"The _générale_!" exclaimed Fenton and Finland, as the passing drums rang loudly in the adjacent streets.
"Yes, gentlemen, the crisis has come," said the Earl; "an hour ago, De Schomberg arrived to deprive me of my command."
"We know him not, save as an usurper," said Walter Fenton; "and rather than obey his Mareschal, we will die with our swords in our hands."
Wemyss flourished his halbert, the soldiers uttered a shout, and poured forth to the muster-place.
It was a clear frosty night; the whole sky was of the most beautiful and unclouded blue. Seven tolled from the bells of St. Peter's church. The winter moon, broad, vast, and saffron-coloured, rising above a steep eminence called the Bishops' Hill, poured its flaky lustre through the narrow and irregular streets of Ipswich, which in 1688 differed very much from those of the present day. There terror and confusion reigned on every hand for, on the drums beating to arms, the mayor and inhabitants feared that the Scots would burn and sack the town, which assuredly they would have done, had Dunbarton expressed a wish to that effect.
Save where the bright moonlight shot through the crooked thoroughfares, the whole town was involved in gloom and obscurity; but every window was crowded with anxious faces, watching the Scots hurrying to their alarm-post, while the flashing of their helmets and the clank of their accoutrements impressed with no ordinary terror the timid and the disloyal.
By this time King James had fled from Whitehall, and under an escort of Dutch troops, was--nobody knew where. William was in possession of his palace, from whence he issued orders to the troops, and proclamations to the people, with all the air of a conqueror and authority of a king. The entire forces of Britain had joined him, save sixty gentlemen of the Scottish Life Guards, and a few of the Scots' Greys (who were on their way home, under Viscount Dundee), and the Royals, whom, from their number, discipline, and known faith to James, the Stadtholder was very desirous of sending abroad forthwith, under command of the Marshal-Duke of Schomberg, a venerable soldier of fortune, whose arrival at Ipswich on the night in question had brought matters to a sudden issue.