LXX. Berwick…

LXX. Berwick

While Wallace, accompanied by his brave friends, was thus carrying all before him from the Grampian to the Cheviot Hills, Bruce was rapidly recovering. His eager wishes seemed to heal his wounds, and on the tenth day after the departure of Wallace, he left the couch which had been beguiled of its irksomeness by the smiling attentions of the tender Isabella. The ensuing Sabbath beheld him still more restored, and having imparted his intentions to the Lords Ruthven and Douglas, who were both with him, the next morning he joyfully buckled on his armor. Isabella, when she saw him thus clad, started, and the roses left her cheek. "I am armed to be your guide to Huntingtower," said he, with a look that showed her he read her thoughts. He then called for pen and ink, to write to Wallace. The reassured Isabella, rejoicing in the glad beams of his brightening eyes, held the standish. As he dipped his pen, he looked at her with a grateful tenderness that thrilled her soul, and made her bend her blushing face to hide emotions which whispered bliss in every beat of her happy heart. Thus, with a spirit wrapped in felicity, for victory hailed him from without, and love seemed to woo him to the dearest transports within, he wrote the following letter to Wallace:

"I am now well, my best friend! This day I attend my lovely nurse, with her venerable guardian, to Huntingtower. Eastward of Perth, almost every castle of consequence is yet filled by the Southrons, whom the folly of James Cummin allowed to reoccupy the places whence you had so lately driven them. I go to root them out; to emulate in the north, what you are now doing in the south! You shall see me again when the banks of the Spey are as free as you have made the Forth. In all this I am yet Thomas de Longueville. Isabella, the sweet soother of my hours, knows me as no other; for would she not despise the unfamed Bruce? To deserve and win her love as De Longueville, and to marry her as King of Scotland, is the fond hope of your friend and brother, Robert ---. God speed me, and I shall send you dispatches of my proceedings."

Wallace had just made a successful attack upon the outworks of Berwick, when this letter was put into his hand. He was surrounded by his chieftains; and having read it, he informed them that Sir Thomas de Longueville was going to the Spey to rid its castles of the enemy.

"The hopes of his enterprising spirit," continued Wallace, "are so seconded by his determination, I doubt not that what he promises, God and the justice of our cause will perform; and we may soon expect to hear Scotland has no enemies in her Highlands."

But in this hope Wallace was disappointed. Day after day passed, and no tidings from the north. He became anxious; Bothwell and Edwin too began to share his uneasiness. Continued successes against Berwick had assured them a speedy surrender, when unexpected succors being thrown in by sea, the confidence of the garrison became re-excited, and the ramparts appeared doubly manned. Wallace saw that the only alternative was to surprise and take possession of the ships, and turn the siege into a blockade. Still trusting that Bruce would be prosperous in the Highlands, he calculated on full leisure to await the fall of Berwick on this plan; and so much blood might be spared. Intent and execution were twin-born in the breast of Wallace. By a masterly stroke he effected his design on the shipping; and having closed the Southrons within their walls, he dispatched Lord Bothwell to Huntingtower, to learn the state of military operations there, and above all to bring back tidings of the prince's health.

On the evening of the very day in which Murray left Berwick, a desperate sully was made by the garrison; but they were beaten back with such effect, that Wallace gained possession of one of their most commanding towers. The contest did not end till night; and after passing a brief while in the council-tent listening to the suggestions of his friends relative to the use that might be made of the new acquisition, he retired to his own quarters at a late hour. At these momentous periods he never seemed to need sleep; and sitting at his table setting the dispositions for the succeeding day, he marked not the time till the flame of his exhausted lamp expired in the socket. He replenished it and had again resumed his military labors, when the curtain which covered the door of his tent was drawn aside, and an armed man entered. Wallace looked up, and seeing that it was the Knight of the Green Plume, asked if anything had occurred from the town.

"Nothing," replied the knight, in an agitated voice, and seating himself beside Wallace.

"Any evil tidings from Perthshire?" demanded Wallace, who now hardly doubted that ill news had arrived of Bruce.

"None," was the knight's reply; "but I am come to fulfill my promise to you, to unite myself forever heart and soul to your destiny, or you behold me this night for the last time."

Surprised at this address, and the emotion which shook the frame of the unknown warrior, Wallace answered him with expressions of esteem, and added:

"If it depend on me to unite so brave a man to my friendship forever, only speak the word, declare your name, and I am ready to seal the compact."

"My name," declared the knight, "will indeed put these protestations to the proof. I have fought by your side, Sir William Wallace; I would have died at any moment to have spared that breast a wound, and yet I dread to raise my visor to show you who I am. A look will make me live or blast me."

"Your language confounds me, noble knight," replied Wallace. "I know of no man living, save the base violators of Lady Helen Mar's liberty, who need tremble before my eyes. It is not possible that either of these men is before me; and whoever you are, whatever you may have been, brave chief, your deeds have proved you worthy of a soldier's friendship, and I pledge you mine."

The knight was silent. He took Wallace's hand--he grasped it; the arms that held it did indeed tremble. Wallace again spoke.

"What is the meaning of this? I have a power to benefit, but none to injure."

