XXV. The Citadel…

XXV. The Citadel

During the repast, the countess often fixed her unrestrained gaze on the manly yet youthful countenance of the heroic Wallace. His plumed helmet was now laid aside; and the heavy corselet unbuckled from his breast, disclosing the symmetry of his fine form, left its graceful movements to be displayed with advantage by the flexible folds of his simple tartan vest. Was it the formidable Wallace she looked on, bathed in the blood of Heselrigge, and breathing vengeance against the adherents of the tyrant Edward! It was, then, the enemy of her kinsmen of the house of Cummin! It was the man for whom her husband had embraced so many dangers! It was the man whom she had denounced to one of those kinsmen, and whom she had betrayed to the hazard of an ignominious death! But where now was the fierce rebel--the ruiner of her peace--the outlaw whom she had wished in his grave?

The last idea was distraction. She could have fallen at his feet, and bathing them with her tears, have implored his pity and forgiveness. Even as the wish sprung in her mind, she asked herself-"Did he know all, could he pardon such a weight of injuries?" She cast her eyes with a wild expression upon his face. The mildness of heaven was there; and the peace, too, she might have thought, had not his eye carried a chastened sadness in its look, which told that something dire and sorrowful was buried deep within. It was a look that dissolved the soul which gazed on it. The countess felt her heart throb violently. At that moment Wallace addressed a few words to her but she knew not what they were; her soul was in tumults, and a mist passed over her sight, which, for a moment, seemed to wrap all her senses in a trance.

The unconscious object of these emotions bowed to her inarticulate reply, supposing that the mingling voices of others had made him hear hers indistinctly.

Lady Mar found her situation so strange, and her agitation so inexplicable, that feeling it impossible to remain longer without giving way to a burst of tears, she rose from her seat, and forcing a smile with her courtesy to the company, left the room.

On gaining the upper apartment, she threw herself upon the nearest couch, and striking her breast, exclaimed: "What is this within me? How does my soul seem to pour itself out to this man! Oh! how does it extend itself, as if it would absorb his, even at my eyes! Only twelve hours--hardly twelve hours, have I seen this William Wallace, and yet my very being is now lost in his!"

While thus speaking, she covered her face with her handkerchief, but no tears now started to be wiped away. The fire in her veins dried the source, and with burning blushes she rose from her seat. "Fatal, fatal hour! Why didst thou come here, too infatuating Wallace, to rob me of my peace? Oh! why did I ever look on that face?-or rather, blessed saints!" cried she, clasping her hands in wild passion, "why did I ever shackle this hand?-why did I ever render such a sacrifice necessary? Wallace is now free; had I been free? But wretch, wretch, wretch; I could tear out this betrayed heart! I could trample on that of the infatuated husband that made me such a slave!" She gasped for breath, and again seating herself, reclined her beating temples against the couch.

She was now silent; but thoughts not less intense, not less fraught with self-reproach and anguish, occupied her mind. Should this god of her idolatry ever discover that it was her information which had sent Earl de Valence's men to surround him in the mountains; should he ever learn that at Bothwell she had betrayed the cause on which he had set his life, she felt that moment would be her last. For, now, to sate her eyes with gazing on him, to hear the sound of his voice, to receive his smiles, seemed to her a joy she could only surrender with her existence. What then was the prospect of so soon losing him, even to crown himself with honor, but to her a living death?

TO defer his departure was all her study--all her hope; and fearful that his restless valor might urge him to accompany Murray in his intended convoy of Helen to the Tweed, she determined to persuade her nephew to set off without the knowledge of his general. She did not allow that it was the youthful beauty, and more lovely mind of her daughter-in-law, which she feared; even to herself she cloaked her alarm under the plausible excuse of care for the chieftain's safety. Composed by this mental arrangement, her disturbed features became smooth, and with even a sedate air she received her lord and his brave friends, when they soon after entered the chamber.

But the object of her wishes did not appear. Wallace had taken Lord Lennox to view the dispositions of the fortress. Ill satisfied as she was with his prolonged absence, she did not fail to turn it to advantage; and while her lord and his friends were examining a draft of Scotland (which Wallace had sketched after she left the banqueting-room), she took Lord Andrew aside, to converse with him on the subject now nearest to her heart.

"It certainly belongs to me alone, her kinsman and friend, to protect Helen to the Tweed, if there she must go," returned Murray; "but, my good lady, I cannot comprehend why I am to lead my fair cousin such a pilgrimage. She is not afraid of heroes! you are safe in Dumbarton, and why not bring her here also?"

"Not for worlds!" exclaimed the countess, thrown off her guard. Murray looked at her with surprise. It recalled her to self-possession, and she resumed: "So lovely a creature in this castle would be a dangerous magnet. You must have known that it was the hope of obtaining her which attracted the Lord Soulis and Earl de Valence to Bothwell. The whole castle rung with the quarrel of these two lords upon her account, when you so fortunately effected her escape. Should it be known that she is here, the same fierce desire of obtaining her would give double incitement to De Valence to recover the place; and the consequences, who can answer for?"

By this argument Murray was persuaded to relinquish the idea of conveying Helen to Dumbarton; but remembering what Wallace had said respecting the safety of a religious sanctuary, he advised that she should be left at St. Fillan's till the cause of Scotland might be more firmly established. "Send a messenger to inform her of the rescue of Dumbarton, and of your and my uncle's health," continued he, "and that will be sufficient to make her happy."

That she was not to be thrown in Wallace's way satisfied Lady Mar; and indifferent whether Helen's seclusion were under the Elidon tree or the Holyrood, she approved Murray's decision. Relieved from apprehension, her face became again dressed in smiles, and, with a bounding step, she rose to welcome the re-entrance of Wallace with the Earl of Lennox.

Absorbed in one thought, every charm she possessed was directed to the same point. She played finely on the lute and sung with all the grace of her country. What gentle heart was not to be affected by music? She determined it should be once of the spells by which she meant to attract Wallace. She took up one of the lutes (which with other musical instruments decorated the apartments of the luxurious De Valence), and touching it with exquisite delicacy, breathed the most pathetic air her memory could dictate.

"If on the heath she moved, her breast was whiter than the down of Cana; If on the sea-beat shore, than the foam of the rolling ocean. Her eyes were two stars of light. Her face was Heaven's bow in showers; Her dark hair flowed around it, like the streaming clouds, Thou wert the dweller of souls, white-handed Strinadona!"

Wallace rose from his chair, which had been placed near her. She had deigned that these tender words of the bard of Morven should suggest to her hearer the observation of her own resembling beauties. But he saw in them only the lovely dweller of his own soul; and walking toward a window, stood there with his eyes fixed on the descending sun. "So hath set all my joys. So is life to me, a world without a sun-cold, cold, and charmless!"

The countess vainly believed that some sensibility advantageous to her new passion had caused the agitation with which she saw him depart from her side; and, intoxicated with the idea, she ran through many a melodious descant, till toughing on the first strains of Thusa ha measg na reultan mor, she saw Wallace start from his contemplative position, and with a pale countenance leave the room. There was something in this abruptness which excited the alarm of the Earl of Lennox, who had also been listening to the songs; he rose instantly, and overtaking the chief at the threshold, inquired what was the matter? "Nothing," answered Wallace, forcing a smile, in which the agony of his mind was too truly imprinted; "but music displeased me." With this reply he disappeared. The excuse seemed strange but it was true; for she whose notes were to him sweeter than the thrush--whose angel strains used to greet his morning and evening hours--was silent in the grave! He should no more see her white hand upon the lute; he should no more behold that bosom, brighter than foam upon the wave, to him? A soulless sound, or a direful knell, to recall the remembrance of all he had lost.

Such were his thoughts when the words of Thusa ha measg rung from Lady Mar's voice. Those were the strains which Halbert used to breathe from his heart to call Marion to her nightly slumbers--those were the strains with which that faithful servant had announced that she slept to wake no more!

What wonder, then, that Wallace fled from the apartment, and buried himself, and his aroused grief, amid the distant solitudes of the beacon-hill!

While looking over the shoulder of his uncle, on the station which Stirling held amid the Ochil hills, Edwin had at intervals cast a side-long glance upon the changing complexion of his commander; and no sooner did he see him hurry from the room, than fearful of some disaster having befallen the garrison (which Wallace did not choose immediately to mention), he also stole out of the apartment.

After seeking the object of his anxiety for a long time, without avail, he was returning on his steps, when, attracted by the splendor of the moon silvering the beacon-hill, he ascended, to once at least tread that acclivity in light which he had so miraculously passed in darkness. Scarce a zephyr fanned the sleeping air. He moved on with a flying step, till a deep sigh arrested him. He stopped and listened: it was repeated again and again. He gently drew near, and saw a human figure reclining on the ground. The head of the apparent mourner was unbonneted, and the brightness of the moon shone on his polished forehead. Edwin thought the sound of those sighs was the same he had often heard from the object of his search. He walked forward. Again the figure sighed; but with a depth so full of piercing woe, that Edwin hesitated.

A cloud had passed over the moon; but, sailing off again, displayed to the anxious boy that he had indeed drawn very near his friend. "Who goes there?" exclaimed Wallace, starting on his feet.

"Your Edwin," returned the youth. "I feared something wrong had happened, when I saw you look so sad, and leave the room abruptly."

Wallace pressed his hand in silence. "Then some evil has befallen you?" inquired Edwin, in an agitated voice; "you do not speak!"

Wallace seated himself on a stone, and leaned his head upon the hilt of his sword. "No new evil has befallen me, Edwin; but there is such a thing as remembrance, that stabs deeper than the dagger's point."

"What remembrance can wound you, my general? The Abbott of St. Colomba has often told me that memory is a balm to every ill with the good; and have not you been good to all? The benefactor, the preserver of thousands! Surely, if man can be happy, it must be Sir William Wallace!"

"And so I am, my Edwin, when I contemplate the end. But, in the interval, with all thy sweet philosophy, is it not written here 'that man was made to mourn?'" He put his hand on his heart; and then, after a short pause, resumed: "Doubly I mourn, doubly am I bereaved, for, had it not been for an enemy, more fell than he who beguiled Adam of Paradise, I might have been a father; I might have lived to have gloried in a son like thee; I might have seen my wedded angel clasp such a blessing to her bosom; but now, both are cold in clay! These are the recollections which sometimes draw tears down thy leader's cheeks. And do not believe, brother of my soul," said he, pressing the now weeping Edwin to his breast, "that they disgrace his manhood. The Son of God wept over the tomb of his friend; and shall I deny a few tears, dropped in stealth, over the grave of my wife and child?"

Edwin sobbed aloud. "No son could love you dearer than I do. Ah, let my duty, my affection, teach you to forget you have lost a child. I will replace all to you but your Marion; and her, the pitying Son of Mary will restore to you in the kingdom of heaven."

Wallace looked steadfastly at the young preacher. "'Out of the mouths of babes we shall hear wisdom!' Thine, dear Edwin, I will lay to heart. Thou shalt comfort me when my hermit-soul shuts out all the world besides."

"Then I am indeed your brother!" cried the happy youth; "admit me but to your heart, and no fraternal, no filial tie, shall be more strongly linked than mine."

"What tender affections I can spare from those resplendent regions," answered Wallace, pointing to the skies, "are thine. The fervors of my once ardent soul are Scotland's, or I die. But thou art too young, my brother," added he, interrupting himself, "to understand all his feelings, all the seeming contradictions, of my contending heart."

"Not so," answered Edwin, with a modest blush; "what was Lady Marion's, you now devote to Scotland. The blaze of those affections which were hers, would consume your being, did you not pour it forth on your country. Were you not a patriot, grief would prey upon your life."

"You have read me, Edwin," replied Wallace; "and that you may never love to idolatry, learn this also. Though Scotland lay in ruins, I was happy; I felt no captivity while in Marion's arms; even oppression was forgotten when she made the sufferer's tears cease to flow. She absorbed my thoughts, my wishes, my life!-and she was wrested from me, that I might feel myself a slave, that the iron might enter into my soul, with which I was to pull down tyranny, and free my country. Mark the sacrifice, young man," cried Wallace, starting on his feet; "it now even smokes, and the flames are here inextinguishable." He struck his hand upon his breast. "Never love as I have loved, and you will be a patriot, without needing to taste my bitter cup!"

Edwin trembled; his tears were checked. "I can love no one better than I do you, my general! and is there any crime in that?"

Wallace in a moment recovered from the transient wildness which had possessed him. "None, my Edwin," replied he; "the affections are never criminal but when by their excess they blind us to other duties. The offense of mine is judged, and I bow to the penalty. When that is paid, then may my ashes sleep in rescued Scotland! Then may the God of victory and of mercy grant that the seraph spirits of my wife and infant may meet my pardoned soul in paradise." Edwin wept afresh. "Cease, dear boy!" said he; "these presages are very comforting; they whisper that the path of glory leads thy brother to his home." As he spoke he took the arm of the silent Edwin (whose sensibility locked up the powers of speech), and putting it through his, they descended the hill together.

On the open ground before the great tower they were met by Murray. "I come to seek you," cried he. "We have had woe on woe in the citadel since you left it."

"Nothing very calamitous," returned Wallace, "if we may guess by the merry aspect of the messenger."

"Only a little whirlwind of my aunt's, in which we have had airs and showers enough to wet us through and blow us dry again."

The conduct of the lady had been even more extravagant than her nephew chose to describe. After the knight's departure, when the chiefs entered into conversation respecting his future plans, and Lennox mentioned that when his men should arrive (for whom he had that evening dispatched Ker), it was Wallace's intention to march immediately for Stirling, whither, it could hardly be doubted, Aymer de Valence had fled, "I shall be left here," continued the earl, "to assist you, Lord Mar, in the severer duties attendant on being governor of this place."

No sooner did these words reach the ears of the countess than, struck with despair, she hastened toward her husband, and earnestly exclaimed, "You will not suffer this!"

"No," returned the earl, mistaking her meaning; "not being able to perform the duties attendant on the responsibilities station with which Wallace would honor me, I shall relinquish it altogether to Lord Lennox, and be amply satisfied in finding myself under his protection."

"Ah, where is protection without Sir William Wallace?" cried she. "If he go, our enemies will return. Who then will repel them from these walls? Who will defend your wife and only son from falling again into the hands of our doubly incensed foes?"

Mar observed Lord Lennox color at this imputation on his bravery, and shocked at the affront which his unreflecting wife seemed to give so gallant a chief, he hastily replied, "Though this wounded arm cannot boast, yet the Earl of Lennox is an able representative of our commander."

"I will die, madam," interrupted Lennox, "before anything hostile approaches you or your children."

She attended slightly to this pledge, and again addressed her lord with fresh arguments for the detention of Wallace. Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, impatient under all this foolery, as he justly deemed it, abruptly said, "Be assured, fair lady, Israel's Samson was not brought into the world his duty better than allow himself to be tied to any nursery girdle in Christendom."

The brave old earl was offended with this roughness, but ere he could so express himself, the object darted her own severe retort on Kirkpatrick, and then, turning to her husband, with an hysterical sob, exclaimed, "It is well seen what will be my fate when Wallace is gone! Would he have stood by and beheld me thus insulted?"

Distressed with shame at her conduct, and anxious to remove her fears, Lord Mar softly whispered her, and threw his arm about her waist. She thrust him from her. "You care not what may become of me, and my heart disdains your blandishments."

Lennox rose in silence, and walked to the other end of the chamber. Sir Roger Kirkpatrick followed him, muttering, pretty audibly, his thanks to St. Andrew that he had never been yoked with a wife. Scrymgeour and Murray tried to allay the storm in her bosom by circumstantially detailing how the fortress must be equally safe under the care of Lennox as of Wallace. But they discoursed in vain; she was obstinate, and at last left the room in a passion of tears.

On the return of Wallace, Lord Lennox advanced to meet him. "What shall we do?" said he. "Without you have the witchcraft of Hercules, and can be in two places at once, I fear we must either leave the rest of Scotland to fight for itself, or never restore peace to this castle!"

Wallace smiled, but before he could answer, Lady Mar, having heard his voice ascending the stairs, suddenly entered the room. She held her infant in her arms. Her air was composed, but her eyes yet shone in tears. At this sight Lord Lennox, sufficiently disgusted with the lady, taking Murray by the arm, withdrew with him from the apartment.

She approached Wallace: "You are come, my deliverer, to speak comfort to the mother of this poor babe. My cruel lord here, and the Earl of Lennox, say you mean to abandon us in this castle?"

"It cannot be abandoned," returned the chief, "while they are in it. But if so warlike a scene alarms you, would not a religious sanctuary-"

"Not for worlds!" cried she, interrupting him; "what altar is held sacred by the enemies of our country! O! wonder not, then," added she, putting her face to that of her child, "that I should wish this innocent babe never to be from under the wing of such a protector."

"But that is impossible, Joanna," rejoined the earl; "Sir William Wallace has duties to perform superior to that of keeping watch over any private family. His presence is wanted in the field, and we should be traitors to the cause did we detain him."

"Unfeeling Mar," cried she, bursting into tears, "thus to echo the words of the barbarian Kirkpatrick; thus to condemn us to die! You will see another tragedy: your own wife and child seized by the returning Southrons, and laid bleeding at your feet!"

Wallace walked from her much agitated.

"Rather inhuman, Joanna," whispered Lord Mar to her in an angry voice, "to make such a reference to the presence of our protector! I cannot stay to listen to a pertinacity as insulting to the rest of our brave leaders as it is oppressive to Sir William Wallace. Edwin, you will come for me when your aunt consents to be guided by right reason." While yet speaking he entered the passage that led to his own apartment.

Lady Mar sat a few minutes silent. She was not to be warned from her determination by the displeasure of a husband whom she now regarded with the impatience of a bondwoman toward her taskmaster; and only solicitous to compass the detention of Sir William Wallace, she resolved, if he would not remain at the castle, to persuade him to conduct her himself to her husband's territories in the Isle of Bute. She could contrive to make the journey occupy more than one day, and for holding him longer she would trust to chance and her own inventions. With these resolutions she looked up. Edwin was speaking to Wallace. "What does he tell you?" said she; "that my lord has left me in displeasure? Alas! he comprehends not a mother's anxiety for her sole remaining child. One of my sweet twins, my dear daughter, died on my being brought a prisoner to this horrid fortress, and to lose this also would be more than I could bear. Look at this babe," cried she, holding it up to him; "let it plead to you for its life! Guard it, noble Wallace, whatever may become of me!"

The appeal of a mother made instant way to Sir William's heart; even her weaknesses, did they point to anxiety respecting her offspring, were sacred with him. "What would you have me do, madam? If you fear to remain here, tell me where you think you would be safer, and I will be your conductor?"

She paused to repress the triumph with which this proposal filled her, and then, with downcast eyes, replied: "In the seagirt Bute stands Rothsay, a rude, but strong castle of my lord's. It possesses nothing to attract the notice of the enemy, and there I might remain in perfect safety. Lord Mar may keep his station here until a general victory sends you, noble Wallace, to restore my child to its father."

Wallace bowed his assent to her proposal; and Edwin, remembering the earl's injunction, inquired if he might inform him of what was decided. When he left the room, Lady mar rose, and suddenly putting her son into the arms of Wallace, rose, and said: "Let his sweet caresses thank you." Wallace trembled as he pressed its little mouth to his; and, mistranslating this emotion, she dropped her face upon the infant's, and in affecting to kiss it, rested her head upon the bosom of the chief. There was something in this action more than maternal; it surprised and disconcerted Wallace. "Madam," said he, drawing back, and relinquishing the child. "I do not require any thanks for serving the wife and son of Lord Mar."

At that moment the earl entered. Lady mar flattered herself that the repelling action of Wallace, and his cold answer, had arisen from the expectation of this entrance; yet blushing with something like disappointment, she hastily uttered a few agitated words, to inform her husband that Bute was to be her future sanctuary.

Lord Mar approved it, and declared his determination to accompany her. "In my state, I can be of little use here," said he; "my family will require protection, even in that seclusion; and therefore, leaving Lord Lennox sole governor of Dumbarton, I shall unquestionably attend them to Rothsay myself."

This arrangement would break in upon the lonely conversations she had meditated to have with Wallace and therefore the countess objected to the proposal. But none of her arguments being admitted by her lord, and as Wallace did not support them by a word, she was obliged to make a merit of necessity, and consent to her husband being their companion.

XXVI. Renfrewshire

Toward evening the next day, Ker not only returned with the Earl of Lennox's men, but brought with them Sir Eustace Maxwell of Carlaveroch. That brave knight happened to be in the neighborhood the very same night in which De Valence fled before the arms of Wallace across the Clyde; and he no sooner saw the Scottish colors on the walls of Dumbarton, than, finding out who was their planter, his soul took fire; and stung with a generous ambition of equaling in glory his equal in years, he determined to assist, while he emulated the victor.

To this end, he traversed the adjoining country, striving to enlighten the understandings of the stupidly satisfied and to excite the discontented, to revolt. With most he failed. Some took upon them to lecture him on "fishing in troubled waters;" and warned him, if he would keep his head on his shoulders, to wear his yoke in peace. Others thought the project too arduous for men of small means; they wished well to the arms of Sir William Wallace; and, should he continue successful, would watch the moment to aid him with all their little power. Those who had much property, feared to risk its loss by embracing a doubtful struggle. Some were too great cowards to fight for the rights they would gladly regain by the exertions of others. And others, again, who had families, shrunk from taking part in a cause which, should it fail, would not only put their lives in danger, but expose their offspring to the revenge of a resentful enemy. This was the best apology of any that had been offered; natural affection was the pleader; and though blinded to its true interest, such weakness had an amiable source, and so was pardoned. But the other pleas were so basely selfish, so undeserving of anything but scorn, that Sir Eustace Maxwell could not forbear expressing it. "When Sir William Wallace is entering full sail, you will send your hirelings to tow him in! but if a plank could save him now, you would not throw it to him! I understand you, sirs, and shall trouble your patriotism no more."

