken, that he will not admit us.”