"To benefit and to injure!" cried the knight, in a transport of emotion; "you have my life in your hands. Oh! grant it, as you value your own happiness and honor! Look on me and say whether I am to live or die."

As the warrior spoke, he cast himself impetuously on his knees, and threw open his visor. Wallace saw a fine but flushed face. It was much overshadowed by the helmet.

"My friend," said he, attempting to raise him by the hand which clasped his, "your words are mysteries to me; and so little right can I have to the power you ascribe to me, that although it seems to me as if I had seen your features before, yet--"

"You forget me!" cried the knight, starting on his feet, and throwing off his helmet to the ground; "again look on this face and stab me at once by a second declaration that I am remembered no more!"

The countenance of Wallace now showed that he too well remembered it. He was pale and aghast.

"Lady Mar," cried he, "not expecting to see you under a warrior's casque--you will pardon me, that when so appareled I should not immediately recognize the widow of my friend."

She gasped for articulation.

"And it is thus," cried she, "you answer the sacrifices I have made for you? For you I have committed an outrage on my nature; I have put on me this abhorrent steel; I have braved the dangers of many a hard-fought day, and all to guard your life! to convince you of a love unexampled in woman! and thus you recognize her who has risked honor and life for you--with coldness and reproach!"

"With neither, Lady Mar," returned he, "I am grateful for the generous motives of your conduct; but for the sake of the fair fame you confess you have endangered, in respect to the memory of him whose name you bear, I cannot but wish that so hazardous an instance of interest in me had been left undone."

"If that is all," returned she, drawing toward him, "it is in your power to ward from me every stigma! Who will dare to cast one reflection on my fair fame when you bear testimony to my purity? Who will asperse the name of Mar when you displace it with that of Wallace? Make me yours, dearest of men," cried she, clasping his hands, "and you will receive one to your heart who never knew how to love before, who will be to you what your heart who never knew how to love before, who will be to you what woman never yet was, and who will endow you with territories nearly equal to those of the King of Scotland. My father is no more; and now, as Countess of Strathearn and Princess of the Orkneys, I have it in my power to earn and Princess of the Orkneys, I have it in my power to bring a sovereignty to your head, and the fondest of wives to your bosom." As she vehemently spoke, and clung to Wallace, as if she had already a right to seek comfort within his arms, her tears and violent agitations so disconcerted him that for a few moments he could not find a reply. This short endurance of her passion aroused her almost drooping hopes, and intoxicated with so rapturous an illusion, she threw off the little restraint in which the awe of Wallace's coldness had confined her, and flinging herself on his breast, poured forth all her love and fond ambitions for him. In vain he attempted to interrupt her, to raise her with gentleness from her indecorous situation; she had no perception but the idea which had now taken possession of her heart, and whispering to him softly, said: "Be but my husband, Wallace, and all rights shall perish before my love and your aggrandizement. In these arms, you shall bless the day you first saw Joanna of Strathearn!"

The prowess of the Knight of the Green Plume, the respect he owed to the widow of the Earl of Mar, the tenderness he ever felt for all of womankind, were all forgotten in the disgusting blandishments of this disgrace to her sex. She wooed to be his wife, but not with the chaste appeal of the widow of Mahlon. "Let me find favor in thy sight, for thou hast comforted me! Spread thy garment over me, and let me be thy wife!" said the fair Moabitess who in a strange land cast herself at the feet of her deceased husband's friend. She was answered, "I will do all that thou requirest, for thou art a virtuous woman!" But neither the actions nor the words of Lady Mar bore witness that she deserved this appellation. The were the dictates of a passion impure as it was intemperate. Blinded by its fumes, she forgot the nature of the heart she sought to pervert to sympathy with hers. She saw not that every look and movement on her part filled Wallace with aversion, and not until he forcibly broke from her did she doubt the success of her fond caresses.

"Lady mar," said he, "I must repeat that I am not ungrateful for the proofs of regard you have bestowed on me; but such excess of attachment is lavished upon a man that is a bankrupt in love. I am cold as monumental marble to every touch of that passion to which I was once but too entirely devoted. Bereaved of the object, I am punished; thus is my heart doomed to solitude on earth for having made an idol of the angel that was sent to cheer my path to Heaven." Wallace said even more than this. He remonstrated with her on the shipwreck she was making of her own happiness, in adhering thus tenaciously to a man who could only regard her with the general sentiment of esteem. He urged her beauty and yet youthful years, and how many would be eager to win her love, and to marry her with honor. While he continued to speak to her with the tender consideration of a brother, she, who knew no gradations in the affections of the heart, doubted his words, and believed that a latent fire glowed in his breast which her art might yet blow into a flame. She threw herself upon her knees, she wept, she implored his pity, she wound her arms around his, and bathed his hands with her tears, but still he continued to urge her, by every argument of female delicacy, to relinquish her ill-directed love, to return to her domains before her absence could be generally known. She looked up to read his countenance. A friend's anxiety, nay, authority, was there, but no glow of passion; all was calm and determined. Her beauty, then, had been shown to a man without eyes, her tender eloquence poured on an ear that was deaf, her blandishments lavished on a block of marble! In a paroxysm of despair she dashed the hand she held far from her, and standing proudly on her feet--"Hear me, thou man of stone!" cried she, "and answer me on your life and honor, for both depend on your reply; is Joanna of Strathearn to be your wife?"