In short, none but about a hundred poor fellows whom outrages had rendered desperate, and a few brave spirits who would put all to the hazard for so good a cause, could be prevailed on to hold themselves in readiness to obey Sir Eustace, when he should see the moment to conduct them to Sir William Wallace. He was trying his eloquence among the clan at Lennox, when Ker arriving, stamped his persuasions with truth; and above five hundred men arranged themselves under their lord's standard. Maxwell gladly explained himself to Wallace's lieutenant; and summoning his little reserve, they marched with flying pennons through the town of Dumbarton. At sight of so much larger a power than they expected would venture to appear in arms, and sanctioned by the example of the Earl of Lennox (whose name held a great influence in those parts), several, who before had held back, from doubting their own judgment, now came forward; and nearly eight hundred well-appointed men marched into the fortress.

So large a reinforcement was gratefully received by Wallace; and he welcomed Maxwell with a cordiality which inspired that young knight with an affection equal to his zeal.

A council being held respecting the disposal of the new troops, it was decided that the Lennox men must remain with their earl in garrison; while those brought by Maxwell, and under his command, should follow Wallace in the prosecution of his conquests along with his own especial people.

These preliminaries being arranged, the remainder of the day was dedicated to more mature deliberations--to the unfolding of the plan of warfare which Wallace had conceived. As he first sketched the general outline of his design, and then proceeded to the particulars of each military movement, he displayed such comprehensiveness of mind; such depths of penetration; clearness of apprehension; facility in expedients; promptitude in perceiving, and fixing on the most favorable points of attack; explaining their bearings upon the power of the enemy; and where the possession of such a castle would compel the neighboring ones to surrender; and where occupying the hills with bands of resolute Scots, would be a more efficient bulwark than a thousand towers--that Maxwell gazed on him with admiration, and Lennox with wonder.

Mar had seen the power of his arms; Murray had already drunk the experience of a veteran from his genius; hence they were not surprised on hearing that which filled strangers with amazement.

Lennox gazed on his leader's youthful countenance, doubting whether he really were listening to military plans, great as general ever formed; or were visited, in vision, by some heroic shade, who offered to his sleeping fancy designs far vaster than his waking faculties could have conceived. He had thought that the young Wallace might have won Dumbarton by a bold stroke, and that when his invincible courage should be steered by stroke, and that when his invincible courage should be steered by graver heads, every success might be expected from his arms; and saw that when turned to any cause of policy, "the Gordian knot of it he did unloose, familiar as his garter," he marveled, and said within himself, "Surely this man is born to be a sovereign!"

Maxwell, though equally astonished, was not so rapt. "You have made arms the study of your life?" inquired he.

"It was the study of my earliest days," returned Wallace. "But when Scotland lost her freedom, as the sword was not drawn in her defense, I looked not where it lay. I then studied the arts of peace; that is over; and now the passion of my soul revives. When the mind is bent on one object only, all becomes clear that leads to it; zeal, in such cases, is almost genius."

Soon after these observations, it was admitted that Wallace might attend Lord mar and his family on the morrow to the Isle of Bute.

When the dawn broke, he arose from his heather bed in the great tower; and having called forth twenty of the Bothwell men to escort their lord, he told Ireland he should expect to have a cheering account of the wounded on his return.

"But to assure the poor fellows," rejoined the honest soldier, "that something of yourself still keeps watch over them. I pray you leave me the sturdy sword with which you won Dumbarton. It shall be hung up in their sight,** and a good soldier's wound will heal by looking on it."

**This tower, within the fortress of Dumbarton, is still called Wallace's tower; and a sword is shown there as the one that belonged to Wallace.

Wallace smiled. "Were it our holy King David's we might expect such a miracle. But you are welcome to it; and here let it remain till I take it hence. Meanwhile, lend me yours, Stephen, for a truer never fought for Scotland."

A glow of conscious valor flushed the cheek of the veteran. "There, my dear lord," said he, presenting it; "it will not dishonor your hand, for it cut down many a proud Norwegian on the field of Largs."

Wallace took the sword, and turned to meet Murray with Edwin in the portal. When they reached the citadel, Lennox and all the officers in the garrison were assembled to bid their chief a short adieu. Wallace spoke to each separately, and then approaching the countess, led her down the rock to the horses which were to convey them tot he Frith of Clyde. Lord Mar, between Murray and Edwin, followed; and the servants and guard completed the suit.

Being well mounted, they pleasantly pursued their way, avoiding all inhabited places, and resting in the deepest recesses of the hills. Lord Mar proposed traveling all night; but at the close of the evening his countess complained of fatigue, declaring she could not advance further than the eastern bank of the River Cart. No shelter appeared in sight, excepting a thick and extensive wood of hazels; but the air being mild, and the lady declaring her inability of moving on, Lord Mar at last became reconciled to his wife and son passing the night with no other canopy than the trees. Wallace ordered cloaks to be spread on the ground for the countess and her women; and seeing them laid to rest, planted his men to keep guard around the circle.

The moon had sunk in the west before the whole of his little camp were asleep; but when all seemed composed, he wandered forth by the dim light of the stars to view the surrounding country--a country he had so often traversed in his boyish days. A little onward, in green Renfrewshire, lay the lands of his father; but that Ellerslie of his ancestors, like his own Ellerslie of Clydesdale, his country's enemies had leveled with the ground. He turned in anguish of heart toward the south, for there less racking remembrances hovered over the distant hills.

Leaning on the shattered stump of an old tree, he fixed his eyes on the far-stretching plain, which alone seemed to divide him from the venerable Sir Ronald Crawford and his youthful haunts at Ayr. Full of thoughts of her who used to share those happy scenes, he heard a sigh behind him. He turned round, and beheld a female figure disappear among the trees. He stood motionless; again it met his view; it seemed to approach. A strange emotion stirred within him. When he last passed these borders, he was bringing his bride from Ayr! What then was this ethereal visitant? The silver light of the stars was not brighter than its airy robes, which floated in the wind. His heart paused--it beat violently--still the figure advanced. Lost in the wilderness of his imagination, he exclaimed, "Marion!" and darted forward, as if to rush into her embrace. But it fled, and again vanished. He dropped upon the ground in speechless disappointment.

"'Tis false!" cried he, recovering from his first expectation; "'tis a phantom of my own creating. The pure spirit of Marion would never fly from me; I loved her too well. She would not thus redouble my grief. But I shall go to thee, wife of my soul!" cried he; "and that is comfort. Balm, indeed, is the Christian's hope!"

Such were his words, such were his thoughts, till the coldness of the hour and the exhaustion of nature putting a friendly seal upon his senses, he sunk upon the bank, and fell into a profound sleep.

When he awoke the lark was caroling above his head; and to his surprise he found a plaid was laid over him. He threw it off, and beheld Edwin seated at his feet. "This has been your doing, my kind brother," said he, "but how came you to discover me?"

"I missed you when the dawn broke, and at last found you here, sleeping under the dew."

"And has none else been astir?" inquired Wallace, thinking of the figure he had seen.

"None that I know of. All were fast asleep when I left the party."

Wallace began to fancy that he had been laboring under the impressions of some powerful dream, and saying no more, he returned to the wood. Finding everybody ready, he took his station; and setting forth, all proceeded cheerfully, though slowly, through the delightful valleys of Barochan. By sunset they arrived at the point of embarkation. The journey ought to have been performed in half the time; but the countess petitioned for long rests, a compliance with which the younger part of the cavalcade conceded with reluctance.

XXVII. The Frith of Clyde

At Gourock, Murray engage two small vessels; one for the earl and countess, with Wallace as their escort; the other for himself and Edwin, to follow with a few of the men.

It was a fine evening, and they embarked with everything in their favor. The boatmen calculated on reaching Bute in a few hours; but ere they had been half an hour at sea, the wind, veering about, obliged them to woo its breezes by a traversing motion, which, though it lengthened their voyage, increased its pleasantness by carrying them often within near views of the ever-varying shores. Sailing under a side-wind, they beheld the huge irregular rocks of Dunoon, overhanging the ocean; while from their projecting brows hung every shrub which can live in that saline atmosphere.

"There," whispered Lady mar, gently inclining toward Wallace, "might the beautiful mermaid of Corie Vrekin keep her court! Observe how magnificently those arching cliffs overhang the hollows, and how richly they are studded with shells and sea-flowers!"

No flower of the field or of the ocean that came within the ken of Wallace, wasted its sweetness unadmired. He assented to the remarks of Lady Mar, who continued to expatiate on the beauties of the shores which they passed; and thus the hours flew pleasantly away, till, turning the southern point of the Cowal Mountains, the scene suddenly changed. The wind, which had gradually been rising, blew a violent gale from that part of the coast; and the sea, being pent between the rocks which skirt the continent and the northern side of Bute, became so boisterous, that the boatmen began to think they should be driven upon the rocks of the island, instead of reaching its bay. Wallace tore down the sails, and laying his nervous arms to the oar, assisted to keep the vessel off the breakers, against which the waves were driving her. The sky collected into a gloom; and while the teeming clouds seemed descending even to rest upon the cracking masts, the swelling of the ocean threatened to heave her up into their very bosoms.

Lady Mar looked with affright at the gathering tempest, and with difficulty was persuaded to retire under the shelter of a little awning. The earl forgot his debility in the general terror; and tried to reassure the boatmen. But a tremendous sweep of the gale, driving the vessel far across the head of Bute, shot her past the mouth of Loch Fyne, toward the perilous rocks of Arran. "Here our destruction is certain!" cried the master of the bark, at the same time confessing his ignorance of the navigation on this side of the island. Lord Mar, seizing the helm from the stupefied master, called to Wallace, "While you keep the men to their duty," cried he, "I will steer."

The earl being perfectly acquainted with the coast, Wallace gladly saw the helm in his hand. But he had scarcely stepped forward himself to give some necessary directions, when a heavy sea, breaking over the deck, carried two of the poor mariners overboard. Wallace instantly threw out a couple of ropes. Then, amidst a spray so blinding that the vessel appeared in a cloud, and while buffeted on each side by the raging of waves, which seemed contending to tear her to pieces, she lay to for a few minutes, to rescue the men from the yawning gulf; one caught a rope and was saved, but the other was seen no more.

Again the bark was set loose to the current. Wallace, now with two rowers only, applied his whole strength to their aid. The master and the third man were employed in the unceasing toil of laying out the accumulating water.

While the anxious chief tugged at the oar, and watched the thousand embattled cliffs which threatened destruction, his eye looked for the vessel that contained his friends. But the liquid mountains which rolled around him prevented all view; and, with hardly a hope of seeing them again, he pursued his attempt to preserve the lives of those committed to his care.

All this while Lady Mar lay in a state of stupefaction. Having fainted at the first alarm of danger, she had fallen from swoon to swoon, and now remained almost insensible upon the bosoms of her maids. In a moment the vessel struck with a great shock, and the next instant it seemed to move with a velocity incredible. "The whirpool! the whirlpool!" resounded from every lip. But again the rapid motion was suddenly checked, and the women, fancying they had struck on the Vrekin Rock, shrieked aloud. The cry, and the terrified words which accompanied it, aroused Lady Mar. She started from her trance, and, while the confusion redoubled, rushed toward the dreadful scene.

The mountainous waves and lowering clouds, borne forward by the blast, anticipated the dreariness of night. The last rays of the setting sun had long passed away, and the deep shadows of the driving heavens cast the whole into a gloom, even more terrific than absolute darkness; while the high and beetling rocks, towering aloft in precipitous walls, mocked the hopes of the sea-beaten mariner, should he even buffet the waters to reach their base; and the jagged shingles, deeply shelving beneath the waves, or projecting their pointed summits upward, showed the crew where the rugged death would meet them.

A little onward, a thousand massy fragments, rent by former tempests from their parent cliffs, lay at the foundations of the immense acclivities which faced the cause of their present alarm--a whirlpool almost as terrific as that of Scarba. The moment the powerful blast drove the vessel within the influence of the outward edge of the first circle of the vortex. Wallace leaped from the deck on the rocks, and, with the same rope in his hand with which he had saved the life of the seaman, he called to the two men to follow him, who yet held similar ropes, fastened like his own to the prow of the vessel; and being obeyed, they strove by towing it along, to stem the suction of the current.

It was at this instant that Lady Mar rushed forward upon deck.

"In for your life, Joanna!" exclaimed the earl. She answered him not, but looked wildly around her. Nowhere could she see Wallace.

"Have I drowned him?" cried she, in a voice of frenzy, and striking the women from her, who would have held her back. "Let me clasp him, even in the deep waters!"

Happily, the earl lost the last sentence in the roaring of the storm.

"Wallace, Wallace!" cried she, wringing her hands, and still struggling with her women. At that moment a huge wave, sinking before her, discovered the object of her fears, straining along the surface of a rock, and followed by the men in the same laborious task, tugging forward the ropes to which the bark was attached. She gazed at them with wonder and affright, for, notwithstanding the beating of the elements (which seeming to find their breasts of iron and their feet armed with some preternatural adhesion to the cliff), they continued to bear resolutely onward. Fortunately, they did not now labor against the wind. Sometimes they pressed forward on the level edge of the rock; then a yawning chasm forced them to leap from cliff to cliff, or to spring on some more elevated projection. Thus, contending with the vortex and the storm, they at last arrived at the doubling of Cuthonrock,** the point that was to clear them of this minor Corie Vrekin. But at that crisis the rope which Wallace held broke, and, with the shock, he fell backward into the sea. The foremost man uttered a dreadful cry; but ere it could be echoed by his fellows, Wallace had risen above the waves, and, beating their whelming waters with his invincible arm, soon gained the vessel and jumped upon the deck. The point was doubled, but the next moment the vessel struck, and in a manner that left no hope of getting her off. All must take to the water or perish, for the second shock would scatter her piecemeal.

**Cuthon means the mournful sound of waves.

Again Lady Mar appeared. At sight of Wallace she forgot everything but him; and perhaps would have thrown herself into his arms, had not the anxious earl caught her in his own.

"Are we to die?" cried she to Wallace, in a voice of horror.

"I trust that God has decreed otherwise," was his reply. "Compose yourself; all may yet be well."

Lord Mar, from his yet unhealed wounds, could not swim; Wallace therefore tore up the benches of the rowers, and binding them into the form of a small raft, made it the vehicle for the earl and countess, with her two maids and the child. While the men were towing it, and buffeting with it through the breakers, he too threw himself into the sea to swim by its side, and be in readiness in case of accident.

Having gained the shore, or rather the broken rocks, that lie at the foot of the stupendous craigs which surround the Isle of Arran, Wallace and his sturdy assistants conveyed the countess and her terrified women up their acclivities. Fortunately for the shipwrecked voyagers, though the wind raged, its violence was of some advantage, for it nearly cleared the heavens of clouds, and allowed the moon to send forth her guiding light. By her lamp one of the men discovered the mouth of a cavern, where Wallace gladly sheltered his dripping charges.

The child, whom he had guarded in his own arms during the difficult ascent, he now laid on the bosom of its mother. Lady mar kissed the hand that relinquished it, and gave way to a flood of grateful tears.

The earl, as he sunk almost powerless against the side of the cave, yet had strength enough to press Wallace to his heart. "Ever preserver of me and mine!" cried he, "how must I bless thee!-My wife, my child-"

"Have been saved to you, my friend," interrupted Wallace, "by the presiding care of Him who walked the waves! Without His especial arm we must all have perished in this awful night; therefore let our thanksgivings be directed to Him alone."

"So be it!" returned the earl, and dropping on his knees, he breathed forth so pathetic and sublime a prayer of thanks, that the countess trembled, and bent her head upon the bosom of her child. She could not utter the solemn Amen, that was repeated by every voice in the cave. Her unhappy infatuation saw no higher power in this great preservation than the hand of the man she adored. She felt that guilt was cherished in her heart; and she could not lift her eyes to join with those who, with the boldness of innocence, called on Heaven to attest the sanctity of their vows.

Sleep soon sealed every weary eye, excepting those of Wallace. A racking anxiety respecting the fate of the other vessel, in which were the brave men of Bothwell, and his two dear friends, filled his mind with dreadful forebodings that they had not outlived the storm. Sometimes, when wearied nature for a few minutes sunk into slumber, he would start, grief-struck, from the body of Edwin floating on the briny flood, and as he awoke, a cold despondence would tell him that his dream was, perhaps, too true. "Oh! I love thee, Edwin!" exclaimed he to himself; "and if my devoted heart was to be separated from all but a patriot's love!-why did I think of loving thee?-must thou, too, die, that Scotland may have no rival, that Wallace may feel himself quite alone!"

Thus he sat musing, and listening, with many a sigh, to the yelling gusts of wind, and louder roaring of the water. At last the former gradually subsided, and the latter, obeying the retreating ride, rolled away in hoarse murmurs.

Morning began to dawn, and spreading upon the mountains of the opposite shore, shed a soft light over their misty sides. All was tranquil and full of beauty. That element, which so lately in its rage had threatened to ingulf them all, now flowed by the rocks at the foot of the cave in gentle undulations; and where the spiral cliffs gave a little resistance, the rays of the rising sun, striking on the bursting waves, turned their vapory showers into dropping gems.

While his companions were still wrapped in sleep, Wallace stole away to seek some knowledge respecting the part of the Isle of Arran on which they were cast. Close by the mouth of the cave he discovered a cleft in the rock, into which he turned, and finding the upward footing sufficiently secure, clambered to the summit. Looking around, he found himself at the skirt of a chain of high hills, which seemed to stretch from side to side over the island, while their tops, in alpine succession, rose in a thousand grotesque and pinnacled forms. The ptarmigan and capercailzie were screaming from those upper regions; and the nimble roes, with their fawns, bounding through the green defiles below. No trace of human habitation appeared; but from the size and known population of the island, he knew he could not be far from inhabitants; and thinking it best to send the boatmen in search of them, he retraced his steps. The morning vapors were fast rolling their snowy wreaths down the opposite mountains, whose heads, shining in resplendent purple, seemed to view themselves in the bright reflections of the now smooth sea. Nature, like a proud conqueror, appeared to have put on a triumphal garb, in exultation of the devastation she had committed the night before. Wallace shuddered, as the parallel occurred to his mind, and turned from the scene.

On re-entering the cave he dispatched the seamen, and disposed himself to watch by the sides of his still sleeping friends. An hour hardly had elapsed before the men returned, bringing with them a large boat and its proprietor. But, alas! no tidings of Murray and Edwin, whom he had hoped might have been driven somewhere on the island. In bringing the boat round to the creek under the rock, the men discovered that the sea had driven their wreck between two projecting rocks, where it now lay wedged. Though ruined as a vessel, sufficient held together to warrant their exertions to save the property. Accordingly they entered it, and drew thence most of the valuables which belonged to Lord Mar.

While this was doing, Wallace reascended to the cave, and finding the earl awake, told him a boat was ready for their re-embarkation. "But where, my friend, are my nephews?" inquired he; "Alas! has this fatal expedition robbed me of them?"

Wallace tried to inspire him with a hope he scarcely dare credit himself, that they had been saved on some more distant shore. The voices of the chiefs awakened the women, but the countess still slept. Aware that she would resist trusting herself to the waves again, Lord Mar desired that she might be moved on board without disturbing her. This was readily done, the men having only to take up the extremities of the plaid on to the boat. The earl received her head on his bosom. All were then on board, the rowers struck their oars, and once more the little party found themselves launched upon the sea.

While they were yet midway between the isles, with a bright sun playing its sparkling beams upon the gently rippling waves, the countess, heaving a deep sigh, slowly opened her eyes. All around glared with the light of day; she felt the motion of the boat, and raising her head, saw that she was again embarked on the treacherous element on which she had lately experienced so many terrors. She grew deadly pale, and grasped her husband's hand. "My dear Joanna," cried he, "be not alarmed, we are all safe."

"And Sir William Wallace has left us?" demanded she.

"No, madam," answered a voice from the steerage, "not till this party is safe at Bute do I quit it."

She looked round with a grateful smile; "Ever generous! How could I for a moment doubt our preserver?"

Wallace bowed, but remained silent; and they passed calmly along till the vessel came in sight of a birling,** which, bounding over the waves, was presently so near the earl's, that the figures in each could be distinctly seen. In it the chiefs, to their rapturous surprise, beheld Murray and Edwin. The latter, with a cry of joy, leaped into the sea; the next instant he was over the boat's side, and clasped in the arms of Wallace. Real transport, true happiness, now dilated the heart of the before desponding chief. He pressed the dear boy again and again to his bosom, and kissed his white forehead with all the rapture of the fondest brother. "Thank God! thank God!" was all that Edwin could say; while, at every effort to tear himself from Wallace, to congratulate his uncle on his safety, his heart overflowing toward his friend, opened afresh, and he clung the closer to his breast; till at last, exhausted with happiness, the little hero of Dumbarton gave way to the sensibility of his tender age, and the chief felt his bosom wet with the joy--drawn tears of his youthful banneret.

While this was passing, the birling had drawn close to the boat; and Murray, shaking hands with his uncle and aunt, exclaimed to Wallace, "That urchin is such a monopolizer, I see you have not a greeting for any one else." On this Edwin raised his face, and turned to the affectionate welcomes of Lord Mar. Wallace stretched out his hand to the ever-gay Lord Andrew; and, inviting him into the boat, soon learned, that on the portentous beginning of the storm, Murray's company made direct to the nearest creek in Bute, being better seamen than Wallace's helmsman who, until danger stopped him, had foolishly continued to aim for Rothsay. By this prudence, without having been in much peril, or sustained any fatigue, Murray's party had landed safely. The night came on dark and tremendous; but not doubting that the earl's rowers had carried him into a similar haven, the young chief and his companion kept themselves very easy in a fisher's hut till morning. At an early hour, they then put themselves at the head of the Bothwell men; and, expecting they should come up with Wallace and his party at Rothsay, walked over to the castle. Their consternation was unutterable when they found that Lord Mar was not there, threw themselves into a birling, to seek their friends upon the seas; and when they did espy them, the joy of Edwin was so great, that not even the unfathomable gulf could stop him from flying to the embrace of his friend.

**Birling is a small boat generally used by fishers.

While mutual felicitations passed, the boats, now nearly side by side, reached the shore; and the seamen, jumping on the rocks, moored their vessels under the projecting towers of Rothsay. The old steward hastened to receive a master who had not blessed his aged eyes for many a year; a master who had the infant in his arms that was to be the future representative of the house of Mar, he wept aloud. The earl spoke to him affectionately, and then walked on with Edwin, whom he called to support him up the bank. Murray led the countess out of the boat; while the Bothwell men so thronged about Wallace, congratulating themselves on his safety, that she saw there was no hope of his arm being then offered to her.

Having entered the castle, the steward led them into a room, in which he had spread a plentiful repast. Here Murray (having recounted the adventures of his voyage) called for a history of what had befallen his friends. The earl gladly took up the tale, and, with many a glance of gratitude to Wallace, narrated the perilous events of their shipwreck, and providential preservation on the Isle of Arran.

Happiness now seemed to, have shed her heavenly influence over every bosom. All hearts owned the grateful effects of the late rescue. The rapturous joy of Edwin burst into a thousand sallies of ardent and luxurious imagination. The high spirits of Murray turned every transient subject into a "mirth-moving jest". The veteran earl seemed restored to health and to youth; and Wallace felt the sun of consolation expanding in his bosom. He had met a heart, though a young one, on which his soul might repose; that dear selected brother of his affection was saved from the whelming waves; and all his superstitious dreams of a mysterious doom vanished before this manifestation of heavenly goodness. His friend, too, the gallant Murray, was spared. How many subjects had he for unmurmuring gratitude! And with an unclouded brow and a happy spirit, he yielded to the impulse of the scene. He smiled; and, with an endearing graciousness, listened to every fond speaker; while his own ingenuous replies bespoke the treasures of love which sorrow, in her cruelest aspect, had locked within his heart.

The complacency with which he regarded every one--the pouring out of his beneficent spirit, which seemed to embrace all, like his dearest kindred--turned every eye and heart toward him, as to the source of every bliss; as to a being who seemed made to love, and be beloved by every one. Lady mar looked at him, listened to him, with her rapt soul seated in her eyes. In his presence all was transport.

But when he withdrew for the night, what was then the state of her feelings! The overflowing of heart he felt for all, she appropriated solely for herself. The sweetness of his voice, the unutterable expression of his countenance, while, as he spoke, he veiled his eyes under their long brown lashes, had raised such vague hopes in her bosom, that--he being gone--she hastened her adieus to the rest, eager to retire to bed, and there uninterruptedly muse on the happiness of having at last touched the heart of a man for whom she would resign the world.

XXVIII. Isle of Bute

The morning would have brought annihilation to the countess' new-fledged hopes, had not Murray been the first to meet her as she came from her chamber.

While walking on the cliffs at some distance from the castle to observe the weather, he met Wallace and Edwin. They had already been across the valley to the haven, and ordered a boat round, to convey them back to Gourock. "Postpone your flight, for pity's sake!" cried Murray, "if you would not, by discourtesy, destroy what your gallantry has preserved!" He then told them that Lady Mar was preparing a feast in the glen, behind the castle; "and if you do not stay to partake it," added he, "we may expect all the witches in the isle will be bribed to sink us before we reach the shore."

After this the general meeting of the morning was not less cordial than the separation of the night before; and when Lady Mar withdrew to give orders for her rural banquet, that time was seized by the earl for the arrangement of matters of more consequence. In a private conversation with Murray the preceding evening he had learned that, just before the party left Dumbarton, a letter had been sent to Helen at St. Filan's, informing her of the taking of the castle, and of the safety of her friends. This having satisfied the earl he did not advert to her at all in his present discourse with Wallace, but rather avoided encumbering his occupied mind with anything but the one great theme.

While the earl and his friends were marshaling armies, taking towns, and storming castles, the countess, intent on other conquests, was meaning to beguile and destroy that manly spirit by soft delights, which a continuance in war's rugged scenes, she thought, was too likely to render invulnerable.

When her lord and his guests were summoned to the feast, she met them at the mouth of the glen. Having tried the effect of splendor, she now left all to the power of her natural charms, and appeared simply clad in her favorite green.** Moraig, the pretty grandchild of the steward, walked beside her, like the fairy queen of the scene, so gayly was she decorated in all the flowers of spring. "Here is the lady of my elfin revels, holding her little king in her arms!" As the countess spoke, Moraig held up the infant to Lady Mar, dressed like herself, in a tissue gathered from the field. The sweet babe laughed and crowed, and made a spring to leap into Wallace's arms. The chief took him, and with an affectionate smile, pressed his little cheek to his.

Though he had felt the repugnance of a delicate mind, and the shuddering of a man who held his person consecrated to the memory of the only woman he had ever loved; though he had felt these sentiments mingle into an abhorrence of the countess, when she allowed her head to drop on his breast in the citadel; and though, while he remained at Dumbarton, (without absolutely charging her to himself with anything designedly immodest), he had certainly avoided her; yet since the wreck, the danger she had escaped, the general joy of all meeting again, had wiped away even the remembrance of his former cause of dislike; and he now sat by her as by a sister, fondling her child, although at every sweet caress it reminded him of what might have been his--of hopes lost to him forever.

The repast over, the piper of the adjacent cottages appeared; and, placing himself on a projecting rock, at the carol of his merry instrument the young peasants of both sexes jocundly came forward and began to dance. At this sight Edwin seized the little hand of Moraig, while Lord Andrew called a pretty lass from amongst the rustics, and joined the group. The happy earl, with many a hearty laugh, enjoyed the jollity of his people; and while the steward stood at his lord's back describing whose sons and daughters passed before him in the reel, Mar remembered their parents--their fathers, once his companions in the chase or on the wave; and their mothers, the pretty maidens he used to pursue over the hills in the merry time of shealing.

Lady Mar watched the countenance of Wallace as he looked upon the joyous group; it was placid, and a soft complacency illumined his eye. How different was the expression in hers, had he marked it! All within her was in tumult, and the characters were but too legibly imprinted on her face. But he did not look on her; for the child, whom the perfume of the flowers overpowered, began to cry. He rose, and having resigned it to the nurse, turned into a narrow vista of trees, where he walked slowly on, unconscious whither he went.

Lady Mar, with an eager, though almost aimless haste, followed him with a light step till she saw him turn out of the vista, and then she lost sight of him. To walk with him undisturbed in so deep a seclusion; to improve the impression which she was sure she had made upon his heart; to teach him which she was sure she had made upon his heart; to teach him to forget his Marion, in the hope of one day possessing her--all these thoughts ran in this vain woman's head; and, inwardly rejoicing that the shattered health of her husband promised her a ready freedom to become the wife of the man to whom she would gladly belong, in honor or in dishonor, she hastened forward as if the accomplishment of her wishes depended on this meeting. Peeping through the trees, she saw him standing with folded arms, looking intently into the bosom of a large lake; but the place was so thickly surrounded with willows, she could only perceive him at intervals, when the wind tossed aside the branches.

Having stood for some time, he walked on. Several times she essayed to emerge, and join him; but a sudden awe of him, a conviction of that saintly purity which would shrink from the guilty vows she was meditating to pour into his ear, a recollection of the ejaculation with which he had accosted her before hovering figure, when she haunted his footsteps on the banks of the Cart; these thoughts made her pause. He might again mistake her for the same dear object. This image it was not her interest to recall. And to approach near him, to unveil her heat to him, and to be repulsed--there was madness in the idea, and she retreated.

She had no sooner returned to the scene of festivity than she repented of having allowed what she deemed an idle alarm of overstrained delicacy to drive her from the lake. She would have hastened back, had not two or three aged female peasants almost instantly engaged her, in spite of her struggles for extrication, to listen to long stories respecting her lord's youth. She remained thus an unwilling auditor, and by the side of the dancers for nearly an hour, before Wallace reappeared. But then she sprung toward him as if a spell were broken.

"Where, truant, have you been?"

"In a beautiful solitude," returned he, "amongst a luxuriant grove of willows."

"Ah!" cried she, "it is called Glenshealeach, and a sad scene was acted there! About ten years ago, a lady of this island drowned herself in the lake they hang over, because the man she loved despised her."

"Unhappy woman!" observed Wallace.

"Then you would have pitied her?" rejoined Lady Mar.

"He cannot be a man that would not pity a woman under such circumstances."

"Then you would not have consigned her to such a fate?"

Wallace was startled by the peculiar tone in which this simple question was asked. It recalled the action in the citadel, and, unconsciously turning a penetrating look on her, his eyes met hers. He need not have heard further to have learned more. She hastily looked down, and colored; and he, wishing to misunderstand a language so disgraceful to herself, so dishonoring to her husband, gave some trifling answer; then making a slight observation about the earl, he advanced to him. Lord Mar was become tired with so gala a scene, and, taking the arm of Wallace, they returned together into the house.

Edwin soon followed with Murray, gladly arriving in time enough to see their little pinnacle draw up under the castle and throw out her moorings. The countess, too, descried its streamers, and hastening into the room where she knew the chiefs were yet assembled, though the wearied earl had retired to repose, inquired the reason of that boat having drawn so near the castle.

"That it may take us from it, fair aunt," replied Murray.

The countess fixed her eyes with an unequivocal expression upon Wallace. "My gratitude is ever due to your kindness, noble lady," said he, still wishing to be blind to what he could not perceive, "and that we may ever deserve it, we must keep the enemy from your doors."

"Yes," added Murray, "and to keep a more insidious foe from our own! Edwin and I feel it rather dangerous to bask too long in these sunny bowers."

"But surely your chief is not afraid," said she, casting a soft glance at Wallace.

"Yet, nevertheless, I must fly," returned he, bowing to her.

"That you positively shall not," added she, with a fluttering joy at her heart, thinking she was about to succeed; "you stir not this night, else I shall brand you all as a band of cowards."

"Call us by every name in the poltroon's calendar," cried Murray, seeing by the countenance of Wallace that his resolution was not to be moved; "yet I must gallop off from your black-eyed Judith, as if chased by the ghost of Holofernes himself."

"So, dear aunt," rejoined Edwin, smiling, "if you do not mean to play Circe to our Ulysses, give us leave to go!"

Lady Mar started, confused she knew not how, as he innocently uttered these words. The animated boy snatched a kiss from her hand, when he ceased speaking, and darted after Murray, who had disappeared, to give some speeding directions respecting the boat.

Left thus alone with the object of her every wish, in the moment when she thought she was going to lose him, perhaps, forever, she forgot all prudence, all reserve; and laying her hand on her arm, as with a respectful bow he was also moving away, she arrested his steps. She held him fast, but her agitation prevented her speaking; she trembled violently, and weeping, dropped her head upon his shoulder. He was motionless. Her tears redoubled. He felt the embarrassment of his situation; and at last extricating his tongue, which surprise and shame for her had chained, in a gentle voice he inquired the cause of her uneasiness. "If for the safety of your nephews-"

"No, no," cried she, interrupting him, "read my fate in that of the lady of Glenshealeach!"

Again he was silent; astonished, fearful of too promptly understanding so disgraceful a truth, he found no words in which to answer her, and her emotions became so uncontrolled, that he expected she would swoon in his arms.

"Cruel, cruel Wallace!" at last cried she, clinging to him, for he had once or twice attempted to disengage himself, and reseat her on the bench; "your heart is steeled, or it would understand mine. It would at least pity the wretchedness it has created. But I am despised, and I can yet find the watery grave from which you rescued me."

To dissemble longer would have been folly. Wallace, now resolutely seating her, though with gentleness, addressed her: "Your husband, Lady Mar, is my friend; had I even a heart to give a woman, not one sigh should arise in it to his dishonor. But I am lost to all warmer affections than that of friendship. I may regard man as my brother, woman as my sister; but never more can I look on female form with love."

Lady Mar's tears now flowed in a more tempered current.

"But were it otherwise," cried she, "only tell me, that had I not been bound with chains, which my kinsmen forced upon me--had I not been made the property of a man who, however estimable, was of too paternal years for me to love; ah! tell me, if these tears should now flow in vain?"

Wallace seemed to hesitate what to answer.

Wrought up to agony, she threw herself on his breast, exclaiming, "Answer! but drive me not to despair. I never loved man before--and now to be scorned! Oh, kill me, too, dear Wallace, but tell me not that you never could have loved me."

Wallace was alarmed at her vehemence. "Lady Mar," returned he, "I am incapable of saying anything to you that is inimical to your duty to the best of men. I will even forget this distressing conversation, and continue through life to revere, equal with himself, the wife of my friend."

"And I am to be stabbed with this?" she replied, in a voice of indignant anguish.

"You are to be healed with it, Lady Mar," returned he, "for it is not a man like the rest of his sex that now addresses you, but a being whose heart is petrified to marble. I could feel no throb of yours; I should be insensible to all your charms, were I even vile enough to see no evil in trampling upon your husband's rights. Yes, were virtue lost to me, still memory would speak, still would she urge, that the chaste and last kiss, imprinted by my wife on these lips, should live there in unblemished sanctity, till I again meet her angel embraces in the world to come!"

The countess, awed by his solemnity, but not put from her suit, exclaimed: "What she was, I would be to thee--thy consoler, thine adorer. Time may set me free. Oh! till then, only give me leave to love thee, and I shall be happy!"

"You dishonor yourself, lady," returned he, "by these petitions, and for what? You plunge your soul in guilty wishes--you sacrifice your peace, and your self-esteem, to a phantom; for I repeat, I am dead to woman; and the voice of love sounds like the funeral knell of her who will never breathe it to me again." He arose as he spoke, and the countess, pierced to the heart, and almost despairing of now retaining any part in its esteem, was devising what next to say, when Murray came into the room.

Wallace instantly observed that his countenance was troubled. "What has happened?" inquired he.

"A messenger from the mainland, with bad news from Ayr."

"Of private or public import?" asked Wallace.

"Of both. There has been a horrid massacre, in which the heads of many noble families have fallen." As he spoke, the paleness of his countenance revealed to his friend that part of the information he had found himself unable to communicate.

"I comprehend my loss," cried Wallace; "Sir Ronald Crawford is sacrificed! Bring the messenger in."

Murray withdrew; and Wallace, seating himself, remained with a fixed and stern countenance, gazing on the ground. Lady Mar durst not breathe for fear of disturbing the horrid stillness which seemed to lock up his grief and indignation.

Lord Andrew re-entered with a stranger, Wallace rose to meet him, and seeing Lady mar-"Countess," said he, "these bloody recitals are not for your ears;" and waving her to withdraw, she left the room.

"This gallant stranger," said Murray, "is Sir John Graham. He has just left that new theater of Southron perfidy."

"I have hastened hither," cried the knight, "to call your victorious arm to take a signal vengeance on the murderers of your grandfather. He, and eighteen other Scottish chiefs, have been treacherously put to death in the Barns of Ayr."

Graham then gave a brief narration of the direful circumstance. He and his father, Lord Dundaff, having crossed the south coast of Scotland on their way homeward, stopped to rest at Ayr. They arrived there the very day that Lord Aymer de Valence had entered it, a fugitive from Dumbarton Castle. Much as that earl wished to keep the success of Wallace a secret from the inhabitants of Ayr, he found it impossible. Two or three fugitive soldiers whispered the hard fighting they had endured; and in half an hour after the arrival of the English earl, every one knew that the recovery of Scotland was begun. Elated with this intelligence, the Scots went, under night, from house to house, congratulating each other on so miraculous an interference in their favor; and many stole to Sir Ronald Crawford, to felicitate the venerable knight on his glorious grandson.

The good old man listened with meek joy to their animated eulogiums on Wallace; and when Lord Dundaff, in offering his congratulations with the rest, said, "But while all Scotland lay in vassalage, where did he imbibe this spirit, to tread down tyrants?" The venerable patriarch replied, "He was always a noble boy. In infancy, he became the defender of every child he saw oppressed by boys of greater power; he was even the champion of the brute creation, and no poor animal was ever attempted to be tortured near him. The old looked on him for comfort, the young for protection. From infancy to manhood, he has been a benefactor; and though the cruelty of our enemies have widowed his youthful years--though he should go childless to the grave, the brightness of his virtues will now spread more glories around the name of Wallace than a thousand posterities." Other ears than those of Dandaff heard this honest exultation.

The next morning this venerable old man, and other chiefs of similar consequence, were summoned by Sir Richard Arnuf, the governor, to his palace, there to deliver in a schedule of their estates; "that quiet possession," the governor said, "might be granted to them, under the great seal of Lord Aymer de Valence, the deputy-warden of Scotland."

The gray-headed knight, not being so active as his compeers of more juvenile years, happened to be the last who went to this tiger's den. Wrapped in his plaid, his silver hair covered with a blue bonnet, and leaning on his staff, he was walking along attended by two domestics, when Sir John Graham met him at the gate of the palace. He smiled on him as he passed, and whispered-"It will not be long before my Wallace makes even the forms of vassalage unnecessary; and then these failing limbs may sit undisturbed at home, under the fig-tree and vine of his planting!"

"God grant it!" returned Graham; and he saw Sir Ronald admitted within the interior gate. The servants were ordered to remain without. Sir John walked there some time, expecting the reappearance of the knight, whom he intended to assist in leading home; but after an hour, finding no signs of egress from the palace, and thinking his father might be wondering at his delay, he turned his steps toward his own lodgings. While passing along he met several Southron detachments hurrying across the streets. In the midst of some of these companies he saw one or two Scottish men of rank, strangers to him, but who, by certain indications, seemed to be prisoners. He did not go far before he met a chieftain in these painful circumstances whom he knew; but as he was hastening toward him, the noble Scot raised his manacled hand and turned away his head. This was a warning to the young knight, who darted into an obscure alley which led to the gardens of his father's lodgings, and was hurrying forward when he met one of his own servants running in quest of him.

Panting with haste, he informed his master that a party of armed men had come, under De Valence's warrant, to seize Lord Dundaff and bear him to prison; to lie there with others who were charged with having taken part in a conspiracy with the grandfather of the insurgent Wallace.

The officer of the band who took Lord Dundaff told him, in the most insulting language, that "Sir Ronald, his ringleader, with eighteen nobles, his accomplices, had already suffered the punishment of their crime, and were lying headless trunks in the judgment hall."

"Haste, therefore," repeated the man; "my lord bids you haste to Sir William Wallace, and require his hand to avenge his kinsman's blood, and to free his countrymen from prison! These are your father's commands; he directed me to seek you and give them to you."

Alarmed for the life of his father, Graham hesitated how to act on the moment. To leave him seemed to abandon him to the death the others had received; and yet, only by obeying him could he have any hopes of averting his threatened fate. Once seeing the path he ought to pursue, he struck immediately into it; and giving his signet to the servant, to assure Lord Dundaff of his obedience, he mounted a horse, which had been brought to the town end for that purpose, and setting off full speed, allowed nothing to stay him, till he reached Dumbarton Castle. There, hearing that Wallace had gone to Bute, he threw himself into a boat, and plying every oar, reached that island in a shorter space of time than the voyage had ever before been completed.

Being now conducted into the presence of the chief, he narrated his dismal tale with a simplicity and pathos which would have instantly drawn the retributive sword of Wallace, had he had no kinsman to avenge, no friend to release from the Southron dungeons. But as the case stood, his bleeding grandfather lay before his eyes; and the ax hung over the heads of the most virtuous nobles of his country.

He heard the chieftain to an end, without speaking or altering the stern attention of his countenance. But at the close, with an augmented suffusion of blood in his face, and his brows denouncing some tremendous fate, he rose. "Sir John Graham," said he, "I attend you."

"Whither?" demanded Murray.

"To Ayr," answered Wallace; "this moment I will set out for Dumbarton, to bring away the sinews of my strength. God will be our speed! and then this arm shall show how I loved that good old man."

"Your men," interrupted Graham, "are already awaiting you on the opposite shore. I presumed to command for you. For on entering Dumbarton, and finding you were absent, after having briefly recounted my errand to Lord Lennox, I dared to interpret your mind, and to order Sir Alexander Scrymgeour, and Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, with all your own force, to follow me to the coast of Renfrew."