"Cease to urge me, unhappy lady," returned Wallace; "you already know the decision of this ever-widowed heart."

Lady Mar looked steadfastly at him.

"Then receive my last determination!" and drawing near him with a desperate and portentous countenance, as if she meant to whisper in his ear, she suddenly plucked St. Louis' dagger from his girdle and struck it into his breast. He caught the hand which grasped the hilt. Her eyes glared with the fury of a maniac, and, with a horrid laugh, she exclaimed: "I have slain thee, insolent triumpher in my love and agonies! Thou shalt not now deride me in the arms of thy minion; for, I know that it is not for the dead Marion you have trampled on my heart but for the living Helen!"

As she spoke, he moved her hold from the dagger, and drew the weapon from the wound. A torrent of blood flowed over his vest, and stained the hand that grasped hers. She turned of a deadly paleness, but a demoniac joy still gleamed in her eyes.

"Lady Mar," cried he, while he thrust the thickness of his scarf into the wound, "I pardon this outrage. Go in peace, I shall never breathe to man nor woman the occurrences of this night. Only remember, that with regard to Lady Helen, my wishes are as pure as her own innocence."

"So they may be now, vainly boasting, immaculate Wallace!" answered she, with bitter derision; "men are saints when their passions are satisfied. Think not to impose on her who knows how this vestal Helen followed you in page's attire, and without one stigma being cast upon her maiden delicacy. I am not to learn the days and nights she passed alone with you in the woods of Normandy? Did you not follow her to France? Did you not tear her from the arms of Lord Aymer de Valence? and now, relinquishing her yourself, you leave a dishonored bride to cheat the vows of some honester man! Wallace, I know you, and as I have been fool enough to love you beyond all woman's love, I swear by the powers of heaven and hell to make you feel the weight of woman's hatred!"

Her denunciation had no effect on Wallace; but her slander against her unoffending daughter-in-law agitated him with an indignation that almost dispossessed him of himself. In hurried and vehement words, he denied all that she had alleged against Helen, and appealed to the whole court of France to witness her spotless innocence. Lady Mar exulted in this emotion, though every sentence, by the interest it displayed in its object, seemed to establish the truth of a suspicion which she at first only uttered from the vague workings of her revenge. Triumphing in the belief that he had found another as frail as herself, and yet maddened that another should have been preferred before her, her jealous pride blazed into redoubled flame.

"Swear," cried she, "till I see the blood of that false heart forced to my feet, and still I shall believe the base daughter of Mar a wanton. I go, not to proclaim her dishonor to the world, but to deprive her of her lover; to yield the rebel Wallace into the hands of justice! When on the scaffold, proud exulter in those by me now detested beauties, remember that it was Joanna Strathearn who laid thy matchless head upon the block; who consigned those limbs, of Heaven's own statuary, to decorate the spires of Scotland! Remember that my curse pursues you, here and hereafter!"

A livid fire seemed to dart from her scornful eyes, her countenance was torn as by some internal fiend, and, with the last malediction thundering from her tongue, she darted from his sight.

LXXI. The Camp

Next morning Wallace was recalled from the confusion into which his nocturnal visitor had thrown his mind by the entrance of Ker, who came, as usual, with the reports of the night. In the course of the communication he mentioned, that about three hours before sunrise, the Knight of the Green Plume had left the camp with his dispatches for Sterling. Wallace was scarcely surprised at this ready falsehood of Lady Mar's, and, not intending to betray her, he merely said, "Long ere be appears again I hope we shall have good tidings from our friend in the north."

But day succeeded day, and notwithstanding Bothweil's embassy, no accounts arrived. The countess had left an emissary in the Scottish camp, who did as she had done before--intercepted all messengers from Perthshire.

Indeed, from the first of her flight to Wallace to the hour of her qoitting him, she had never halted in her purpose from any regard to honor. Previous to her stealing from Huntingtower, she had bribed the senesehal to say that on the morning of her disappearance, he had met a knight, near Saint Concal's Well, coming to the castle; who told him that the Countess of Mar was gone on a secret mission to Norway, and she therefore had commanded him, by that knight, to enjoin her sister-in-law, for the sake of the cause most dear to them all, not to acquaint Lord Ruthven, or any of their friends, with her departure, till she should return with happy news for Scotland. The man added, that after declaring this, the knight rode hastily away. But this precaution, which did indeed impose on the innocent credulty of her husband's sister and his daughter, failed to satisfy the countess herself.