"Thank you, my friend!" cried Wallace, grasping his hand; "may I ever have such interpreters! I cannot stay to bid your uncle farewell," said he, to Lord Andrew; "remain, to tell him to bless me with his prayers; and then, dear Murray, follow me to Ayr."

Ignorant of what the stranger had imparted, at the sight of the chiefs approaching from the castle gate, Edward hastened with the news, that all was ready for embarkation. He was hurrying out his information, when the altered countenance of his general checked him. He looked at the stranger; his features were agitated and severe. He turned toward his cousin, all there was grave and distressed. Again he glanced at Wallace; no word was spoken, but every look threatened, and Edwin saw him leap into the boat, followed by the stranger. The astonished boy, though unnoticed, would not be left behind, and stepping in also, sat down beside his chief.

"I shall follow you in a hour," exclaimed Murray. The seamen pushed off; then giving loose to their swelling sail, in less than ten minutes, the light vessel was wafted out of the little harbor, and turning a point, those in the castle saw it no more.

XXIX. The Barns of Ayr

While the little bark bounded over the waves toward the main land, the poor pilgrims of earth who were its freightage, with heavy hearts bent toward each other, intent on the further information they were to receive.

"Here is a list of the murdered chiefs, and of those who are in the dungeons, expecting the like treatment," continued Graham, holding out a parchment; "it was given to me by my faithful servant." Wallace took it, but seeing his grandfather's name at the top, he could look no further; closing the scroll, "Gallant Graham," said he, "I want no stimulus to urge me to the extirpation I meditate. If the sword of Heaven be with us, not one perpetrator of this horrid massacre shall be alive to-morrow to repeat the deed."

"What massacre?" Edwin ventured to inquire. Wallace put the parchment into his hand. "A list of the Scottish chiefs murdered on the 18th of June, 1297, in the Judgment Hall of the English Barons at Ayr," his cheek, paled by the suspense of his mind, now reddened with the hue of indignation; but when the venerated name of his general's grandfather met his sight, his horror struck eye sought the face of Wallace; it was dark as before, and he was now in earnest discourse with Graham.

Forbearing to interrupt him, Edwin continued to read over the blood-registered names. In turning the page, his eye glanced to the opposite side; and he saw at the head of "A list of prisoners in the dungeons of Ayr," the name of "Lord Dundaff" and immediately after it, that of "Lord Ruthven!" He uttered a piercing cry; and extending his arms to Wallace, who turned round at so unusual a sound, the terror-struck boy exclaimed, "My father is in their hands! Oh! If you are indeed my brother, fly to Ayr, and save him!"

Wallace took up the open list which Edwin had dropped; he saw the name of Lord Ruthven amongst the prisoners; and folding his arms round this affectionate son, "Compose yourself," said he, "it is to Ayr I am going; and if the God of Justice be our speed, your father and Lord Dundaff shall not see another day in prison."

Edwin threw himself on the neck of his friend; "My benefactor!" was all he could utter. Wallace pressed him silently to his bosom.

"Who is this youth?" inquired Graham; "to which of the noble companions of my captive father is he son?"

"To William Ruthven," answered Wallace; "the valiant lord of the Carse of Gowry. And it is a noble scion from that glorious root. He it was that enabled me to win Dumbarton. Look up, my brother!" cried Wallace, trying to regain so tender a mind from the paralyzing terrors which had seized it; "Look up, and hear me recount the first fruits of your maiden arms, to our gallant friend."

Covered with blushes, arising from anxious emotion, as well as from a happy consciousness of having wont he praises of his general, Edwin rose from his breast, and bowing to Sir John, still leaned his head upon the shoulder of Wallace. That amiable being, who, when seeking to wipe the tear of affliction from the cheek of others, minded not the drops of blood which were distilling in secret from his own heart, began the recital of his first acquaintance with his young Sir Edwin. He enumerated every particular; his bringing the detachment from Bothwell, through the enemy-encircled mountains, to Glenfinlass; his scaling the walls of Dumbarton to make the way smooth for the Scots to ascend; and his after prowess in that well-defended fortress. As Wallace proceeded, the wonder of Graham was raised to a pitch, only to be equaled by his admiration; and taking the hand of Edwin, "Receive me, brave youth," said he, "as your second brother; Sir William Wallace is your first; but, this night, we shall fight side by side for our fathers; and let that be our bond of kindred."

Edwin pressed the young chief's cheek with his innocent lips; "Let us, together, free them;" cried he' "and then we shall be born twins in happiness."

"So be it," cried Graham; "and Sir William Wallace be the sponser of that hour!"

Wallace smiled on them; and turning his head toward the shore, when the vessel doubled a certain point, he saw the beach covered with armed men. To be sure they were his own, he drew his sword, and waved it in the air. At that moment a hundred falchions flashed in the sunbeams, and the shouts of "Wallace!" came loudly on the breeze.

Graham and Edwin started on their feet; the seamen piled their oars; the boat dashed into the breakers--and Wallace, leaping on shore, was received with acclamations by his eager soldiers.

He no sooner landed, than he commenced his march. Murray joined him on the banks of the Irwin; and as Ayr was no very great distance from that river, at two hours before midnight the little army entered Laglane Wood; where they halted, while Wallace, with his chieftains proceeded to reconnoiter the town. The wind swept in gusts through the trees, and seemed by its dismal yellings, to utter warnings of the dreadful retributions he was about to inflict. He had already declared his plan of destruction; and Graham, as a first measure, went to the spot he had fixed on with Macdougal, his servant, as a place of rendezvous. He returned with the man; who informed Wallace, that in honor of the sequestrated lands of the murdered chiefs having been that day partitioned by De Valance amongst certain Southron lords, a grand feast was going on in the governor's palace. Under the very roof where they had shed the blood of the trusting Scots, they were now keeping this carousal!

"Now, then, is our time to strike!" cried Wallace; and ordering detachments of his men to take possession of the avenues to the town, he set forth with others, to reach the front of the castle gates, by a less frequented path than the main street. The darkness being so great that no object could be distinctly seen, they had not gone far, before Macdougal, who had undertaken to be their guide, discovered by the projection of a hill on the right, that he had lost the road.

"Our swords will find one!" exclaimed Kirkpatrick.

Unwilling to miss any advantage, in a situation where so much was at stake, Wallace gladly hailed a twinkling light, which gleamed from what he supposed the window of a distant cottage. Kirkpatrick, with Macdougal, offered to go forward, and explore what it might be. In a few minutes they arrived at a thatched building; from which, to their surprise, issued the wailing strains of the coronach. Kirkpatrick paused. Its melancholy notes were sung by female voices. Hence, there being no danger in applying to such harmless inhabitants, to learn the way to the citadel, he proceeded to the door; when, intending to knock, the weight of his mailed arm burst open its slender latch, and discovered two poor women, in an inner apartment, wringing their hands over a shrouded corpse. While the chief entered his friends came up. Murray and Graham, struck with sounds never breathed over the vulgar dead, lingered at the porch wondering what noble Scot could be the subject of lamentation in so lowly an abode. The stopping of these two chieftains impeded the steps of Wallace, who was pressing forward, without eye or ear for anything but the object of his search. Kirkpatrick at that moment appeared on the threshold, and without a word, putting forth his hand, seized the arm of his commander, and pulled him into the cottage. Before Wallace could ask the reason of this, he saw a woman run forward with a light in her hand; the beams of which falling on the face of the knight of Ellerslie, with a shriek of joy she rushed toward him, and threw herself upon his neck.

He instantly recognized Elspa, his nurse; the faithful attendant on his grandfather's declining years! the happy matron who had decked the bridal bed of his Marion! and with an anguish of recollections that almost unmanned him, he returned her affectionate embrace.

"Here he lies!" cried the old woman, drawing him toward the rushy bier; and before he had time to demand, "Who?" she pulled down the shroud and disclosed the body of Sir Ronald Crawford. Wallace gazed on it, with a look of such dreadful import that Edwin, whose anxious eyes then sought his countenance, trembled with a nameless horror. "Oh," thought he, "to what is this noble soul reserved! Is he alone doomed to extirpate the enemies of Scotland, that every ill falls direct upon his head!"

"Sorry, sorry bier, for the good Lord Ronald!" cried the old woman; "a poor wake to mourn the loss of him who was the benefactor of all the country round! But had I not brought him here, the salt sea must have been his grave." Here sobs prevented her utterance; but after a short pause, with many vehement lamentations over the virtues of the dead, and imprecations on his murderers, she related that as soon as the woful tidings were brought to Monktown kirk (and brought too by the Southron, who was to take it in possession!) she and the clan's-folk who would not swear fidelity to the new lord, were driven from the house. She hastened to the bloody theater of massacre; and there beheld the bodies of the murdered chiefs drawn on sledges to the seashore. Elspa knew that of her master, by the scar on his breast, which he had received in the battle of Largs. When she saw corpse after corpse thrown, with a careless hand, into the waves, and the man approached who was to cast the honored chief of Monktown, to the same unhallowed burial, she threw herself frantically on the body, and so moved the man's compassion, that, taking advantage of the time when his comrades were out of sight, he permitted her to wrap the dead Sir Ronald in her plaid, and so carry him away between her sister and herself. But ere she had raised her sacred burden, the man directed her to seek the venerable head from amongst the others, which lay mingled in a sack; drawing it forth, she placed it beside the body, and then hastily retired with both, to the hovel where Wallace had found her. It was a shepherd's hut, from which the desolation of the times having long ago driven away its former inhabitant, she had hoped that in so lonely an obscurity, she might have performed without notice, a chieftain's rites, to the remains of the murdered lord of the very lands on which she wept him. These over, she meant he should be interred in secret by the fathers of a neighboring church, which he had once richly endowed. With these intentions, she and her sister were chanting over him the sad dirge of their country, when Sir Roger Kirkpatrick burst open the door. "Ah!" cried she, as she closed the dismal narrative; "though two lonely women were all they had left of the lately thronged household of Sir Ronald Crawford, to raise the last lament over his revered body, yet in that and midnight hour, our earthly voices were not alone; the wakeful spirits of his daughters, hovered in the air, and joined the deep coronach!"

Wallace sighed heavily as he looked on the animated face of the aged mourner. Attachment to the venerable dead seemed to have inspired her with thoughts beyond her station; but the heart is an able teacher, and he saw that true affection speaks but one language.

As her ardent eyes withdrew from their heavenward gaze, they fell upon the shrouded face of her master. A napkin concealed the wound of decapitation. "Chiefs," cried she, in a burst of recollection, "ye have not seen all the cruelty of these murderers!" At these words she suddenly withdrew the linen, and lifting up the pale head, held it wofully toward Wallace. "Here," cried she, "once more kiss these lips! They have often kissed yours, when you were a babe; and as insensible to his love, as he is now to your sorrow."

Wallace received the head in his arms; the long silver beard, thick with gouts of blood, hung over his hands. He gazed on it, intently, for some minutes. An awful silence pervaded the room; every eye was riveted upon him.

Looking round on his friends, with a countenance whose deadly hue gave a sepulchral fire to the gloomy denunciation of his eyes; "Was it necessary," said he, "to turn my heart to iron, that I was brought to see this sight?" All the tremendous purpose of his soul was read in his face, while he laid the head back upon the bier. His lips again moved, but none heard what he said. He rushed from the hut, and with rapid strides, proceeded in profound silence toward the palace.

He well knew that no honest Scot could be under that roof. The building, though magnificent, was altogether a structure of wood; to fire it, then, was his determination. TO destroy all, at once, in the theater of their cruelty; to make an execution, not engage in a warfare of man to man, was his resolution; for they were not soldiers hew as seeking, but assassins; and to pitch his brave Scots in the open field against such unmanly wretches would be to dishonor his men, to give criminals a chance for the lives they had forfeited.

All being quiet in the streets through which he passed, and having set strong bodies of men at the mouth of every sallyport of the citadel, he made a bold attack upon the guard at the barbican-gate; and, ere they could give the alarm, all being slain, he and his chosen troop entered the portal, and made direct to the palace. The lights which blazed through the windows of the banqueting hall showed him to the spot; and, having detached Graham and Edwin to storm the keep, where their fathers were confined, he took the half-intoxicated sentinels at the palace-gates by surprise, and striking them into a sleep from which they would wake no more, he fastened the doors upon the assassins. His men surrounded the building with hurdles filled with combustibles, which they had prepared according to his directions; and, when all was ready, Wallace, with the mighty spirit of retribution nerving every limb, mounted to the roof, and tearing off the shingles, with a flaming brand in his hand, showed himself to the affrighted revelers beneath; and, as he threw it blazing among them, he cried aloud, "The blood of the murdered calls for vengeance, and it comes."

At that instant the matches were put to the fagots which surrounded the building; and the party within, springing from their seats, hastened toward the doors. All were fastened on them; and retreating into the midst of the room, they fearfully looked toward the tremendous figure above, which, like a supernatural being, seemed indeed come to rain fire upon their guilty heads. Some shook with superstitious dread; others, driven to atheistical despair, with horrible execrations, again strove to force a passage through the doors. A second glance told De Valence whose was the hand which had launched the thunderbolt at his feet; and, turning to Sir Richard Arnuf, he cried, in a voice of horror, "My arch-enemy is there!"

Thick smoke rising from within and without the building now obscured his terrific form. The shouts of the Scots as the fire covered its walls, and the streaming flames licking the windows, and pouring into every opening of the building, raised such a terror in the breasts of the wretches within, that, with the most horrible cries, they again and again flew to the doors to escape. Not an avenue appeared; almost suffocated with smoke, and scorched by the blazing rafters which fell from the burning roof, they at last made a desperate attempt to break a passage through the great portal. Arnuf was at their head, and sunk to abjectness by his despair, in a voice which terror rendered piercing, he called aloud for mercy. The words reached the ear of Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, who stood neared to the door. In a voice of thunder he replied, "That ye gave, ye shall receive. Where was mercy when our fathers and our brothers fell beneath your murderous axes!"

Aymer de Valence came up at this moment with a wooden pillar, which he and his strongest men in the company had torn from under the gallery that surrounded the room, and with all their strength dashing it against the great door, they at last drove it from its bolts. But now a wall of men opposed them. Desperate at the sight, and with a burning furnace in their rear, it was not the might of man that could prevent their escape, and with the determination of despair, rushing forward, the foremost rank of Scots fell. But ere the exulting Southrons could press out into the open space, Wallace himself had closed upon them, and Arnuf, the merciless Arnuf, whose voice had pronounced the sentence of death upon Sir Ronald Crawford, died beneath his hand.

Wallace was not aware that he had killed the Governor of Ayr till the terror-struck exclamations of his enemies informed him that the ruthless instigator of the massacre was slain. This event was welcome news to the Scots; and hoping that the next death would be that of De Valence, they pressed on with redoubled energy.

Aroused by so extraordinary a noise, and alarmed by the flames of the palace, the soldiers quartered near hastened half armed to the spot. But their presence rather added to the confusion than gave assistance to the besieged. They were without leaders, and not daring to put themselves to action, for fear of being afterward punished (in the case of a mischance) for having presumed to move without their officers, they stood dismayed and irresolute, while those very officers, who had been all at the banquet, were falling in heaps under the swords of the exterminating Scots.

Meanwhile, the men who guarded the prisoners in the keep, having their commanders with them, made a stout resistance there; and one of the officers, seeing a possible advantage, stole out, and, gathering a company of the scattered garrison, suddenly taking Graham in flank, made no inconsiderable havoc amongst that part of his division. Edwin blew the signal for assistance. Wallace heard the blast; and seeing the day was won at the palace, he left the finishing of the affair to Kirkpatrick and Murray; and, drawing off a small party to reinforce Graham, he took the Southron officer by surprise. The enemy's ranks fell around him like corn beneath the sickle; and, grasping a huge battering ram which his men had found, he burst open the door of the keep. Graham and Edwin rushed in; and Wallace, sounding his own bugle with the notes of victory, his reserves (whom he had placed at the ends of the streets) entered in every direction, and received the flying soldiers of De Valence upon their pikes.

Dreadful was now the carnage; for the Southrons, forgetting all discipline, fought every man for his life; which the furious Scots driving them into the far-spreading flames, what escaped the sword would have perished in the fire, had not the relenting heart of Wallace pleaded for bleeding humanity, and he ordered the trumpet to sound a parley. He was obeyed; and, standing on an adjacent mound, in an awful voice he proclaimed that "whoever had not been accomplices in the horrible massacre of the Scottish chiefs, if they would ground their arms, and take an oath never to serve again against Scotland, their lives should be spared."

Hundreds of swords fell to the ground; and their late holders, kneeling at his feet, took the oath perscribed. At the head of those who surrendered appeared the captain who had commanded at the prison. He was the only officer of all the late garrison who survived, all else had fallen in the conflict or perished in the flames; and when he saw that not one of his late numerous companions existed to go through the same humiliating ceremony, with an aghast countenance he said to Wallace, as he presented his sword, "Then I must believe that, with this weapon, I am surrendering to Sir William Wallace the possession of this castle and the government of Ayr. I see not one of my late commanders--all must be slain; and for me to hold out longer would be to sacrifice my men, not to redeem that which has been so completely wrested from us. But I serve severe exactors, and I hope that your testimony, my conqueror, will assure my king that I fought as became his standard."

Wallace gave him a gracious answer; and committing him to the generous care of Murray, he turned to give orders to Ker respecting the surrendered and the slain. During these momentous events, Graham had deemed it prudent that, exhausted by anxiety and privations, the noble captives should not come forth to join in the battle; and not until the sound of victory echoed through the arches of their dungeons, would he suffer the eager Dundaff to see and thank his deliverer. Meanwhile, the young Edwin appeared before the eyes of his father, like the angel who opened the prison gates to Peter. After embracing him with all a son's fondness, in which for the moment he lost the repressing idea, that he might have offended by his truancy; after recounting, in a few hasty sentences, the events which had brought him to be a companion of Sir William Wallace; and to avenge the injuries of Scotland in Ayr, he knocked off the chains of his amazed father. Eager to perform the like service to all who had suffered in like manner, and accompanied by the happy Lord Ruthven (who gazed with delight on his son, treading so early the path of glory), he hastened around to the other dungeons; and gladly proclaimed to the astonished inmates, freedom and safety. Having rid them of their shackles, he had just entered with his noble company into the vaulted chamber, which contained the released Lord Dundaff, when the peaceful clarion sounded. At the joyful tidings, Graham started on his feet: "Now, my father, you shall see the bravest of men!"

XXX. The Barns of Ayr

Morning was spreading in pale light over the heavens, and condensing with its cold breath the lurid smoke which still ascended in volumes from the burning ruins, when Wallace, turning round at the glad voice of Edwin, beheld the released nobles. This was the first time he had ever seen the Lords Dundaff and Ruthven; but several of the others he remembered having met at the fatal decision of the crown; and, while welcoming to his friendship those to whom his valor had given freedom, how great was his surprise to see, in the person of a prisoner suddenly brought before him, Sir John Monteith; the young chieftain whom he had parted with a few months ago at Douglas; and from whose fatal invitation to that castle he might date the ruin of his dearest happiness, and all the succeeding catastrophe!

"We found Sir John Monteith amongst the slain before the palace," said Ker; "he, of the whole party, alone breathed; I knew him instantly. How he came there I know not; but I have brought him hither to explain it himself." Ker withdrew, to finish the interment of the dead.

Monteith, still leaning on the arm of a soldier, grasped Wallace's hand. "My brave friend!" cried he, "to owe my liberty to you is a twofold pleasure; for," added he, in a lowered voice, "I see before me the man who is to verify the words of Baliol; and be not only the guardian, but the possessor of the treasure he committed to our care!"

Wallace, who had never thought on the coffer, since he knew it was under the protection of St. Fillan, shook his head. "A far different need do I seek, my friend!" said he; "to behold these happy countenances of my liberated countrymen is greater reward to me than would be the development of all the splendid mysteries which the head of Baliol could devise."

"Ay!" cried Dundaff, who overheard this part of the conversation, "we invited the usurpation of a tyrant by the docility with which we submitted to his minion. Had we rejected Baliol, we had never been ridden by Edward. But the rowel has gored the flanks of us all! and who amongst us will not lay himself and fortune at the foot of him who plucks away the tyrant's heel?"

"It all held our cause in the light that you do," returned Wallace, "the blood which these Southrons have sown would rise up in ten thousand legions to overwhelm the murderers!"

"But how," inquired he, turning to Monteith, "did you happen to be in Ayr at this period? and how, above all, amongst the slaughtered Southrons at the palace?"

Sir John Monteith readily replied: "My adverse fate accounts for all." He then proceeded to inform Wallace, that on the very night in which they parted at Douglas, Sir Arthur Heselrigge was told the story of the box: and accordingly sent to have Monteith brought prisoner to Lanark. He lay in the dungeons of its citadel at the very time Wallace entered that town and destroyed the governor. Though the Scots did not pursue the advantage offered by the transient panic into which the retribution threw their enemies, care was immediately taken by the English lieutenant to prevent a repetition of the same disasters; and, in consequence, every suspected person was seized, and those already in confinement loaded with chains. Monteith being known as a friend of Wallace, was sent under a strong guard toward Stirling, there to stand his trial before Cressingham and the English Justiciary, Ormsby. "By a lucky chance," said he, "I made my escape; but I was soon retaken by another party, and conveyed to Ayr, where the Lieutenant-governor Arnuf, discovering my talents for music, compelled me to sing at his entertainments."