Fearful that Helen might communicate her flight to Wallace, and so excite his suspicion of her not being far from him, from the moment of her joining him at Linlithgow she intercepted every letter from Huntingtower: and when Bruce went to that castle, she continued the practice with double vigilance, being jealous of what might be said of Helen by this Sir Thomas de Longueville, in whom the master of her fate seemed so unreservedly to confide. To this end, even after she left the camp, all packets from Perthshire were conveyed to her by the spy she had stationed near Wallace; while all which were sent from him to Huntingtower were stopped by the treacherous seneschal, and thrown into the flames. No letters, however, ever came from Helen; a few bore Lord Ruthven's superscription, and all the rest were addressed by Sir Thomas de Longueville to Wallace. She broke the seals of this correspondence, but she looked in vain on their contents. Bruce and his friend, as well as Ruthven, wrote in a cipher, and only one passage, which the former had by chance written in the common character, could she ever make out. It ran thus:

"I have just returned to Huntingtower, after the capture of Kinfouns. Lady Helen sits by me on one side, Isabella on the other. Isabella smiles on me, like the spirit of happiness. Helen's look is not less gracious, for I tell her I am writing to Sir William Wallace. She smiles, hut it is with such a smile as that with which a saint would relinquish to Heaven the dearest object of its love. 'Helen,' said I, 'what shall I say from you to our friend?' 'That I pray for him.' 'That you think of him?' 'That I pray for him,' repeated she, more emphatically; 'that is the way I always think of my preserver.' Her manner checked me, my dear Wallace, but I would give worlds that you could bring your heart to make this sweet vestal smile as I do her sister!"

Lady Mar crushed the registered wish in her hand; and though she was never able to decipher a word or more of Bruce's numerous letters (many of which, could she have read them, contained complaints of that silence she had so cruelly occasioned), she took and destroyed them all.

She had ever shunned the penetrating eyes of young Lord Bothwell, and to have him on the spot when she should discover herself to Wallace, she thought would only invite discomfiture. Affecting to share the general anxiety respecting the failure of communications from the north, she it was who suggested the propriety of sending some one of peculiar trust to make inquiries. By covert insinuations, she easily induced Ker to propose Bothwell to Wallace, and, on the very night that her machinations had prevailed, to dispatch him on this embassy; impatient, yet doubting and agitated, she went to declare herself to the man for whom she had thus sunk herself in shame and falsehood.

Though Wallace heard the denunciation with which she left his presence, yet he did not conceive it was more than the evanescent rage of disappointed passion; and, anticipating persecutions rather from her love than her revenge, he was relieved, and not alarmed, by the intelligence that the Knight of the Green Plume had really taken his departure. More delicate of Lady Mar's honor than she was of her own, when he met Edwin at the works, he silently acquiesced in his belief also, that their late companion was gone with dispatches to the regent, who was now removed to Stirling.

After frequent sallies from the garrison, in which the Southrons were always beaten back with great loss, the lines of circumvallation were at last finished, and Wallace hourly anticipated the surrender of the enemy. Reduced for want of provisions, and seeing all succors cut off by the seizure of the fleet, the inhabitants, detesting their new rulers, collected in bands; and lying in wait for the soldiers of the garrison, murdered them secretly, and in great numbers. But here the evil did not end; for by the punishments which the governor thought proper to inflict by lots on the guilty, or the guiltless (he not being able to discover who were actually the assassins), the distress of the town was augmented to a horrible degree. Such a state of things could not be long maintained. Aware that should he continue in the fortress, his troops must assuredly perish, either by insurrection within, or from the enemy without, the Southron commander determined no longer to wait the appearance of a relief which might never arrive; and to stop the internal confusion, he sent a flag of truce to Wallace, accepting and signing his offered terms of capitulation. By this deed, he engaged to open the gates at sunset, but begged the interval between noon and that hour, to allow him time to settle the animosity between his men and the people before he should surrender his brave followers entirely into the hands of the Scots.

Having dispatched his assent to this request of the governor's, Wallace retired to his own tent. That he had effected his purpose without the carnage which must have ensued had he again stormed the place, gratified his humanity; and congratulating himself on such a termination of the siege, he turned with more than usual cheerfulness toward a herald, who brought him a packet from the north. The man withdrew, and Wallace broke the seal; but what was his astonishment to find it a citation for himself to repair immediately to Stirling, "to answer," it said, "certain charges brought against him, by an authority too illustrious to be set aside without examination!" He had hardly read this extraordinary mandate when Sir Simon Fraser, his second in command, entered, and, with consternation in his looks, put an open letter into his hand. It ran as follows:

"Sir Simon Fraser,--Allegations of treason against the liberties of Scotland having been preferred against Sir William Wallace, until he clears himself of these charges to the thanes of Scotland here assembled, you, Sir Simon Fraser, are directed to assume, in his stead, the command of the forces which form the blockade of Berwick, and, as the first act of your duty, you are ordered to send the accused toward Stirling under a strong guard, within an hour after you receive this dispatch.

"(Signed)

John Cummin,

"Earl of Badenoch, Lord Regent of Scotland.

"Stirling Castle."

Wallace returned the letter to Fraser with an undisturbed countenance. "I have received a similar order from the regent," said he; "and though I cannot guess the source whence these accusations spring, I fear not to meet them, and shall require no guard to speed me forward to the scene of my defense. I am ready to go, my friend, and happy to resign the brave garrison, that has just surrendered, to your honor and lenity." Fraser answered that he should be emulous to follow his example in all things, and to abide by his agreements with the Southron governor. He then retired to prepare the army for the departure of their commander, and, much against his feelings, to call out the escort that was to attend the calumniated chief Stirling.