"For this purpose, he last night confined me in the banqueting-room at the palace, and thus, when the flames surrounded that building, I found myself exposed to die the death of a traitor, though then as much oppressed as any other Scot. Snatching up a sword, and striving to join my brave countrymen, the Southrons impeded my passage, and I fell under their arms."

Happy to have rescued his old acquaintance from further indignities, Wallace committed him to Edwin to lead into the citadel. Then taking the colors of Edward from the ground (where the Southron officer had laid them), he gave them to Sir Alexander Scrymgeour, with orders to fill their former station on the citadel with the standard of Scotland. This action he considered as the seal of each victory; as the beacon which, seen from afar, would show the desolate Scots where to find a protector, and from what ground to start when courage should prompt them to assert their rights.

The standard was no sooner raised than the proud clarion of triumph was blown from every warlike instrument in the garrison and the Southron captain, placing himself at the head of his disarmed troops, under the escort of Murray, marched out of the castle. He announced his design to proceed immediately to Newcastle, and thence embark with his men to join their king at Flanders. Not more than two hundred followed their officer in this expedition, for not more were English; the rest, to nearly double that number, being, like the garrison of Dumbarton, Irish and Welsh, were glad to escape enforced servitude. Some parted off in divisions to return to their respective countries, while a few, whose energetic spirits preferred a life of warfare in the cause of a country struggling for freedom, before returning to submit to the oppressors of their own, enlisted under the banners of Wallace.

Some other necessary regulations being then made, he dismissed his gallant Scots, to find refreshment in the well-stored barracks of the dispersed Southrons, and retired himself to join his friends in the citadel.

XXXI. Berwick and the Tweed

In the course of an hour Murray returned from having seen the departing Southrons beyond the barriers of the township. But he did not come alone; he was accompanied by Lord Auchinleck, the son of one of the betrayed barons who had fallen in the palace of Ayr. This young chieftain, at the head of his vassals, hastened to support the man whose dauntless hand had thus satisfied his revenge; and when he met Murray at the north gate of the town, and recognized in his flying banners a friend of Scotland, he was happy to make himself known to an officer of Wallace, and to be conducted to that chief.

While Lord Andrew and his new colleague were making the range of the suburbs, the glad progress of the victor Scots had turned the whole aspect of that gloomy city. Doors and windows, so recently closed in deep mourning, for the sanguinary deeds done in the palace, now opened teeming with smiling inhabitants. The general joy penetrated to the most remote recesses. Mothers now threw their fond arms around the necks of the children whom just before they had regarded with the averted eyes of despair; in the one sex, they then beheld the victims of, perhaps, the next requisition for blood; and in the other, the hapless prey of passions, more felt than the horrid rage of the beast of the field. But now all was secure again. These terrific tyrants were driven hence; and the happy parent, embracing her offspring as if restored from the grave, implored a thousand blessings on the head of Wallace, the gifted agent of all this good.

Sons who in secret had lamented the treacherous death of their fathers, and brothers of their brothers, now opened their gates, and joined the valiant troops in the streets. Widowed wives and fatherless daughters almost forgot they had been bereaved of their natural protectors, when they saw Scotland rescued from her enemies, and her armed sons, once more walking in the broad day, masters of themselves and of their country's liberties.

Thus, then, with every heart rejoicing, every house teeming with numbers to swell the ranks of Wallace, did he, the day after he had entered Ayr, see all arranged for its peaceful establishment. But ere he bade that town adieu, in which he had been educated, and where almost every man, remembering its preserver's boyish years, thronged round him with recollections of former days, one duty yet demanded his stay: to pay funeral honors to the remains of his beloved grandfather.

Accordingly, the time was fixed; and with every solemnity due to his virtues and his rank, Sir Ronald Crawford was buried in the chapel of the citadel. It was not a scene of mere ceremonious mourning. As he had been the father of the fatherless, he was followed to the grave by many an orphan's tears; and as he had been the protector of the distressed of every degree, a procession, long and full of lamentation, conducted his shrouded corpse to its earthly rest. The mourning families of the chiefs who had fallen in the same bloody theater with himself, closed the sad retinue; and while the holy rites committed his body to the ground, the sacred mass was extended to those who had been plunged into the weltering element.

While Wallace confided the aged Elspa and her sister to the care of Sir Reginald Crawford, to whom he also resigned the lands of his grandfather; "Cousin," said he, "you are a valiant and a humane man! I leave you to be the representative of your venerable uncle; to cherish these poor women whom he loved; to be the protector of his people and the defender of the town. The citadel is under the command of the Baron of Auchinleck; he, with his brave followers, being the first to hail the burning of the accursed Barns of Ayr."

After this solemnity, and these dispositions, Wallace called a review of his troops; and found that he could leave five hundred men at Ayr, and march an army of at least two thousand out of it.

His present design was to take his course to Berwick; and, by seizing every castle of strength in his way, form a chain of works across the country, which would not only bulwark Scotland against any further inroads from its enemies, but render the subjugation of the interior Southron garrisons more certain and easy.

On the third morning after the conflagration of the palace, Wallace quitted Ayr; and marching over its far-stretching hills, manned every watch-tower on their summits. For now, whithersoever he moved, he found his victories had preceded him; and all, from hall to hovel, turned out to greet and offer him their services. Thus, heralded by fame, the panic-struck Southron governors fled at the distant view of his standards; the flames of Ayr seemed to menace them all, and castle and fortalice, from Muirkirk to the walls of Berwick, opened their gates before him.

Arrived under those blood-stained towers which had so often been the objects of dispute between the powers of England and of Scotland, he prepared for their immediate attack. Berwick being a valuable fortress to the enemy, not only as a key to the invaded kingdom, but a point whence by their ships they commanded the whole of the eastern coast of Scotland, Wallace expected that a desperate stand would be made here to stop the progress of his arms. But being aware that the most expeditious mode of warfare was the best adapted to promote his cause, he first took the town by assault; and then, having driven the garrison into the citadel, assailed it by a vigorous seige.

After ten days hard duty before the walls, Wallace devised a plan to obtain possession of the English ships which commanded the harbor. He found among his own troops many men who had been used to a seafaring life; these he disguised as fugitive Southrons from the late defeats, and sent in boats to the enemy's vessels which lay in the roads. The feint took; and by these means getting possession of those nearest the town, he manned them with his own people; and going out with them himself, in three days made himself master of every ship on the coast.

By this maneuver the situation of the beseiged was rendered so hopeless, that no mode of escape was left but by desperate sallies. They made them, but without other effect than weakening their strength and increasing their miseries. Wallace was for them to do in their situation, he needed no better spy over their actions than his own judgment.

Foiled in every attempt, as their opponent, guessing their intentions, was prepared at every point to meet their different essays, and losing men at every rencounter, their governor stood without resource. Without provisions, without aid of any kind for his wounded men, and hourly annoyed by the victorious Scots, who continued day and night to throw showers of arrows, and other missile weapons, from the towers and springalls with which they had overtopped the walls, the unhappy Earl of Gloucester seemed ready to rush on death, to avoid the disgrace of surrendering the fortress. Every soul in the garrison was reduced to similar despair. Wallace even found means to dam up the spring which had supplied the citadel with water. The common men, famished with hunger, smarting with wounds, and now perishing with inextinguishable thirst, threw themselves at the feet of their officers, imploring them to represent to their royal governor that if he held out longer, he must defend the place alone, for they could not exist another day under their present sufferings.

The earl indeed repented the rashness with which he had thrown himself unprovisioned into the citadel. He now saw that expectation was no apology for want of precaution. When his first division had been overpowered in the assault on the town, his evil genius then suggested that it was best to take the second unbroken into the citadel, and there await the arrival of a reinforcement by sea. But he thence beheld the ships which had defended the harbor seized by Wallace before his eyes. Hope was then crushed, and nothing but death or dishonor seemed to be his alternatives. Cut to the soul at the consequences of his want of judgment, he determined to retrieve his fame by washing out that error with his blood. To fall under the ruins of Berwick Castle was his resolution. Such was the state of his mind when his officers appeared with the petition from his men. In proportion as they felt the extremities into which they were driven, the offense he had committed glared with tenfold enormity in his eyes; and, in a wild despair, he told them "they might do as they would, but for his part, the moment they opened the gates to the enemy, that moment should be the last of his life. He, that was the son-in-law of King Edward, would never yield his sword to a Scottish rebel."

Terrified at these threats on himself, the soldiers, who loved their general, declared themselves willing to die with him; and, as a last effort, proposed making a mine under the principal tower of the Scots; and by setting fire to it, at least destroy the means by which they feared their enemies might storm the citadel.

As Wallace gave his orders from this commanding station, he observed the besieged passing in numbers behind a mound, in the direction of the tower where he stood: he concluded what was their design; and ordering a countermine to be made, what he anticipated happened; and Murray, at the head of his miners, encountered those of the castle at the very moment they would have set fire to the combustibles laid to consume the tower. The instant struggle was violent, but short; for the impetuous Scots drove their amazed and enfeebled adversaries through the aperture, back into the citadel. At this crisis, Wallace, with a band of resolute men, sprung from the tower upon the wall; and it being almost deserted by its late guards (who had quitted their post to assist in repelling the foe below), he leaped into the midst of the conflict and the battle became general. It was decisive; for beholding the undaunted resolution with which the weakened and dying were supporting the cause their governor was determined to defend to the last, Wallace found his admiration and his pity alike excited; and even while his followers seemed to have each his foe's life in his hands, when one instant more would make him the undisputed master of the castle (for not a Southron would then breathe to dispute it), he resolved to stop the carnage. At the moment when a gallant officer, who, having assaulted him with the vehemence of despair, now lay disarmed under him; at that moment when the discomfited knight exclaimed, "In mercy strike, and redeem the honor of Ralph de Monthermer!"** Wallace raised his bugle and sounded the note of peace. Every sword was arrested, and the universal clangor of battle was hushed in expecting silence.

**Ralph de Monthermer, a noble knight who married Jane of Acre, the daughter of King Edward I. He was created Earl of Gloucester on his marriage with that princess.-(1809.)

"Rise, brave earl," cried Wallace, to the governor; "I revere virtue too sincerely to take an unworthy advantage of my fortune. The valor of this garrison commands my respect; and, as a proof of my sincerity, I grant to it what I have never yet done to any: that yourself and these dauntless men march out with the honors of war, and without any bonds on your future conduct toward us. We leave it to your own hearts to decide whether you will ever be again made instruments to enchain a free and brave people."

While he was speaking, De Monthermer leaned gloomily on the sword he had returned to him, with his eyes fixed on his men. They answered his glance with looks that said they understood him: and passing a few words in whispers to each other, one at last spoke aloud: "Decide for us, earl. We are as ready to die as to live; so that in neither we may be divided from you."

At this generous declaration the proud despair of De Monthermer gave way to nobler feelings; and while a big tear stood in each eye, he turned to Wallace, and stretching out his hand to him. "Noble Scot," said he, "your unexampled generosity, and the invincible fidelity of these heroic men, have compelled me to accept the life I had resolved to lose under these walls, rather than resign them. But virtue is resistless, and to it do I surrender that pride of soul which made existence insufferable under the consciousness of having erred. When I became the husband of King Edward's daughter, I believed myself pledged to victories or to death. But there is a conquest, and I feel it, greater than over hosts in the field; and here taught to make it, the husband of the princess of England, the proud Earl of Gloucester, consents to live to be a monument of Scottish nobleness, and of the inflexible fidelity of English soldiers."

"You live, illustrious and virtuous Englishmen," returned Wallace, "to redeem that honor of which too many rapacious sons of England have robbed their country. Go forth, therefore, as my conqueror, for you have on this spot extinguished that burning antipathy with which the outraged heart of William Wallace had vowed to extirpate every Southron from off this ravaged land. Honor, brave earl, makes all men brethren; and, as a brother, I open these gates for you, to repass into your country. When there, if you ever remember William Wallace, let it be as a man who fights, not for conquest or renown, but to restore Scotland to her rights, and then resign his sword to peace."

"I shall remember you, Sir William Wallace!" returned De Monthermer; "and, as a pledge of it, you shall never see me again in this country till I come an embassador of that peace for which you fight. But meanwhile, in the moment of hot contention for the rights which you believe wrested from you, do you remember that they have not been so much the spoil of my royal father's ambition as the traffic of your own venal nobles. Had I not believed that Scotland was unworthy of freedom, I should never have appeared upon her borders; but now that I see that she has brave hearts within her, who not only resist oppression, but know how to wield power, I detest the zeal with which I volunteered to rivet her chains. And I repeat, that never again shall my hostile foot impress this land."

These sentiments were answered in the same spirit by his soldiers; and the Scots, following the example of their leader, treated them with every kindness. After dispensing amongst them provisions, and appointing means to convey the wounded in comfort, Wallace bade a cordial farewell to the Earl of Gloucester, and his men conducted their reconciled enemies over the Tweed. There they parted. The English bent their course toward London, and the Scots returned to their victorious general.

XXXII. Stirling

The happy effects of these rapid conquests were soon apparent. The fall of Berwick excited such a confidence in the minds of the neighboring chieftains, that every hour brought fresh recruits to Wallace. Every mouth was full of the praises of the young conqueror; every eye was eager to catch a glimpse of his person; and while the men were emulous to share his glory, the women in their secret bowers put up prayers for the preservation of one so handsome and so brave.

Amongst the many of every rank and age who hastened to pay their respects to the deliverer of Berwick, was Sir Richard Maitland, of Thirlestane, the Stawlart Knight of Lauderdale.**

**Sir Richard Maitland, of the castle of Thirlestane on the Leeder, is noted in Scottish tradition for his bravery. His valiant defense of his castle against the English in his extreme old age, is still the subject of enthusiasm amongst the people of Lauderdale.

Wallace was no sooner told of the approach of the venerable chief, than he set forth to bid him welcome. At sight of the champion of Scotland, Sir Richard threw himself off his horse with a military grace that might have become even youthful years; and hastening toward Wallace, clasped him in his arms.

"Let me look on thee!" cried the old knight; "let me feast my eyes on the true Scot, who again raises this hoary head, so long bent in shame for its dishonored country!" While he spoke, he viewed Wallace from head to foot. "I knew Sir Ronald Crawford, and thy valiant father," continued he, "O! had they lived to see this day! But the base murder of the one thou hast nobly avenged, and the honorable grave of the other, on Loudon Hill,** thou wilt cover with a monument of thine own glories. Low are laid my own children, in this land of strife, but in thee I see a son of Scotland that is to dry all our tears."

**Sir Malcolm Wallace, the father of Sir William Wallace, was killed in the year 1295, on Loudon Hill, in a battle with the English.

He embraced Wallace again and again; and, as the veteran's overflowing heart rendered him garrulous, he expatiated on the energy with which the young victor had pursued his conquests, and paralleled them with the brilliant actions he had seen in his youth. While he thus discoursed, Wallace drew him toward the castle, and there presented to him the two nephews of the Earl of May.

He paid some warm compliments to Edwin on his early success in the career of glory; and then turning to Murray: "Ay!" said he, "it is joy to me to see the valiant house of Bothwell in the third generation. Thy grandfather and myself were boys together at the coronation of Alexander the Second; and that is eighty years ago. Since then, what have I not seen! the death of two noble Scottish kings! our blooming princes ravished from us by untimely fates! the throne sold to a coward, and at last seized by a foreign power! Then, in my own person, I have been the father of as brave and beauteous a family as ever blessed a parent's eye; but they are all torn from me. Two of my sons sleep on the plains of Dunbar; my third, my dauntless William, since that fatal day, has been kept a prisoner in England. And my daughters, the tender blossoms of my aged years--they grew around me, the fairest lilies of the land: but they, too, are passed away. The one, scorning the mere charms of youth, and preferring a union with a soul that had long conversed with superior regions, loved the sage of Ercildown. But my friend lost this rose of his bosom, and I the child of my heart, ere she had been a year his wife. Then was my last and only daughter married to the Lord Mar; and in giving birth to my dear Isabella she, too, died. Ah, my good young knight, were it not for that sweet child, the living image of her mother, who in the very spring of youth was cropped and fell, I should be alone: my hoary head would descend to the grave, unwept, unregretted!"

The joy of the old man having recalled such melancholy remembrances, he wept upon the shoulder of Edwin, who had drawn so near, that the story, was begun to Murray, was ended to him. To give the mourning father time to recover himself, Wallace was moving away, when he was met by Ker, bringing information that a youth had just arrived in breathless haste from Stirling, with a sealed packet, which he would not deliver into any hands but those of Sir William Wallace. Wallace requested his friends to show every attention to the Lord of Thirlestane, and then withdrew to meet the messenger.

On his entering the ante-room, the youth sprung forward, but suddenly checking himself, he stood as if irresolute whom to address.

"This is Sir William Wallace, young man," said Ker; "deliver your embassy."

At these words the youth pulled a packet from his bosom, and putting it into the chief's hand, retired in confusion. Wallace gave orders to Ker to take care of him, and then turned to inspect its contents. He wondered from whom it would come, aware of no Scot in Stirling who would dare to write to him while that town was possessed by the enemy. But not losing a moment in conjecture, he broke the seal.

How was he startled at the first words! and how was every energy of his heart roused to redoubled action when he turned to the signature! The first words in the letter were these:

"A daughter, trembling for the life of her father, presumes to address Sir William Wallace." The signature was "Helen Mar." He began the letter again:

"A daughter, trembling for the life of her father, presumes to address Sir William Wallace. Alas! it will be a long letter! for it is to tell of our countless distresses. You have been his deliverer from the sword, from chains, and from the waves. Refuse not to save him again to whom you have so often given life, and hasten, brave Wallace, to preserve the Earl of Mar from the scaffold.

"A cruel deception brought him from the Isle of Bute, where you imagined you had left him in security. Lord Aymer de Valence, escaping a second time from your sword, fled under rapacious robber of all our castles, found in him an apt coadjutor. They concerted how to avenge your late successes; and Cressingham, eager to enrich himself, while he flattered the resentments of his commander, suggested that you, Sir William Wallace, our deliverer, and our enemy's scourge, would most easily be made to feel through the bosoms of your friends. These cruel men have therefore determined, by a mock trial, to condemn my father to death, and thus, while they distress you, put themselves in possession of his lands, with the semblance of justice.

"The substance of this most unrighteous debate was communicated to me by De Valence himself; thinking to excuse his part in the affair by proving to me how insensible he is to the principles which move alike a patriot and a man of honor.

"Having learned from some too well-informed spy that Lord Mar had retired in peaceful obscurity to Bute, these arch-enemies to our country sent a body of men disguised as Scots to Gourock. There they dispatched a messenger into the island to inform Lord Mar that Sir William Wallace was on the banks of the Frith waiting to converse with him. My noble father, unsuspicious of treachery, hurried to the summons. Lady Mar accompanied him, and so both fell into the snare.

"They were brought prisoners to Stirling, where another affliction awaited him;-he was to see his daughter and his sister in captivity.

"After I had been betrayed from St. Fillian's monastery by the falsehoods of one Scottish knight, and were rescued from his power by the gallantry of another, I sought the protection of my aunt, Lady Ruthven, who then dwelt at Alloa, on the banks of the Forth. Her husband had been invited to Ayr by some treacherous requisition of the governor, Arnuf; and with many other lords was thrown into prison. Report says, bravest of men, that you have given freedom to my betrayed uncle.

"The moment Lord Ruthven's person was secured, his estates were seized, and my aunt and myself being found at Alloa, we were carried prisoners to this city. Alas! we had then no valiant arm to preserve us from our enemies! Lady Ruthven's first born son was slain in the fatal day of Dunbar, and in terror of the like fate, she placed her eldest surviving boy in a convent.

"Some days after our arrival, my dear father was brought to Stirling. Though a captive in the town, I was not then confined to any closer durance than the walls. While he was yet passing through the streets, rumor told my aunt that the Scottish lord then leading to prison was her beloved brother. She flew to me in agony to tell me the dreadful tidings. I heard no more, saw no more, till, having rushed into the streets, and bursting through every obstacle of crowd and soldiers, I found myself clasped in my father's arms--in his shackled arms! What a moment was that! Where was Sir William Wallace in that hour? Where the brave unknown knight, who had sworn to me to seek my father, and defend him with his life? Both were absent, and he was in chains.

"My grief and distraction baffled the attempts of the guards to part us, and what became of me I know not until I found myself lying on a couch, attended by many women, and supported by my aunt. When I had recovered to lamentation and to tears, my aunt told me I was in the apartments of the deputy warden. He, with Cressingham, having gone out to meet the man they had so basely drawn into their toils, De Valence himself saw the struggles of paternal affection contending against the men who would have torn a senseless daughter from his arms, and yet, merciless man! he separated us, and sent me, with my aunt, a prisoner to his house.

"The next day a packet was put into my aunt's hands, containing a few precious lines from my father to me, also a letter from the countess to Lady Ruthven, full of your goodness to her and to my father, and narrating the cruel manner in which they had been ravished from the asylum in which you had placed them. She then said that could she find means of apprising you of the danger to which she and her husband are now involved, she would be sure of a second rescue. Whether she has blessedly found these means I know not, for all communication between us, since the delivery of that letter, has been rendered impracticable. The messenger that brought the packet was a good Southron, who had been won by Lady Mar's entreaties. But on his quitting our apartments, he was seized by a servant of De Valence, and on the same day put publicly to death, to intimidate all others from the like compassion to the sufferings of unhappy Scotland. Oh! Sir William Wallace, will not your sword reach these men of blood?

"Earl de Valence compelled my aunt to yield the packet to him. We had already read it, therefore did not regret it on that head, but feared the information it might give relative to you. In consequence of this circumstance, I was made a closer prisoner. But captivity could have no terrors for me, did it not divide me from my father. And, grief on grief! what words have I to write it? they have CONDEMNED HIM TO DIE! That fatal letter of my step-mother's was brought out against him, and as your adherent, Sir William Wallace, they have sentenced him to lose his head!

"I have knelt to Earl de Valence; I have implored my father's life at his hands, but to no purpose. He tells me that Cressingham, at his side, and Ormsby, by letters from Scone, declare it necessary that an execution of consequence should be made to appall the discontented Scots; and that as no lord is more esteemed in Scotland than the Earl of Mar, he must be the sacrifice.

"Hasten, then, my father's preserver and friend! hasten to save him! Oh, fly, for the sake of the country he loves; for the sake of the hapless beings dependent on his protection! I shall be on my knees till I hear your trumpet before the walls; for in you and Heaven now rest all the hopes of Helen Mar."

A cold dew stood on the limbs of Wallace as he closed the letter. It might be too late! The sentence was passed on the earl, and his executioners were prompt as cruel: the ax might already have fallen.

He called to Ker, for the messenger to be brought in. He entered. Wallace inquired how long he had been from Stirling. "Only thirty-four hours," replied the youth, adding that he had traveled night and day for fear the news of the risings in Annandale, and the taking of Berwick, should precipitate the earl's death.

"I accompany you this instant," cried Wallace! "Ker, see that the troops get under arms." As he spoke he turned into the room where he had left the Knight of Thirlestane.

"Sir Richard Maitland," said he, willing to avoid exciting his alarm, "there is more work for us at Stirling. Lord Aymer de Valence has again escaped the death we thought had overtaken him, and is now in that citadel. I have just received a summons thither, which I must obey." At these words, Sir Roger Kirkpatrick gave a shout and rushed from the apartment. Wallace looked after him for a moment, and then continued: "Follow us with your prayers, Sir Richard; and I shall not despair of sending blessed tidings to the banks of the Lauder."

"What has happened?" inquired Murray, who saw that something more than the escape of De Valence had been imparted to his general.

"We must spare this good old man," returned he, "and have him conducted to his home before I declare it publicly; but the Earl of Mar is again a prisoner, and in Stirling."

Murray, who instantly comprehended his uncle's danger speeded the departure of Sir Richard; and as Wallace held his stirrup, the chief laid his hand on his head, and blessed him. "The seer of Ercildown is too ill to bring his benediction himself, but I breathe it over this heroic brow!" Wallace bowed his head in silence; and the bridle being in the hand of Lord Andrew, he led the horse out of the eastern gate of the town, where, taking leave of the veteran knight, he soon rejoined his commander, whom he found in the midst of his chieftains.

He had informed them of the Earl of Mar's danger, and the policy as well as justice of rescuing so powerful and patriotic a nobleman from the threatened execution. Lord Ruthven needed no arguments to precipitate him to the assistance of his brother and his wife; and the anxieties of the affectionate Edwin were all awake when he knew that his mother was a prisoner. Lord Andrew smiled proudly when he returned his cousin's letter to Wallace. "We shall have the rogue on the nail yet," cried he; "my uncle's brave head is not ordained to fall by the stroke of such a coward!"

"So I believe," replied Wallace; and then turning to Lord Dundaff-"My lord," said he, "I leave you governor of Berwick."

The veteran warrior grasped Wallace's hand. "To be your representative in this fortress, is the proudest station this warworn frame hath ever filled. My son must be my representative with you in the field." He waved Sir John Graham toward him; the young knight advanced, and Lord Dundaff, placing his son's hands upon his target, continued, "Swear, that as this defends the body, you will ever strive to cover Scotland from her enemies; and that from this hour you will be the faithful friend and follower of Sir William Wallace."

"I swear," returned Graham, kissing the shield. Wallace pressed his hand. "I have brothers around me, rather than what the world calls friends! And with such valor, such fidelity to aid me, can I be otherwise than a victor? Heaven's anointed sword is with such fellowship!"

Edwin, who stood near this rite of generous enthusiasm, softly whispered to Wallace, as he turned toward his troops, "But amongst all these brothers, cease not to remember Edwin--the youngest and the least. Ah, my beloved general, what Jonathan was to David, I would be to thee!"

Wallace looked on him with penetrating tenderness; his heart was suddenly wrung by a recollection, which the words of Edwin had recalled. "But thy love, Edwin, passes not the love of woman!" "But it equals it," replied he; "what has been done for thee I would do; only love me as David did Jonathan, and I shall be the happiest of the happy." "Be happy then, dear boy!" answered Wallace; "for all that ever beat in human breast, for friend or brother, lives in my heart for thee."

At that moment Sir John Graham rejoined them; and some other captains coming up. Wallace made the proper military dispositions, and every man took his station at the head of his division.

Until the men had marched far beyond the chance of rumors reaching Thirlestane, they were not informed of the Earl of Mar's danger. They conceived their present errand was the recapture of De Valence. "But at a proper moment," said Wallace, "they shall know the whole truth; for," added he, "as it is a law of equity, that what concerns all, should be approved by all, and that common dangers should be repelled by united efforts, the people who follow our standards, not as hirelings, but with willing spirits, ought to know our reasons for requiring their services."

"They who follow you," said Graham, "have too much confidence in their leader, to require any reasons for his movements."

"It is to place that confidence on a sure foundation, my brave friends," returned Wallace, "that I explain what there is no just reason to conceal. Should policy ever compel me to strike a blow without previously telling my agents wherefore, I should then draw upon their faith, and expect that confidence in my honor and arms which I now place on their discretion and fidelity."

Exordiums were not requisite to nerve every limb, and to strengthen every heart in the toilsome journey. Mountains were climbed, vast plains traversed, rivers forded, and precipices crossed, without one man in the ranks lingering on its steps, or dropping his head upon his pike, to catch a moment's slumber. Those who had fought with Wallace, longed to redouble their fame under his command; and they who had recently embraced his standard, panted with a virtuous ambition to rival those first-born in arms.

Sir Roger Kirkpatrick had been the first to fly to arms, on the march to Stirling being mentioned; and when Wallace stood forward to declare that rest should be dispensed with till Stirling fell, full of a fierce joy, the ardent knight darted over every obstacle to reach his aim. He flew to the van of his troops, and hailing them forward: "Come on!" cried he, "and in the blood of Cressingham let us forever sink King Edward's Scottish crown."

The shouts of the men, who seemed to drink in the spirit that blazed from Kirkpatrick's eyes, made the echoes of Lammermuir ring with a long-estranged noise. It was the voice of liberty. Leaping every bound, the eager van led the way; and, with prodigious perseverance, dragging their war-machines in the rear, the rest pressed on, till they reached the Carron side. At the moment the foaming steed of Wallace, smoking with the labors of a long and rapid march, was plunging into the stream to take the form, Ker snatched the bridle of the horse: "My lord," cried he, "a man on full speed from Douglas Castle has brought this packet."

In his march to Ayr, Wallace had left Sir Eustace Maxwell governor of that castle, and Monteith as his lieutenant.

Wallace opened the packet and read as follows:

"The patriots in Annandale have been beaten by Lord de Warenne. Sir John Monteith (who volunteered to head them) is taken prisoner, with twelve hundred men.

"Earl de Warenne comes to resume his arrogant title of Lord Warden of Scotland, and thereby to relieve his deputy, Aymer de Valence, who is recalled to take possession of the lordship of Pembroke. In pursuance of his usurping commission, the earl is now marching rapidly toward the Lothians, in the hope of intercepting you in your progress.

"Thanks to the constant information you send us of your movements, for being able to surprise you of this danger! I should have attempted to have checked the Southron, by annoying his flanks, had not his numbers rendered such an enterprise on my part hopeless. But his aim being to come up with you, if you meet him in the van, we shall have him in the rear; and, so surrounded, he must be cut to pieces. Surely the tree you planted in Dumbarton, is not now to be blasted!

"Ever your general's and Scotland's true servant,

"Eustace Maxwell."

"What answer?" inquired Ker.

Wallace hastily engraved with his dagger's point upon his gauntlet, "Reviresco!** Our sun is above!" and desiring it to be given to the messenger to carry to Sir Eustace Maxwell, he refixed himself in his saddle, and spurred over the Carron.

**Reviresco! means "I bud again!" This encouraging word is now the reuto of the Maxwell arms.

The moon was near her meridian as the wearied troops halted on the deep shadows of the Carse of Stirling. All around them was desolation; the sword and the fire had been there, not in open declared warfare, but under the darkness of midnight, and impelled by rapacity and wantonness; hence from the base of the rock, even to the foot of the Clackmannan Hills, all lay a smoking wilderness.

An hour's rest was sufficient to restore every exhausted power to the limbs of the determined followers of Wallace; and, as the morning dawned, the sentinels on the ramparts of the town were not only surprised to see a host below, but that (by the most indefatigable labor, and a silence like death) had not merely passed the ditch, but having gained the counterscarp, had fixed their movable towers, and were at that instant overlooking the highest bastions. The mangonels and petraries, and other implements for battering walls, and the ballista, with every efficient means of throwing missive weapons, were ready to discharge their artillery upon the heads of the beseiged.

At a sight so unexpected, which seemed to have arisen out of the earth like an exhalation (with such muteness and expedition had the Scottish operations been carried on), the Southrons, struck with dread, fled a moment from the walls; but immediately recovering their presence of mind, they returned, and discharged a cloud of arrows upon their assailants. A messenger, meanwhile, was sent into the citadel to apprise De Valence and the Governor Cressingham of the assault. The interior gates now sent forth thousands to the walls; but in proportion to the numbers which approached, the greater was the harvest of death prepared for the terrible arm of Wallace, whose tremendous war wolves throwing prodigious stones, and lighter springalls, casting forth brazen darts, swept away file after file of the reinforcements. It grieved the noble heart of the Scottish commander to see so many valiant men urged to inevitable destruction; but still they advanced, and that his own might be preserved they must fall. To shorten the bloody contest, his direful weapons were worked with redoubled energy; and so mortal a shower fell that the heavens seemed to rain iron. The crushed and stricken enemy, shrinking under the mighty tempest, forsook their ground.

The ramparts deserted, Wallace sprung from his tower upon the walls. At that moment De Valence opened one of the gates; and, at the head of a formidable body, charged the nearest Scots. A good soldier is never taken unawares, and Murray and Graham were prepared to receive him. Furiously driving him to a retrograde motion, they forced him back into the town. But there all was confusion. Wallace, with his resolute followers, had already put Cressingham and his legions to flight; and, closely pursued by Kirkpatrick, they threw themselves into the castle. Meanwhile, the victorious Wallace surrounded the amazed De Valence, who, caught in double toils, called to his men to fight for their king, and neither give nor take quarter.

The brave fellows too strictly obeyed; and while they fell on all sides, he supported them with a courage which horror of Wallace's vengeance for his grandfather's death, and the attempt on his own life in the hall at Dumbarton, rendered desperate. At last he encountered the conquering chief, arm to arm. Great was the dismay of De Valence at this meeting; but as death was now all he saw before him, he resolved, if he must die, that the soul of his enemy should attend him to the other world.

He fought, not with the steady valor of a warrior determined to vanquish or die; but with the fury of despair, with the violence of a hyena, thirsting for the blood of his opponent. Drunk with rage, he made a desperate plunge at the heart of Wallace--a plunge, armed with execrations, and all his strength; but his sword missed its aim, and entered the side of a youth, who at that moment had thrown himself before his general. Wallace saw where the deadly blow fell; and instantly closing on the earl--with a vengeance in his eyes, which reminded his now determined victim of the horrid vision he had seen in the burning Barns of Ayr--with one grasp of his arm, the incensed chief hurled him to the ground; and setting his foot upon his breast, would have buried his dagger there, had not De Valence dropped his uplifted sword, and with horror in every feature, raised his clasped hands in speechless supplication.

Wallace suspended the blow; and De Valence exclaimed: "My life! this once again, gallant Wallace! by your hopes of heaven, grant me mercy!"

Wallace looked on the trembling recreant with a glare, which, had he possessed the soul of a man, would have made him grasp at death, rather than deserve a second. "And hast thou escaped me again?" cried Wallace. Then turning his indignant eyes from the abject earl to his bleeding friend-"I yield him his life, Edwin, and you, perhaps, are slain?"

"Forget not our own bright principle to avenge me," said Edwin, as brightly smiling; "he has only wounded me. But you are safe, and I hardly feel a smart."

Wallace replaced his dagger in his girdle. "Rise, Lord de Valence; it is my honor, not my will, that grants your life. You threw away your arms! I cannot strike even a murderer who bares his breast. I give you that mercy you denied to nineteen unoffending, defenseless old men, whose hoary heads your ruthless ax brought with blood to the ground. Let memory be the sword I have withheld!"

While he spoke, De Valence had risen, and stood, conscience-stricken, before the majestic mien of Wallace. There was something in this denunciation that sounded like the irreversible decree of a divinity; and the condemned wretch quaked beneath the threat, while he panted for revenge.

The whole of the survivors in De Valence's train having surrendered themselves when their leader fell, in a few minutes Wallace was surrounded by his chieftains, bringing in the colors, and the swords of their prisoners.

"Sir Alexander Ramsay," said he, to a brave and courteous knight, who with his kinsman, William Blair, had joined him in the Lothians; "I confide Earl de Valence, to your care. See that he is strongly guarded; and has every respect according to the honor of him to whom I commit this charge."

The town was now in possession of the Scots; and Wallace, having sent off the rest of his prisoners to safe quarters, reiterated his persuasions to Edwin, to have the ground, and submit his wounds to the surgeon. "No, no," replied he; "the same hand that gave me this, inflicted a worse on my general at Dumbarton: he kept the field then; and shall I retire now, and disgrace my example? No, my brother; you would not have me so disprove my kindred!"

"Do as you will," answered Wallace, with a grateful smile; "so that you preserve a life that must never again be risked to save mine. While it is necessary for me to live, my Almighty Captain will shield me; but when his word goes forth, that I shall be recalled, it will not be in the power of friendship, nor of hosts, to turn the steel from my breast. Therefore, dearest Edwin, thrown not yourself away, in defending what is in the hands of Heaven--to be lent, or to be withdrawn at will."

Edwin bowed his modest head; and having suffered a balsam to be poured into his wound, braced his brigandine over his breast; and was again at the side of his friend, just as he had joined Kirkpatrick before the citadel. The gates were firmly closed, and the dismayed Cressingham was panting behind its walls, as Wallace commanded the parley to be sounded. Afraid of trusting himself within arrow-shot of an enemy who he believed conquered by witchcraft, the terrified governor sent his lieutenant up on the walls to answer the summons.

The herald of the Scots demanded the immediate surrender of the place. Cressingham was at that instant informed by a messenger, who had arrived too late the preceding night to be allowed to disturb his slumbers, that De Warenne was approaching with an immense army. Inflated with new confidence, he mounted the wall himself, and in haughty language, returned for answer, "That he would fall under the towers of the citadel before he would surrender to a Scottish rebel. And as an example of the fate which such a delinquent merits," continued he, "I will change the milder sentence passed on Lord Mar, and immediately hang him, and all his family, on these ramparts, in sight of your insurgent army."

"Then," cried the herald, "thus says Sir William Wallace--if even one hair on the heads of the Earl of Mar and his family falls with violence to the ground, every Southron soul who has this day surrendered to the Scottish arms shall lose his head by the ax."

"We are used to the blood of traitors," cried Cressingham, "and mind not its scent. But the army of Earl de Warenne is at hand; and it is at the peril of all your necks, for the rebel, your master, to put his threat in execution. Withdraw, or you shall see the dead bodies of Donald Mar and his family fringing these battlements; for no terms do we keep with man, woman, or child, who is linked with treason!"

At these words, an arrow, winged from a hand behind Cressingham, flew directly to the unvisored face of Wallace, but it struck too high, and ringing against his helmet fell to the ground.

"Treachery!" resounded from every Scottish lip; while indignant at so villainous a rupture of the parley, every bow was drawn to the head; and a flight of arrows, armed with retribution, flew toward the battlements. All hands were now at work, to bring the towers to the wall; and mounting on them, while the archers by their rapid showers drove the men from the ramparts, soldiers below, with pickaxes, dug into the wall to make a breach.

Cressingham began to fear that his boasted auxiliaries might arrive too late; but, determining to gain time at least, he shot flights of darts, and large stones, from a thousand engines; also discharged burning combustibles over the ramparts, in hopes of setting fire to the enemy's attacking machines.

But all his promptitude proved of no effect. The walls were giving way in parts, and Wallace was mounting by scaling-ladders, and clasping the parapets with bridges from his towers. Driven to extremity, Cressingham resolved to try the attachment of the Scots for Lord Mar; and even at the moment when their chief had seized the barbican and outer ballium, this sanguinary politician ordered the imprisoned earl to be brought out upon the wall of the inner ballia. A rope was round his neck, which was instantly run through a groove, that projected from the nearest tower.

At this sight, horror froze the ardent blood of Wallace. But the intrepid earl, descrying his friend on the ladder which might soon carry him to the summit of the battlement, exclaimed, "Forward! Let not my span of life stand between my country and this glorious day for Scotland's freedom!"

"Execute the sentence!" cried the infuriate Cressingham.

At these words, Murray and Edwin precipitated themselves upon the ramparts, and mowed down all before them, in a direction toward their uncle. The lieutenant who held the cord, aware of the impolicy of the cruel mandate, hesitated to fulfill it; and now, fearing a rescue from the impetuous Scots, hurried his victim off the works, back to his prison. Meanwhile, Cressingham perceiving that all would be lost should he suffer the enemy to gain this wall also, sent such numbers upon the brave Scots who had followed the cousins, that, overcoming some, and repelling others, they threw Murray, with a sudden shock, over the ramparts. Edwin was surrounded; and his successful adversaries were bearing him off, struggling and bleeding, when Wallace, springing like a lioness on hunters carrying away her young, rushed in singly amongst them. He seized Edwin; and while his falchion flashed terrible threatenings in their eyes, with a backward step he fought his passage to one of the wooden towers he had fastened to the wall.

Cressingham, being wounded in the head, commanded a parley to be sounded.

"We have already taken Lord de Valence and his host prisoners," returned Wallace; "and we grant you no cessation of hostilities till you deliver up the Earl of Mar and his family, and surrender the castle into our hands."

"Think not, proud boaster!" cried the herald of Cressingham, "that we ask a parley to conciliate. It was to tell you that if you do not draw off directly, not only the Earl of Mar and his family, but every Scottish prisoner within these walls, shall perish in your sight."

While he yet spoke, the Southrons uttered a great shout, and the Scots looking up, beheld several high poles erected on the roof of the keep, and the Earl of Mar, as before, was led forward. But he seemed no longer the bold and tranquil patriot. He was surrounded by shrieking female forms, clinging to his knees; and his trembling hands were lifted to heaven, as if imploring its pity.

"Stop!" cried Wallace, in a voice whose thundering mandate rung from tower to tower. "The instant he dies, Lord Aymer de Valence shall perish!"

He had only to make the sign, and in a few minutes that nobleman appeared between Ramsay and Kirkpatrick. "Earl," exclaimed Wallace, "though I granted your life in the field with reluctance, yet here I am ashamed to put it in danger. But your own people compel me. Look at that spectacle. A venerable father, in the midst of his family; he and they doomed to an ignominious and instant death, unless I betray my country and abandon these walls. Were I weak enough to purchase their lives at such an expense, they could not survive that disgrace. But that they shall not die, while I have the power to preserve them, is my resolve and my duty! Life, then, for life; yours for this family!"

Wallace, directing his voice toward the keep:

"The moment," cried he, "in which that vile cord presses too closely on the neck of the Earl of Mar, or any of his blood, the ax shall sever the head of Lord de Valence from his body!"

De Valence was now seen on the top of one of the besieging towers. He was pale as death. He trembled, but not with dismay only; ten thousand varying emotions tore his breast. To be thus set up as a monument of his own defeat, to be threatened with execution by an enemy he had contemned, to be exposed to such indignities by the unthinking ferocity of his colleague, filled him with such contending passions of revenge against friends and foes, that he forgot the present fear of death in turbulent wishes to deprive of life all by whom he suffered.

Cressingham became alarmed on seeing the retaliating menace of Wallace brought so directly before his view; and, dreading the vengeance of De Valence's powerful family, he ordered a herald to say that if Wallace would draw off his troops to the outer ballium, and the English chief along with them, the Lord Mar and his family should be taken from their perilous situation, and he would consider on terms of surrender.

Aware that Cressingham only wanted to gain time until De Warenne should arrive, Wallace determined to foil him with his own weapons, and make the gaining of the castle the consequence of vanquishing the earl. He told the now perplexed governor that he should consider Lord de Valence as the hostage of safety for Lord Mar and his family, and therefore he consented to withdraw his men from the inner ballium till the setting of the sun, at which hour he should expect a herald with the surrender of the fortress.