When the marshal of the army read to the officers and men the orders of the regent, a speechless consternation seized on one part of the troops, and as violent an indignation agitated the other to tumult. The veterans, who had followed the chief of Ellerslie from the first hour of his appearing as a patriot in arms, could not brook this aspersion upon their leader's honor; and had it not been for the vehement exhortations of the no less incensed, though more moderate, Scrymgeour and Lockhart, they would have risen in instant revolt. Though persuaded to sheathe their half-drawn swords, they could not be withheld from immediately quitting the field, and marching directly to Wallace's tent. He was conversing with Edwin when they arrived; and, in some measure, he had broken the shock to him of so dishonoring a charge on his friend, by his being the first to communicate it. While Edwin strove to guess who could be the inventor of so dire a falsehood against the truest of Scots, he awakened an alarm in Wallace for Bruce, which could not be excited for himself, by suggesting that perhaps some intimation had been given to the most ambitious of the thanes, respecting the arrival of their rightful prince. "And yet," returned Wallace, "I cannot altogether suppose that; for even their desires of self-aggrandizement could not torture my share in Bruce's restoration to his country into anything like treason our friend's rights are too undisputed for that; and all I should dread, by a premature discovery of his being in Scotland, would be secret machinations against his life. There are men in this land who might attempt it; and it is our duty, my dear Edwin, to suffer death upon the rack, rather than betray our knowledge of him. "But," added he, with a smile, "we need not disturb ourselves with such thoughts--the regent is in our prince's confidence; and did this accusation relate to him, he would not, on such a plea, have arraigned me as a traitor."

Edwin again revolved in his mind the nature of the charge and who the villain could be who had made it; and, at last suddenly recollecting the Knight of the Green Plume, he asked if it were not possible that he, a stranger who had so sedulously kept himself from being known, might be the traitor?

"I must confess to you," continued Edwin, "that this knight, who ever appeared to dislike your closest friends, seems to me the most probable instigator of this mischief; and is, perhaps, the author of the strange failure of communication between you and Bruce! Accounts have not arrived, ever since Bothwell went; and that is more than natural. Though brave in his deeds, this unknown way prove only the more subtle spy and agent of our enemies."

Wallace changed color at these suggestions, but merely replied:

"A few hours will decide your suspicion, for I shall lose no time in confronting my accuser."

"I go with you," said Edwin; "never while I live, will I consent to lose sight of you again!"

It was at this moment that the tumultuous approach of the Lanark veterans was heard from without. The whole band rushed into the tent; and Stephen Ireland, who was foremost, raising his voice above the rest, exclaimed:

"They are the traitors, my lord, who accuse you! It is determined, by our corrupted thanes, that Scotland shall be sacrificed, and you are to be made the first victim. Think they, then, that we will obey such parricides? Lead us on, thou only worthy of the name of regent, and we will hurl these usurpers from their thrones."

This demand was reiterated by every man present--was echoed by hundreds who surrounded the tent. The Bothwell men and Ramsay's followers joined the men of Lanark, and the mutiny against the orders of the regent became general. Wallace walked out into the open field, and mounting his horse, rode forth amongst them. At sight of him the air resounded with acclamations, unceasingly proclaiming him their only leader, but, stretching out his arm to them, in token of silence, they became profoundly still.

"My friends and brother soldiers," cried he, "as you value the honor of William Wallace, as you have hitherto done this moment yield him implicit obedience."

"Forever!" shouted the Bothwell men.

"We never will obey any other!" rejoined his faithful Lanark followers, and, with an increased uproar, they demanded to be led to Stirling.

His extended hand again stilled the storm, and he resumed:

"You shall go with me to Stirling, but as my friends only: never as the enemies of the Regent of Scotland. I am charged with treason; it is his duty to try me by the laws of my country; it is mine to submit to the inquisition. I fear it not, and I invite you to accompany me; not to brand me with infamy, by passing between my now darkened honor and the light of justice--not to avenge an iniquitous sentence denounced on a guiltless man--but to witness my acquittal; and in that my triumph over them, who, through my breast would strike at what is greater than I."

At this mild persuasive every upraised sword dropped before him, and Wallace, turning his horse into the path which led toward Stirling, his men, with a silent determination to share the fate of their master, fell into regular marching order, and followed him. Edwin rode by his side, equally wondering at the unaffected composure with which he sustained such a weight of insult, and at the men who could be so unjust as to lay it upon him.

At the west of the camp, the detachment appointed to guard Wallace in his arrest came up with him. It was with difficulty that Fraser could find an officer who would command it; and he who did at last consent, appeared before his prisoner with downcast eyes; seeming rather the culprit than the guard. Wallace, observing his confusion, said a few gracious words to him; and the officer, more overcome by this than he could have been with reproaches, burst into tears and retired into the rear of his men.

LXXII. Stirling Castle

Wallace entered on the Carse of Stirling, that scene of his many victories, and beheld its northern horizon white with tents. Officers appointed for the purpose had apprised the thanes of Wallace having left Berwick; and knowing by the same means all his movements, an armed cavalcade met him near the Carron, to hold his followers in awe, and to conduct him without opposition to Stirling. In case it should be insufficient to quail their spirit, or to intimidate him who had never yet been made to fear by mortal man, the regent had summoned all the vassals of the various seigniories of Cummin, and planted them in battle array before the walls of Stirling. But whether they were friends or foes was equally indifferent to Wallace; for, strong in integrity, he went serenely forward to his trial; and, though inwardly marveling at such a panoply of war, being called out to induce him to comply with so simple an act of obedience to the laws, he met the heralds of the regent with as much ease as if they had been coming to congratulate him on the capitulation of Berwick, the ratification of which he brought in his hand.