Thinking that he had caught the Scottish chief in a snare, and that the lord warden's army would be upon him long before the expiration of the armistice, Cressingham congratulated himself upon this maneuver; and resolving that the moment Earl de Warenne should appear, Lord Mar should be secretly destroyed in the dungeons, he ordered them to their security again.

Wallace fully comprehended what were his enemy's views, and what ought to be his own measures, as soon as he saw the unhappy group disappear from the battlements of the keep. He then recalled his men from the inner ballium wall, and stationing several detachments along the ramparts, and in the towers of the outer wall, committed De Valence to the stronghold of the barbican, under the especial charge of Lord Ruthven, who was, indeed, eager to hold the means in his own hand that were to check the threatened danger of relatives so dear to him as were the prisoners in the castle.

XXXIII. Cambus-Kenneth

Having secured the advantages he had gained in the town and on the works of the castle, by manning all the strong places, Wallace set forward with his chosen troops to intercept De Warenne.

He took his position on a commanding ground about half a mile from Stirling, near to the Abbey of Cambus-Kenneth. The Forth lay before him, crossed by a wooden bridge, over which the enemy must pass to reach him, the river not being fordable in that part.

He ordered the timbers which supported the bridge to be sawed at the bottom, but not displaced in the least, that they might stand perfectly firm for as long as he should deem it necessary. To these timbers were fastened strong cords, all of which he intrusted to the sturdiest of his Lanark men, who were to lie concealed amongst the flags. These preparations being made, he drew up his troops in order of battle. Kirkpatrick and Murray commanded the flanks. In the center stood Wallace himself, with Ramsay on one side of him, and Edwin, with Scrymgeour on the other, awaiting with steady expectation the approach of the enemy, who, by this time, could not be far distant.

Cressingham was not less well-informed of the advance of De Warenne; and burning with revenge against Wallace, and earnest to redeem the favor of De Valence by some act in his behalf, he first gave secret orders to his lieutenant, then set forth alone to seek an avenue of escape, never divulged to any but to the commanders of the fortress. He soon discovered it; and by the light of a torch, making his way through a passage bored in the rock, emerged at its western base, screened from sight by the surrounding bushes. He had disguised himself in a shepherd's bonnet and plaid, in case of being observed by the enemy; but fortune, favored him, and unseen he crept along through the thickets, till he descried the advance of De Warenne's army on the skirts of Tor Wood.

Having missed Wallace in West Lothian, De Warenne divided his army into three divisions, to enter Stirlingshire by different routes; and so he hoped, certainly, to intercept him in one of them. The Earl of Montgomery led the first, of twenty thousand men; the Barons Hilton and Blenkinsopp, the second, of ten thousand; and De Warenne himself the third, of thirty thousand.

It was the first of these divisions that Cressingham encountered in Tor Wood; and revealing himself to Montgomery, he recounted how rapidly Wallace had gained the town, and in what jeopardy the citadel would be, if he were not instantly attacked. The earl advised waiting for a junction with Hilton or the lord warden, "which," said he, "must happen in the course of a few hours."

"In the course of a few hours," returned Cressingham, "you will have no Stirling Castle to defend. The enemy will seize it at sunset, in pursuance of the very agreement by which I warded him off, to give us time to annihilate him before that hour. Therefore no hesitation, if we would not see him lock the gates of the north of Scotland upon us, even when we have the power to hurl him to perdition."

By arguments such as these the young earl was induced to give up his judgment; and, accompanied by Cressingham, whose courage revived amid such a host, he proceeded to the southern bank of the Forth.

The bands of Wallace were drawn up on the opposite shore, hardly five thousand strong, but so disposed the enemy could not calculate their numbers, though the narrowness of their front suggested to Cressingham that they could not be numerous; and he recollected that many must have been left to occupy the outworks of the town and the citadel. "It will be easy to surround the rebel," cried he; "and that we may effect our enterprise before the arrival of the warden robs us of the honor, let us about it directly, and cross the bridge."

Montgomery proposed a herald being sent to inform Wallace that, besides the long line of troops he saw, De Warenne was advancing with double hosts, and if he would now surrender, a pardon should be granted to him and his, in the king's name, for all their late rebellions. Cressingham was vehement against this measure, but Montgomery being resolute, the messenger was dispatched.

In a few minutes he returned, and repeated to the Southron commanders the words of Wallace: "Go," said he, "tell your masters we came not here to treat for a pardon of what we shall never allow to be an offense; we came to assert our rights--to set Scotland free. Till that is effected, all negotiation is vain. Let them advance; they will find us prepared."

"Then onward!" cried Montgomery; and, spurring his steed, he led the way to the bridge; his eager soldiers followed, and the whole of his center ranks passed over. The flanks advanced, and the bridge, from end to end, was filled with archers, cavalry, men-at-arms, and war-carriages. Cressingham, in the midst, was hallooing in proud triumph to those who occupied the rear of the straining beams, when the blast of a trumpet sounded from the till now silent and immovable Scottish phalanx. It was re-echoed by shouts from behind the passing enemy, and in that moment the supporting piers of the bridge** were pulled away, and the whole of its mailed throng was precipitated into the stream.

**This historical fact relating to the bridge is yet exultantly repeated on the spot, and the number of the Southrons who fell beneath the arms of so small a band of Scots, is not less the theme of triumph.-(1809.)

The cries of the maimed and the drowning were joined by the terrific slogan of two bands of Scots. The one with Wallace toward the head of the river, while the other, under the command of Sir John Graham, rushed from its ambuscade on the opposite bank upon the rear of the dismayed troops; and both divisions sweeping all before them, drove those who fought on land into the river, and those who had just escaped the flood, to meet its waves again, a bleeding host.

In the midst of this conflict, which rather seemed a carnage than a battle, Kirkpatrick, having heard the proud shouts of Cressingham on the bridge, now sought him amidst its shattered timbers. With the ferocity of a tiger hunting its prey, he ran from man to man, and as the struggling wretches emerged from the water, he plucked them from the surge; but even while his glaring eye-balls and uplifted ax threatened destruction, he only looked on them; and with imprecations of disapointment, rushed forward on his chase. Almost in despair that the waves had cheated his revenge, he was hurrying on in another direction, when he perceived a body moving through a hollow on his right. He turned, and saw the object of his search crawling amongst the mud and sedges.

"Ha!" cried Kirkpatrick, with a triumphant yell, "art thou yet mine? Damned, damned villain!" cried he, springing upon his breast: "Behold the man you dishonored!-behold the hot cheek your dastard hand defiled! Thy blood shall obliterate the stain; and then Kirkpatrick may again front the proudest in Scotland!"

"For mercy!" cried the horror-struck Cressingham, struggling with preternatural strength to extricate himself.

"Hell would be my portion did I grant any to thee," cried Kirkpatrick; and with one stroke of the ax he severed the head from its body. "I am a man again!" shouted he, as he held its bleeding veins in his hand, and placed it on the point of his sword. "Thou ruthless priest of Moloch and of Mammon, thou shalt have thine own blood to drink, while I show my general how proudly I am avenged!" As he spoke, he dashed amongst the victorious ranks, and reached Wallace at the very moment he was freeing himself from his fallen horse, which a random arrow had shot under him. Murray, at the same instant, was bringing up the wounded Montgomery, who came to surrender his sword, and to beg quarter for his men. The earl turned deadly pale; for the first object that struck his sight was the fierce knight of Torthorald, walking under the stream of blood which continued to flow from the ghastly head of Cressingham, as he held it exultingly in the air.

"If that be your chief," cried Montgomery, "I have mistaken him much--I cannot yield my sword to him."

Murray understood him: "If cruelty be an evil spirit," returned he, "it has fled every breast in this army to shelter with Sir Roger Kirkpatrick; and its name is Legion! That is my chief!" added he, pointing to Wallace, with an evident consciousness of deriving honor from his command. The chief rose from the ground dyed in the same ensanguined hue which had excited the abhorrence of Montgomery, though it had been drawn from his own veins, and those of his horse. All, indeed, of blood about him seemed to be on his garment; none was in his eyes, none in his heart but what warmed it to mercy and to benevolence for all mankind. His eyes momentarily fell on the approaching figure of Kirkpatrick, who, waving the head in the air, blew from his bugle the triumphal notes of the Pryse, and then cried to his chief: "I have slain the wolf of Scotland! My brave clansmen are now casing my target with his skin,** which, when I strike its bossy sides, will cry aloud. So, perishes thy dishonor! So perish all the enemies of Scotland!"

**It is recorded that the memory of Cressingham was so odious to the Scots, they did indeed flay his dead body, and made saddles and girths and other things of his skin.-(1809.)

"And with the extinction of that breath, Kirkpatrick," cried Wallace, looking serenely from the head to him, "let your fell revenge perish also. For your own honor commit no indignities on the body you have slain."

"'Tis for you to conquer like a god!" cried Kirkpatrick; "I have felt as a man, and like a man I revenge. This head shall destroy in death; it shall vanquish its friends for me; for I will wear it like a Gorgon on my sword, to turn to stone every Southron who looks on it." While speaking, he disappeared amongst the thickening ranks; and as the victorious Scots hailed him in passing, Montgomery, thinking of his perishing men, suffered Murray to lead him to the scene of his humility.

The ever-comprehensive eye of Wallace perceived him as he advanced; and guessing by his armor and dignified demeanor who he was, with a noble grace he raised his helmed bonnet from his head when the earl approached him. Montgomery looked on him; he felt his soul, even more than his arms, subdued; but still there was something about a soldier's heart that shrunk from yielding his power of resistance. The blood mounted into his before pale cheeks; he held out his sword in silence to the victor; for he could not bring his tongue to pronounce the word "surrender."

Wallace understood the sign, and holding up his hand to a herald, the trumpet of peace was raised. It sounded--and where, the moment before, were the horrid clashing of arms, the yell of savage conquest, and direful cries for mercy, all was hushed as death. Not that death which had passed, but that which is approaching.--None spoke, not a sound was heard, but the low groans of the dying, who lay, overwhelmed and perishing, beneath the bodies of the slain, and the feet of the living.

The voice of Wallace rose from this awful pause. Its sound was ever the harbinger of glory, or of "good will to men." "Soldiers!" cried he, "God has given victory--let us show our gratitude by moderation and mercy. Gather the wounded into quarters and bury the dead."

Wallace then turned to the extended sword of the earl; he put it gently back with his hand: "Ever wear what you honor," said he; "but, gallant Montgomery, when you draw it next, let it be in a better cause. Learn, brave earl, to discriminate between a warrior's glory and his shame; between the defender of his country, and the unprovoked ravager of other lands."

Montgomery blushed scarlet at these words; but it was not with resentment. He looked down for a moment: "Ah!" thought he, "perhaps I ought never to have drawn it here!" Then raising his eyes to Wallace, he said: "Were you not the enemy of my king, who, though a conqueror, sanctions none of the cruelties that have been committed in his name, I would give you my hand, before the remnant of his brave troops, whose lives you grant. But you have my heart: a heart that knows no difference between friend or foe, when the bonds of virtue would unite what only civil dissensions hold separate."

"Had your king possessed the virtues you believe he does," replied Wallace, "my sword might have now been a pruning-hook. But that is past! We are in arms for injuries received, and to drive out a tyrant. For believe me, noble Montgomery, that monarch has little pretensions to virtue, who suffers the oppressors of his people, or of his conquests, to go unpunished. To connive at cruelty, is to practice it. And has Edward ever frowned on one of those despots, who, in his name, have for these two years past laid Scotland in blood and ashes?"

The appeal was too strong for Montgomery to answer; he felt its truth, and bowed, with an expression in his face that told more than, as a subject of England, he dared declare.

The late respectful silence was turned into the clamorous activity of eager obedience. The prisoners were conducted to the rear of Stirling; while the major part of the Scots (leaving a detachment to unburden the earth of its bleeding load), returned in front to the gates, just as De Warenne's division appeared on the horizon, like a moving cloud gilded by the now setting sun. At this sight Wallace sent Edwin into the town with Lord Montgomery, and marshaling his line, prepared to bear down upon the approaching earl.

But the lord warden had received information which fought better for the Scots than a host of swords. When advanced a very little onward on the Carse of Stirling, one of his scouts brought intelligence that having approached the south side of the Forth, he had seen that river floating with dead bodies; and soon after met Southron horns blowing the notes of victory. From what he learned from the fugitives, he also informed his lord, "that not only the town and citadel of Stirling were in the possession of Sir William Wallace, but the two detachments under Montgomery and Hilton had both been discomfited, and their leaders slain or taken."

At this intelligence, Earl de Warenne stood aghast; and while he was still doubting that such disgrace to King Edward's arms could be possible, two or three fugitives came up, and witnessed to its truth. One had seen Kirkpatrick, with the bloody head of the Governor of Stirling on his sword. Another had been near Cressingham in the wood, when he told Montgomery of the capture of De Valence; and concluding that he meant the leader of the third division, he corroborated the scout's information of the two defeats, adding (for terror magnified the objects of fear), that the Scots army was incalculable; but was so disposed by Sir William Wallace, as to appear inconsiderable, that he might ensnare his enemies, by filling them with hopes of an easy conquest.

These accounts persuaded De Warenne to make a retreat; and intimidated by the exaggerated representations of those who had fled, his men, with no little precipitation, turned to obey.

Wallace perceived the retrograde motion of his enemy's lines; and while a stream of arrows from his archers poured upon them like hail, he bore down upon the rear-guard with his cavalry and men-at-arms, and sent Graham round by the wood, to surprise the flanks.

All was executed with promptitude; and the tremendous slogan sounding from side to side, the terrified Southrons, before in confusion, now threw away their arms, to lighten themselves for escape. Sensible that it was not the number of the dead, but the terror of the living, which gives the finishing stroke to conquest, De Warenne saw the effects of this panic, in the total disregard of his orders; and dreadful would have been the carnage of his troops had he not sounded a parley.

The bugle of Wallace instantly answered it. De Warenne sent forward his herald. He offered to lay down his arms, provided he might be exempted from relinquishing the royal standard, and that he and his men might be permitted to return without delay to England.

Wallace accepted the first article; granted the second; but with regard to the third, it must be on condition that he, the Lord de Warenne, and the officers taken in his army, or in other engagements lately fought in Scotland, should be immediately exchanged for the like number of noble Scots Wallace should name, who were prisoners in England; and that the common men of the army, now about to surrender their arms, should take an oath never to serve again against Scotland.

These preliminaries being agreed to (their very boldness arguing the conscious advantage which seemed to compel the assent), the lord warden advanced at the head of his thirty thousand troops; and first laying down his sword, which Wallace immediately returned to him, the officers and soldiers marched by with their heads uncovered, throwing down their weapons as they approached their conqueror. Wallace extended his line while the procession moved, for he had too much policy to show his enemies that thirty thousand men had yielded, almost without a blow, to scarce five thousand. The oath was afterward administered to each regiment by heralds, sent for that purpose into the strath of Monteith, whither Wallace had directed the captured legions to assemble and refresh themselves, previous to their departure next morning for England. The privates thus disposed of, to release himself from the commanders also, Wallace told De Warenne that duty called him away, but every respect would be paid to them by the Scottish officers.

He then gave directions to Sir Alexander Ramsay to escort De Warenne and the rest of the noble prisoners to Stirling. Wallace himself turned with his veteran band to give a conqueror's greeting to the Baron of Hilton, and so ended the famous battles of Cambus-Kenneth and the Carse of Stirling.

XXXIV. Stirling Castle

The prisoners who had been taken with Montgomery were lodged behind the town, and the wounded carried into the Abbey of Cambus-Kenneth; but when Edwin came to move that earl himself, he found him too faint with loss of blood to sit a horse to Snawdoun. He therefore ordered a litter; and so conveyed his brave prisoner to that palace of the kings of Scotland in Stirling.

The priests in Wallace's army not only exercised the Levitical but the good Samaritan's functions, and they soon obeyed the young knight's summons to dress the wounds of Montgomery.

Messengers, meanwhile, arrived from Wallace, acquainting his chieftains in Stirling with the surrender of De Warenne's army. Hence no surprise was created in the breast of the wounded earl when he saw his commander enter the palace as the prisoner of the illustrious Scot.

Montgomery held out his hand to the lord warden in silence, and with a flushed cheek.

"Blush not, my noble friend!" cried De Warenne; "these wounds speak more eloquently than a thousand tongues, the gallantry with which you maintained the sword that fate compelled you to surrender. But I, without a scratch, how can I meet the unconquered Edward? And yet it was not for myself I feared: my brave and confiding soldiers were in all my thoughts; for I saw it was not to meet an army I led them, but against a whirlwind, a storm of war, with which no strength that I commanded could contend."

While the English generals thus conversed, Edwin's impatient heart yearned to be again at the side of Wallace; and gladly resigning the charge of his noble prisoner to Sir Alexander Ramsay, as soon as he observed a cessation in the conversation of the two earls, he drew near Montgomery to take his leave.

"Farewell, till we meet again!" said the young earl, pressing his hand; "you have been a young brother rather than an enemy, to me."

"Because," returned Edwin, "I follow the example of my general, who would willingly be the friend of all mankind."

Warenne looked at him with surprise: "And who are you, who, in that stripling form, utters gallant sentiments which might grace the maturest years?"

With a sweet dignity, Edwin replied, "I am Edwin Ruthven, the adopted brother of Sir William Wallace."

"And the son of him," asked De Warenne, "who, with Sir William Wallace, was the first to mount Dumbarton walls?"

At these words the cheeks of Edwin were suffused with a more animated bloom. At the moment when his courage was distinguished on the heights of Dumbarton, by the vowed friendship of Wallace, he had found himself beloved by the bravest and most amiable of beings; and in his light he felt both warmth and brightness; but this question of De Warenne, conveyed to him that he had found fame himself; that he was there publicly acknowledged to be an object not unworthy of being called the brother of Sir William Wallace!-and, casting down his eyes, beaming with exultation, from the fixed gaze of De Warenne, he answered, "I am that happy Ruthven, who had the honor to mount Dumbarton Rock by the side of my general; and from his hand there received the stroke of knighthood."

De Warenne rose, much agitated: "If such be the boys of Scotland need we wonder, when the spirit of resistance is roused in the nation, that our strength should wither before its men?"

"At least," said Montgomery, whose admiration of what passed seemed to reanimate his languid faculties, "it deprives defeat of its sting, when we are conscious we yielded to power that was irresistible. But, my lord," added he, "if the courage of this youth amazes you, what will you say ought to be the fate of this country? what to be the crown of Sir William Wallace's career, when you know the chain of brave hearts by which he is surrounded? Even tender woman loses the weakness of her sex when she belongs to him." Earl de Warenne, surprised at the energy with which he spoke, looked at him with an expression that told him so. "Yes," continued he, "I witnessed the heroism of Lady Wallace, when she defended the character of her husband in the midst of an armed host, and preserved the secret of his retreat inviolate. I saw that loveliest of women, whom the dastard Heselrigge slew."

"Disgrace to knighthood!" cried Edwin, with indignant vehemence; "if you were a spectator of that bloody deed, retire from this house; go to Cambus-Kenneth--anywhere; but leave this city before the injured Wallace arrives; blast not his eyes with a second sight of one who could have beheld his wife murdered."

Every eye was now fixed on the commanding figure of the young Edwin, who stood with the determination of being obeyed breathing in every look. De Warenne then at once saw the possibility of so gentle a creature being transformed into the soul of enterprise, into the fearless and effective soldier.

Lord Montgomery held out his hand to Edwin. "By this right arm, I swear, noble youth, that had I been on the spot when Heselrigge, lifted his sword against the breast of Lady Wallace, I would have sheathed my sword in his. It was before then that I saw that matchless woman; and offended with my want of severity in the scrutiny I had made at Ellerslie for its chief. Heselrigge sent me back to Ayr. Arnuf quarreled with me there, on the same subject; and I immediately retired in disgust to England."

"Then how? you ought to be Sir Gilbert Hambledon?" replied Edwin; "but whoever you are, as you were kind to the Lady Marion, I cannot but regret my late hasty charge; and for which I beseech your pardon."

Montgomery took his hand, and pressed it. "Generous Ruthven, your warmth is too honorable to need forgiveness. I am that Sir Gilbert Hambledon; and had I remained so, I should not now be in Scotland. But in my first interview with the Prince of Wales, after my accession to the Earldom of Montgomery, his highness told me, it had been rumored from Scotland that I was disloyal in my heart to my king. 'And to prove the falsehood of such calumniators,' continued the prince, 'I appoint you second in command there to the Earl de Warenne.' To have refused to fight against Sir William Wallace, would have been to have accused myself of treason. And while I respected the husband of the murdered Lady Marion, I yet condemned him as an insurgent; and with the same spirit you follow him in the field, I obeyed the commands of my sovereign."

"Lord Montgomery," returned Edwin, "I am rejoiced to see one who proves to me what my general, wronged as he has been, yet always inculcates--that all the Southrons are not base and cruel! When he knows who is indeed his prisoner, what recollections will it awaken! But till you and he again meet, I shall not intimate to him the melancholy satisfaction he is to enjoy, for, with the remembrances it will arouse, your presence must bring the antidote."

The brave youth then telling Ramsay in what parts of the palace the rest of the lords were to be lodged, with recovered composure descended to the courtyard, to take horse for Tor Wood. He was galloping along, under the bright light of the moon, when he heard a squadron on full speed approaching, and presently Murray appeared at its head. "Hurrah, Edwin!" cried he; "well met! We are come to demand the instant surrender of the citadel. Hilton's division has surrendered!"

The two barons had indeed come up about half an hour after Earl de Warenne's division was discomfited. Sir William Wallace had sent forward to the advancing enemy two heralds, bearing the colors De Valence and Montgomery, with the captive banner of De Warenne, and requiring the present division to lay down its army also. The sight of these standards was sufficient to assure Hilton there was no deceit in the embassy. The nature of his position precluded retreat; and not seeing any reason for ten thousand men disputing the day with a power to whom fifty thousand had just surrendered, he and his compeer, with the reluctance of veterans, embraced the terms of surrender.

The instant Hilton put his argent banner** into the victor's hand, Wallace knew that the castle must now be his; he had discomfited all who could have maintained it against him. Impatient to apprise Lord Mar and his family of their safety, he dispatched Murray with a considerable escort to demand its surrender.

**The arms of Hilton are, argent, two bars azure. The charge on those of Blenkinsopp are three wheat-sheaves; crest, a lion rampant, grasping a rose. The ruins of the patrimonial castles of these two ancient barons are still to be seen in the north of England. The author's revered mother was a descendant from the latter venerable name, united with that of the brave and erudite race of Adamson, of further north.

Murray gladly obeyed, and now, accompanied by Edwin, with the standards of Cressingham and De Warenne trailing in the dust, he arrived before the castle, and summoned the lieutenant to the walls. But that officer, well aware of what was going to happen, feared to appear. From the battlements of the keep he had seen the dreadful conflict on the banks of the Forth--he had seen the thousands of De Warenne pass before the conqueror. To punish his treachery, in not only having suffered Cressingham to steal out under the armistice, but upholding also the breaking of his word to surrender at sunset, the terrified officer believed that Wallace was now come to put the whole garrison to the sword.

At the first sight of Murray's approaching squadron, the lieutenant hurried to Lord Mar, to offer him immediate liberty if he would go forth to Wallace and treat with him to spare the lives of the garrison. Closed up in a solitary dungeon, the earl knew naught of what was occurring without; and when the Southron entered, he expected it was to lead him again to the death which had been twice averted. But the pale and trembling lieutenant had no sooner spoken the first word than Mar discerned it was a suppliant, not an executioner, he saw before him, and he was even promising that clemency from Wallace, which he knew dwelt in his heart, when Murray's trumpet sounded.

The lieutenant started, horror-struck. "It is now too late! We have not made the first overture, and there sounds the death-bell of this garrison! I saved your life, earl!" cried he, imploringly, to Lord Mar; "when the enraged Cressingham commanded me to pull the cord which would have launched you into eternity. I disobeyed him! For my sake, then, preserve this garrison, and accompany me to the ramparts."

The chains were immediately knocked off the limbs of Lord Mar, and the lieutenant presenting him with a sword, they appeared together on the battlements. As the declining moon shone on their backs, Murray did not discern that it was his uncle who mounted the walls; but calling to him in a voice which declared there was no appeal, pointed to the humbled colors of Edward, and demanded the instant surrender of the citadel.

"Let it be, then with the pledge of Sir William Wallace's mercy?" cried the venerable earl.

"With every pledge, Lord Mar," returned Murray, now joyfully recognizing his uncle, "which you think safe to give."

"Then the keys of the citadel are yours," cried the lieutenant; "I only ask the lives of my garrison."

This was granted, and immediately preparations were made for the admission of the Scots. As the enraptured Edwin heard the heavy chains of the portcullis drawn up, and the massy bolts of the huge doors grating in their guards, he thought of his mother's liberty, of his father's joy, in pressing her again in his arms; and hastening to the tower where Lord Ruthven held watch over the now sleeping De Valance, he told him all that had happened. "Go, my father," added he; "enter with Murray, and be the first to open the prison doors of my mother."

Lord Ruthven embraced his son. "My dear Edwin! this sacrifice to my feelings is worthy of you. But I have a duty to perform, superior even to the tenderest private ones. I am planted hereby my commander; and shall I quit my station, for any gratification, till he gives me leave? No, my son! Be you my representative to your mother; and while my example teaches you, above all earthly considerations, to obey your honor, those tender embraces will show her what I sacrifice to duty."

Edwin no longer urged his father, and leaving his apartment, flew to the gate of the inner ballium. It was open; and Murray already stood on the platform before the keep, receiving the keys to the garrison.

"Blessed sight!" cried the earl, to his nephew. "When I put the banner of Mar into your unpracticed hand, little could I expect that, in the course of four months, I should see my brave Andrew receive the keys of proud Stirling from its commander!"

Murray smiled, while his plumed head bowed gratefully to his uncle, and turning to the lieutenant, "Now," said he, "lead me to the Ladies Mar and Ruthven that I may assure them they are free."

The gates of the keep were now unclosed, and the lieutenant conducted his victors along a gloomy passage, to a low door, studded with knobs of iron. As he drew the bolt, he whispered to Lord Mar, "These severities are the hard policy of Governor Cressingham."

He pushed the door slowly open, and discovered a small, miserable cell--its walls, of rugged stone, having no other covering than the incrustations which time, and many a dripping winter, had strewn over their vaulted service. On the ground, on a pallet of straw, lay a female figure in a profound sleep. But the light which the lieutenant held, streaming full upon the uncurtained slumberer, she started, and, with a shriek of terror at the sight of so many armed men, discovered the pallid features of the Countess of Mar. With an anguish which hardly the freedom he was going to bestow could ameliorate, the earl rushed forward, and, throwing himself beside her, caught her in his arms.

"Are we, then, to die?" cried she, in a voice of horror. "Has Wallace abandoned us? Are we to perish? Heartless-heartless man!"

Overcome by his emotions, the earl could only strain her to his breast in speechless agitation. Edwin saw a picture of his mother's sufferings, in the present distraction of the countess; and he felt his powers of utterance locked up; but Lord Andrew, whose ever-light heart was gay the moment he was no longer unhappy, jocosely answered, "My fair aunt, there are many hearts to die by your eyes before that day! and, meanwhile, I come from Sir William Wallace--to set you free!"

The name of Wallace, and the intimation that he had sent to set her free, drove every former thought of death and misery from her mind; again the ambrosial gales of love seemed to breathe around her--she saw not her prison walls; she felt herself again in his presence; and in a blissful trance, rather endured than participated in the warm congratulations of her husband on their mutual safety.

Edwin and Murray turned to follow the lieutenant, who, preceding them, stopped at the end of the gallery. "Here," said he, "is Lady Ruthven's habitation; and--alas! not better than the countess'." While he spoke, he threw open the door, and discovered its sad inmate also asleep. But when the glad voice of her son pierced her ear--when his fond embraces clung to her bosom, her surprise and emotions were almost insupportable. Hardly crediting her senses, that he whom she had believed was safe in the cloisters of St. Colomba, could be within the dangerous walls of Stirling; that it was his mailed breast that pressed against her bosom; that it was his voice she heard exclaiming, "Mother, we come to give you freedom!" all appeared to her like a dream of madness.

She listened, she felt him, she found her cheek wet with his rapturous tears. "Am I in my right mind?" cried she, looking at him with a fearful, yet overjoyed countenance; "am I not mad? Oh! tell me," cried she, turning to Murray, and the lieutenant, "is this my son that I see, or has terror turned my brain?"

"It is indeed your son, your Edwin, my very self," returned he, alarmed at the expression of her voice and countenance. Murray gently advanced, and kneeling down by her, respectfully took her hand. "He speaks truth, my dear madam. It is your son Edwin. He left his convent, to be a volunteer with Sir William Wallace. He has covered himself with honor on the walls of Dumbarton; and here also a sharer in his leader's victories, he is come to set you free."

At this explanation, which, being given in the sober language of reason, Lady Ruthven believed, she gave way to the full happiness of her soul, and falling on the neck of her son, embraced him with a flood of tears: "And thy father, Edwin, where is he? Did not the noble Wallace rescue him from Ayr?"

"He did, and he is here." Edwin then repeated to his mother the affectionate message of his father, and the particulars of his release. Perceiving how happily they were engaged, Murray, now with a flutter in his own bosom, rose from his knees, and requested the lieutenant to conduct him to Lady Helen Mar.

His guide led the way by a winding staircase into a stone gallery, where letting Lord Andrew into a spacious apartment, divided in the midst by a vast screen of carved cedar-wood, he pointed to a curtained entrance. "In that chamber," said he, "lodges the Lady Helen."

"Ah, my poor cousin," exclaimed Murray; "though she seems not to have tasted the hardships of her parents, she has shared their misery, I do not doubt." While he spoke, the lieutenant bowed in silence, and Murray entered alone. The chamber was magnificent, and illumined by a lamp which hung from the ceiling. He cautiously approached the bed, fearing too hastily to disturb her, and gently pulling aside the curtains, beheld vacancy. An exclamation of alarm had almost escaped him, when observing a half-open door at the other side of the apartment, he drew toward it, and there beheld his cousin, with her back to him, kneeling before a crucifix. She spoke not, but the fervor of her action manifested how earnestly she prayed. He moved behind her, but she heard him not; her whole soul was absorbed in the success of her petition; and at last raising her clasped hands in a paroxysm of emotion, she exclaimed,-"If that trumpet sounded the victory of the Scots, then, Power of Goodness! receive thy servant's thanks. But if De Warenne have conquered, where De Valence has failed; if all whom I love be lost to me here, take me then to thyself, and let my freed spirit fly to their embraces in heaven!"

"Ay, and on earth too, thou blessed angel!" cried Murray, throwing himself toward her. She started from her knees, and with such a cry as the widow of Sarepta uttered when she embraced her son from the dead, Helen threw herself on the bosom of her cousin, and closed her eyes in a blissful swoon--for even while every outward sense seemed fled, the impression of joy played about her heart; and the animated throbbings of Murray's breast, while he pressed her in his arms, at last aroused her to recollection. Her glistening and uplifted eyes told all the happiness, all the gratitude of her soul.

"My father? All are safe?" demanded she.

"All, my best beloved!" answered Murray, forgetting in his powerful emotions of his heart, that what he felt, and what he uttered, were beyond even a cousin's limits: "My uncle, the countess, Lord and Lady Ruthven--all are safe."

"And Sir William Wallace?" cried she; "you do not mention him. I hope no ill-"

"He is conqueror here!" interrupted Murray. "He has subdued every obstacle between Berwick and Stirling; and he has sent me hither to set you and the rest of the dear prisoners free."

Helen's heart throbbed with a new tumult as he spoke. She longed to ask whether the unknown knight from whom she had parted in the hermit's cell, had ever joined Sir William Wallace. She yearned to know that he yet lived. At the thought of the probability of his having fallen in some of these desperate conflicts, her soul seemed to gasp for existence; and dropping her head on her cousin's shoulder, "Tell me, Andrew," said she, and there she paused, with an emotion for which she could not account to herself.

"Of what would my sweet cousin inquire?" asked Murray, partaking her agitation.

"Nothing particular," said she, covered with blushes; "but did you fight alone in these battles? Did no other knight but Sir William Wallace?"

"Many, dearest Helen," returned Murray, enraptured at a solicitude which he appropriated to himself. "Many knights joined our arms. All fought in a manner worthy of their leader, and thanks to Heaven, none have fallen."

"Thanks, indeed," cried Helen; and with a hope she dared hardly whisper to herself, of seeing the unknown knight in the gallant train of the conqueror, she falteringly said, "Now, Andrew, lead me to my father."

Murray would perhaps have required a second bidding, had not Lord Mar, impatient to see his daughter, appeared with the countess at the door of the apartment. Hastening toward them, she fell on the bosom of her father; and while she bathed his face and hands with her glad tears, he, too, wept, and mingled blessings with his caresses. No coldness here met his paternal heart: no distracting confusions tore her from his arms; no averted looks, by turns, alarmed and chilled the bosom of tenderness. All was innocence and duty in Helen's breast; and every ingenuous action showed its affection and its joy. The estranged heart of Lady Mar had closed against him; and though he suspected not its wanderings, he felt the unutterable difference between the warm transports of his daughter and the frigid gratulations forced from the lips of his wife.

Lady Mar gazed with a weird frown on the lovely form of Helen, as she wound her exquisitely turned arms round the earl in filial tenderness. Her bosom, heaving in the snowy whiteness of virgin purity; her face, radiant with the softest blooms of youth; all seemed to frame an object which malignant fiends had conjured up to blast her stepdame's hope. "Wallace will behold these charms!" cried her distracted spirit to herself, "and then, where am I?"

While her thoughts thus followed each other, she unconsciously darted looks on Helen, which, if an evil eye had any bewitching power, would have withered all her beauties. At one of these portentous moments, the glad eyes of Helen met her glance. She started with horror. It made her remember how she had been betrayed, and all that she had suffered from Soulis. But she could not forget that she had also been rescued; and with that blessed recollection, the image of her preserver rose before her. At this gentle idea, her alarmed countenance took a softer expression; and, tenderly sighing, she turned to her father's question of "How she came to be with Lady Ruthven, when he had been taught by Lord Andrew to believe her safe at St. Fillan's?"

"Yes," cried Murray, throwing herself on a seat beside her, "I found in your letter to Sir William Wallace, that you had been betrayed from your asylum by some traitor Scot; and but for the fullness of my joy at our present meeting, I should have inquired the name of the villian!"

Lady Mar felt a deadly sickness at her heart, on hearing that Sir William Wallace was already so far acquainted with her daughter as to have received a letter from her; and in amazed despair, she prepared to listen to what she expected would bring a death-stroke to her hopes. They had met--but how?--where? They wrote to each other. Then, far indeed had proceeded that communication of hearts, which was now the aim of her life--and she was undone! Helen glanced at the face of Lady mar, and observing its changes, regarded them as corroborations of her having been the betrayer. "If conscience disturbs you thus," thought Helen, "let it rend your heart, and perhaps remorse may follow!"

As the tide of success seemed so full for the patriot Scots, Helen no longer feared that her cousin would rashly seek a precarious vengeance on the traitor Soulis, when he might probably soon have an opportunity of making it certain at the head of an army. She therefore commenced her narrative from the time of Murray's leaving her at the priory, and continued it to the hour in which she had met her father, a prisoner in the streets of Stirling. As she proceeded, the indignation of the earl and of Murray against Soulis became vehement. The nephew was full of immediate personal revenge. But the father, with arguments similar to those which had suggested themselves to his daughter, calmed the lover's rage, for Murray now felt that fire as well as a kinsman's; and reseated himself with repressed, though burning resentment, to listen to the remainder of her relation.

The quaking conscience of Lady mar did indeed vary her cheeks with a thousand dyes, when, as Helen repeated part of her conversation with Macgregor's wife, Murray abruptly said, "Surely that woman could name the traitor who betrayed us into the hands of our enemies! Did she not hint it?"

Helen cast down her eyes, that even a glance might not overwhelm with insupportable shame the already trembling countess. Lady Mar saw that she was acquainted with her guilt, and expecting no more mercy than she knew she would show to Helen in the like circumstances, she hastily rose from her chair, internally vowing vengeance against her triumphant daughter and hatred of all mankind. But Helen thought she might have so erred, from a wife's alarm for the safety of the husband she professed to doat on; and this dutiful daughter determined never to accuse her.

While all the furies raged in the breast of the guilty woman, Helen simply answered, "Lord Soulis would be weak as he is vile, to trust a secret of that kind with a servant;" then hurried on to the relation of subsequent events. The countess breathed again; and almost deceiving herself with the idea that Helen was indeed ignorant of her treachery, listened with emotions of another kind, when she heard of the rescue of her daughter-in-law. She saw Wallace in that brave act! But as Helen, undesignedly to herself, passed over the parts in their conversation which had most interested her, and never named the graces of his person, Lady mar thought, that to have viewed Wallace with so little notice would have been impossible; and therefore was glad of such a double conviction, that he and her daughter had never met, which seemed verified when Helen said that the unknown chief had promised to join his arms with those of Wallace.

Murray had observed Helen while she spoke, with an impression at his heart that made it pause. Something in this interview had whispered to him what he had never dreamed before--that she was dearer to him than fifty thousand cousins. And while the blood flushed and retreated in the complexion of Helen, and her downcast eyes refused to show what was passing there, while she hastily ran over the circumstances of her acquaintance with the stranger knight, Murray's own emotions declared the secret of hers; and with a lip as pale as her own, he said, "But where is this brave man? He cannot have yet joined us, for surely he would have told Wallace or myself that he came from you?"

"I warned him not to do so," replied she, "for fear that your indignation against my enemies, my dear cousin, might have precipitated you into dangers to be incurred for our country only."

"Then, if he had joined us," replied Murray, rising from his seat, "you will probably soon known who he is. To-morrow morning Sir William Wallace will enter the citadel, attended by his principal knights; and in that gallant company you must doubtless discover the man who had laid such obligations on us all by your preservation."

Murray's feelings told him that glad should he be, if the utterance of that obligation would repay it!

Helen herself knew not how to account for the agitation which shook her whenever she adverted to her unknown preserver. At the time of the hermit's friend (the good lay brother), having brought her to Alloa, when she explained to Lady Ruthven the cause of her strange arrival, she had then told her story with composure, till she mentioned her deliverer; but in that moment, for the first time she felt a confusion which disordered the animation with which she described his patriotism and his bravery. But it was natural, she thought, that gratitude for a recent benefit should make her heart beat high. It was something like the enthusiasm she had felt for Wallace on the rescue of her father, and she was satisfied. But a few days of quiet at Alloa had recovered her health from the shock it had received in the recent scenes, and she proposed to her aunt to send some trusty messenger to inform the imprisoned earl at Dumbarton of her happy refuge; and Lady Ruthven in return had urged the probability that the messenger would be intercepted, and so her asylum be discovered, saying, "Let it alone, till this knight of yours, by performing his word, calls you to declare his honorable deeds. Till then, Lord Mar, ignorant of your danger, needs no assurance of your safety."

This casual reference to the knight had then made the tranquilized heart of Helen renew its throbbings, and turning from her aunt with an acquiescing reply, she retired to her own apartment to quell the unusual and painful blushes she felt burning on her cheeks. Why she should feel thus she could not account, "unless," said she to herself, "I fear that my suspicion may be guessed at; and should my words or looks betray the royal Bruce to any harm, that moment of undesigned ingratitude would be the last of my life."

This explanation seemed ample to herself. And henceforth avoiding all mention of her preserver in her conversations with Lady Ruthven, she had confined the subject to her own breast; and thinking that she thought of him more by her intention to speak of him less, she wondered not that whenever she was alone his image immediately rose in her mind, his voice seemed to sound in her ears, and even as the summer air wafted its soft fragrance over her cheek, she would turn as if she felt that breath which had so gently brushed her to repose. She would then start and sigh, and repeat his words to herself, but all was serene in her bosom. For it seemed as if the contemplation of so much loveliness of soul in so noble a form, soothed instead of agitated her heart. "What a king will he be?" thought she; "with what transport would the virtuous Wallace set the Scottish crown on so noble a brow."

Such were her meditations and feelings, when she was brought a prisoner to Stirling. And when she heard of the victories of Wallace, she could not but think that the brave arm of her knight was there, and that he, with the renowned champion of Scotland, would fly, on the receipt of her letter, to Stirling, there to repeat the valiant deeds of Dumbarton. The first blast of the Scottish trumpet under the walls found her, as she had said, upon her knees, and kept her there, for hardly with any intermission, with fast and prayer did she kneel before the altar of Heaven--till the voice of Andrew Murray at midnight called her to freedom and to happiness.

Wallace, and perhaps her nameless hero with him, had again conquered! His idea dwelt in her heart and faltered on her tongue; and yet, in reciting the narrative of her late sufferings to her father, when she came to the mentioning of the stranger's conduct to her--with an apprehensive embarrassment she felt her growing emotions as she drew near the subject; and, hurrying over the event, she could only excuse herself for such new perturbations by supposing that the former treason of Lady Mar now excited her alarm, with fear she should fix it on a new object. Turning cold at an idea so pregnant with horror, she hastily passed from the agitating theme to speak of De Valence and the respect with which he had treated her during her imprisonment. His courtesy had professed to deny nothing to her wishes except her personal liberty and any conference with her parents or aunt. Her father's life, he declared it was altogether out of his power to grant. He might suspend the sentence, but he could not abrogate it.

"Yes," cried the earl, "though false and inflexible, I must not accuse him of having been so barbarous in his tyranny as Cressingham. For it was not until De Valence was taken prisoner that Joanna and I were divided. Till then we were lodged in decent apartments, but on that event Cressingham tore us from each other, and threw us into different dungeons. My sister Janet I never saw since the hour we were separated in the street of Stirling until the awful moment in which we met on the roof of this castle--the moment when I expected to behold her and my wife die before my eyes!"

Helen now learned, for the first time, the base cruelties which had been exercised on her father and his family since the capture of De Valence. She had been exempted from sharing them by the fears of Cressingham, who, knowing that the English earl had particular views with regard to her, durst not risk offending him by outraging one whom he had declared himself determined to protect.

During part of this conversation, Murray withdrew to bring Lady Ruthven and her son to share the general joy of full domestic reunion. The happy Edwin and his mother having embraced these dear relatives with yet more tender affections yearning in their bosoms, accompanied Murray to the door of the barbican, which contained Lord Ruthven. They entered on the wings of conjugal and filial love; but the for once pensive Lord Andrew, with a slow and musing step, returned into the castle to see that all was safely disposed for the remainder of the night.