By his order his faithful followers (who took a pride in obeying with the most scrupulous exactness the injunctions of their now deposed commander) encamped under Sir Alexander Scrymgeour to the northwest of the castle, near Ballockgeich. It was then night. In the morning, at an early hour, Wallace was summoned before the council in the citadel.

On his re-entrance into that room which he had left, the dictator of the kingdom, when every knee bent and every head bowed to his supreme mandate, he found not one who even greeted his appearance with the commonest ceremony of courtesy. Badenoch, the regent, sat upon the throne, with evident symptoms of being yet an invalid. The Lords Athol and Buchan, and the numerous chiefs of the clans of Cummin, were seated on his right: on his left were arranged the Earls of Fife and Lorn, Lord Soulis, and every Scottish baron of power who at any time bad shown himself hostile to Wallace. Others, who were of easy faith to a tale of malice, sat with them; and the rest of the assembly was filled up with men of better families than personal fame, and whose names swelled a list without adding any true importance to the side on which they appeared. A few, and those a very few, who still respected Wallace, were present; not because they were sent for (great care having been taken not to summon his friends), but in consequence of a rumor of the charge having reached them: and these were, the Lords Lennox and Loch-awe, with Kirkpatrick, and two or three chieftains from the western Highlands. None of them had arrived till within a few minutes of the council being opened, and Wallace was entering at one door as they appeared at the other.

At sight of him a low whisper buzzed through the hail, and a marshal took the plumed bonnet from his hand, which, out of respect to the nobility of Scotland, he had raised from his head at his entrance. A herald meanwhile proclaimed, in a loud voice, "Sir William Wallace! you are charged with treason; and, by an ordinance of Fergus the First, you must stand covered before the representative of the majesty of Scotland until that loyalty be proved, which would again restore you to a seat amongst her faithful barons."

Wallace, with the same equanimity as that with which he would have mounted the regal chair, bowed his head to marshal in token of acquiescence. But Edwin, whose indignation was reawakened at this exclusion of his friend from the privilege of his birth, said something so warm to the marshal that Wallace, in a low voice, was obliged to check his vehemence by a declaration, that, however obsolete the custom, and revived in his case only, it was his determination to submit himself in every respect to whatever was exacted of him by the laws of his country.

On Loch-awe and Lennox observing him stand thus before the bonneted and seated chiefs (a stretch of magisterial prerogative which had not been exercised on a Scottish knight for many a century), they took off their caps and bowing to Wallace, refused to occupy their places on the benches while the defender of Scotland stood. Kirkpatrick drew eagerly toward him, and throwing down his casque and sword at his feet, cried in a loud voice, "Lie there till the only true man in all this land commands me to take ye up in his defense. He alone had courage to look the Southrons in the face, and to drive their king over the borders, while his present accusers skulked in their chains!" Wallace regarded this ebullition from the heart of the honest veteran with a look that was eloquent to all. He would have animatedly praised such an instance of fearless gratitude expressed to another, and when it was directed to himself, his ingenuous soul showed approbation in every feature of his beaming countenance.

"Is it thus, presumptuous Knight of Ellerslie," cried Soulis, "that by your looks you dare encourage contumely to the lord regent and his peers?"

Wallace did not deign him an answer, but turning calmly toward the throne, "Representative of my king!" said he, "in duty to the power whose authority you wear, I have obeyed your summons, and I here await the appearance of the accuser who has had the hardihood to brand the name of William Wallace with disloyalty to prince or people."

The regent was embarrassed. He did not suffer his eyes to meet those of Wallace, but looked down in manifest confusion during this address; and then, without reply, turned to Lord Athol, and called on him to open the charge. Athol required not a second summons; he rose immediately, and, in a bold and positive manner, accused Wallace of having been won over by Philip of France to sell those rights of supremacy to him which, with a feigned patriotism, his sword had wrested from the grasp of England. For this treachery, Philip was to endow him with the sovereignty of Scotland; and, as a pledge of the compact, he had invested him with the principality of Gascony in France. "This is the groundwork of his treason," continued Athol; "but the superstructure is to be cemented with our blood. I have seen a list, in his own handwriting, of those chiefs whose lives are to pave his way to the throne."

At this point of the charge Edwin sprung forward; but Wallace, perceiving the intent of his movement, caught him by the arm, and, by a look, reminded him of his recently repeated engagement to keep silent.

"Produce the list," cried Lord Lennox. "No evidence that does not bring proof to our eyes ought to have any weight with us against the man who had bled in every vein for Scotland."

"It shall be brought to your eyes," returned Athol; "that, and other damning proofs, shall convince this credulous country of its abused confidence."

"I see these damning proofs now!" cried Kirkpatrick, who had frowningly listened to Athol; "the abusers of my country's confidence betray themselves at this moment by their eagerness to impeach her friends; and I pray Heaven, that before they mislead others into so black a conspiracy, the lie in their throats may choke its inventors!"

"We all know," cried Athol, turning on Kirkpatrick, "to whom you belong. You were brought with this shameless grant to mangle the body of the slain Cressingham; a deed which brought a stigma on the Scottish name never to be erased by the disgrace of its perpetrators. For this savage triumph did you sell yourself to Sir William Wallace; and a bloody champion you are, always ready for your secretly murderous master!"

"Hear you this, and bear it?" cried Kirkpatrick and Edwin in one breath, and grasping their daggers, Edwin's flashed in his hand.

"Seize them!" cried Athol; "my life is threatened by his myrmidons."

Marshals instantly approached; but Wallace, who had hitherto stood in silent dignity, turned to them with that tone of justice which had ever commanded from his lips, and bade them forbear:

"Touch these knights at your peril, marshals!" said he; "no man in this chamber is above the laws, and they protect every Scot who resents unjust aspersions upon his own character, or irrelevant and prejudicing attacks on that of an arraigned friend. It is before the majesty of the laws that I now stand; but were injury to usurp its place, not all the lords in Scotland should detain me a moment in a scene so unworthy of my country."

The marshals retreated, for they had been accustomed to regard with implicit deference the opinion of Sir William Wallace on the laws; and though he now stood in the light of their violator, yet memory bore testimony that he had always read them aright, and, to this hour, had ever appeared to make them the guide of his actions.

Athol saw that none in the assembly had courage to enforce this act of violence, and blazing with fury, he poured his whole wrath upon Wallace. "Imperious, arrogant traitor!" cried he; "this presumption only deepens our impression of your guilt! Demean yourself with more reverence to this august court, or expect to be sentenced on the proof which such insolence amply gives; we require no other to proclaim your domineering spirit, and at once to condemn you as the premeditated tyrant of land."

"Lord Athol," replied Wallace, "what is just I would say in the face of all the courts in Christendom. It is not in the power of man to make me silent when I see the laws of country outraged and my countrymen oppressed. Though I may submit my own cheek to the blow, I will not permit theirs to share the stroke. I have answered you, earl, to this point and am ready to hear you to the end."

Athol resumed. "I am not your only accuser, proudly-confident man; you shall see one whose truth cannot be doubted, and whose first glance will bow that haughty spirit, and cover that bold front with the livery of shame! My lord," cried he, turning to the regent, "I shall bring a most illustrious witness before you; one who will prove on oath that it was the intention of this arch-hypocrite, this angler for women's hearts, this perverter of men's understandings, before another moon to bury deep in blood the very people whom he now insidiously affects to protect! But to open your and the nation's eyes at once, to overwhelm him with his fate, I now call forth the evidence."

The marshals opened a door in the side of the hall, and led a lady forward, habited in regal splendor, and covered from head to foot with a veil of so transparent a texture, that her costly apparel and majestic contour were distinctly seen through it. She was conducted to a chair on an elevated platform a few paces from where Wallace stood. On her being seated the regent rose, and in a tremulous voice addressed her:

"Joanna, Countess of Strathearn and Mar, Princess of the Orkneys, we adjure thee by thy princely dignity, and in the name of the King of kings, to bear a just witness to the truth or falsehood, of the charges of treason and conspiracy now brought against Sir William Wallace."

The name of his accuser made Wallace start; and the sight of her unblushing face, for she threw aside her veil the moment she was addressed, overspread his cheek with a tinge of that shame for her which she was now too hardened in determined crime to feel herself. Edwin gazed at her in speechless horror; while she, casting a glance at Wallace, in which the full purpose of her soul was declared, turned with a softened though majestic air, to the regent, and spoke:

"My lord," said she, "you see before you a woman, who never knew what it was to feel a self-reproachful pang till an evil hour brought her to receive an obligation from that insidious treacherous man. But as my first passion has ever been the love of my country, I will prove it to this good assembly by making a confession of what was once my heart's weakness; and by that candor, I trust they will fully honor the rest of my narrative."

A Clamor of approbation resounded through the hall. Lennox and Loch-awe looked on each other with amazement. Kirkpatrick, recollecting the scenes at Dumbarton, exclaimed--"Jezebel!"--but the ejaculation was lost in the general burst of applause; and the countess opening a folded paper which she held in her hand, in a calm, collected voice, but with a flushing cheek, resumed:

"I shall read my further deposition. I have written it, that my memory might not err, and that my country may be unquestionably satisfied of the accuracy of every syllable I utter."

She paused an instant, drew a quick breath, and proceeded reading from the paper, thus: (But as occasion occurred for particularly pointing its contents, she turned her tutored eye upon the object, to look a signet on her mischief.)

"I am not to tell you, my lord, that Sir William Wallace twice released the late Earl of Mar and myself from Southron captivity. Our deliverer was what you see him: fraught with attractions, which he too successfully directed against the peace of a young woman married to a man of paternal years. While to all the rest of the world, he seemed to consecrate himself to the memory of his ill-fated wife, to me alone he unveiled his straying heart. I revered my nuptial vow too sincerely to listen to him with the complacency he wished; but, I blush to own, that his tears, his agonies of love, his manly graces, and the virtues I believed he possessed (for well he knows to feign!), cooperating with my gratitude, at last wrought such a change in my breast that--I became wretched. No guilty wish was there; but an admiration of him, a pity which undermined my health, and left me miserable! I forbade him to approach me. I tried to wrest him from my memory; and nearly had succeeded, when I was informed by my late husband's nephew--(the youth who now stands beside Sir William Wallace)--that he was returned under an assumed name from France. Then I feared that all my inward struggles were to recommence. I had once conquered myself; for abhorring the estrangement of my thoughts from my wedded lord, when he died I only yearned to appease my conscience; and in penance for my involuntary crime, I refused Sir William Wallace my hand. His return to Scotland filled me with tumults, which only they who would sacrifice all they prize to a sense of duty, can know. Edwin Ruthven left me at Huntingtower; and, that very evening, while walking alone in the garden, I was surprised by the sudden approach of an armed man. He threw a scarf over my head, to prevent my screams, but I fainted with terror. He then took me from the garden by the way he had entered, and placing me on a horse before him, carried me whither I know not; but on my recovery I found myself in a chamber, with a woman standing beside me, and the same warrior. His visor was so closed that I could not see his face. On my expressing alarm at my situation, he addressed me in French, telling me he had provided a man to carry an excuse to Huntingtower, to prevent pursuit; and then he put a letter into my hand, which, he said, he brought from Sir William Wallace. Anxious to know the purpose of this act, and believing that a man who had sworn to me devoted love could not premeditate a more serious outrage, I broke the seal and, nearly as I can recollect, read to this effect:

"That his passion was so imperious, he had determined to make me his in spite of those sentiments of female delicacy which, while they tortured him, rendered me dearer in his eyes. He told me, that as he had often read in my blushes the sympathy which my too severe virtue made me conceal, he would now wrest me from my cheerless widowhood; and having nothing in reality to reproach myself with, compel me to be happy. His friend, the only confidant of his love, had brought me to a spot whence I could not fly; there I should remain, till he, Wallace, could leave the army for a few days, and throwing himself on my compassion and tenderness, he received as the most faithful of lovers, the fondest of husbands.

"This letter," continued the countess, "was followed by many others; and suffice it to say, that the latent affection in my heart, and his subduing love, were too powerful in his cause. How his letters were conveyed I know not; but they were duly presented to me by the woman who attended me. At last the knight who had brought me to the place, and who wore green armor, and a green plume, reappeared."

"Prodigious villain!" broke from the lips of Edwin.

The countess turned her eye on him for a moment and then resumed: "He was the warrior who had borne me from Huntingtower, and from that hour until the period I now speak of, I had never seen him. He put another packet into my hand, desiring me to peruse it with attention, and return Sir William Wallace a verbal answer by him. Yes! was all he required. I retired to open it; and what was my horror, when I read a perfect development of the treasons for which he is now brought to account! By some mistake of my character, he had conceived me to be ambitious; and knowing himself to be the master of my heart, he fancied himself lord of my conscience also. He wrote, that until he saw me, he had no other end in his exertions for Scotland than her rescue from a foreign yoke; 'but,' added he, 'from the moment in which I first beheld my adored Joanna, I aspired to place a crown on her brow!" Be then told me, that he did not deem the time of its presentation to him on the Carse of Stirling a safe juncture for its acceptance; neither was he tempted to run the risk of maintaining an unsteady throne when I was not free to partake it; but since the death of Lord Mar, every wish, every hope was re-awakened; and then he determined to become a king. Philip of France had made secret articles with him to that end. He was to hold Scotland of him. While to make the surrender of his country's independence sure to Philip, and its scepter to himself and his posterity, he attempted to persuade me there would be no crime in destroying the chiefs whose names he enrolled in this list. The pope, he added, would absolve me from a transgression dictated by connubial duty; and, on our bridal day, he proposed the deed should be done. He would invite all the lords to a feast; and poison, or dagger, should lay them at his feet.

"So impious a proposal restored me to myself. My love at once turned to the most decided abhorrence; and hastening to the Knight of the Green Plume, I told him to carry my resolution to his master, that I would never see him more till I should appear as his accuser before the tribunal of his country. The knight tried to dissuade me from my purpose, but in vain, and at last, becoming alarmed at the punishment which might overtake himself as the agent of such treason, he confessed to me that the scene of his first appearance at Linlithgow was devised by Wallace, who, unknown to all others, had brought him from France to assist him in the scheme he durst not confide to Scotland's friends. If I would guarantee his life, he offered to take me from the place where I was then confined, and convey me safe to Stirling. All else that he asked was, that I would allow him to be the bearer of the casket which contained Sir William Wallace's letters, and suffer my eyes to be blindfolded during the first part of our journey. This I consented to; but the murderous list I had undesignedly put into my bosom. My bead was again wrapped in a thick veil, and we set out. It was very dark; and we traveled long and swiftly till we came to a wood. There was neither moon nor stars to point out any habitation. But being overcome with fatigue, my conductor persuaded me to dismount and take rest. I slept beneath the trees. In the morning, when I awoke, I in vain looked round for the knight and called him; he was gone; and I saw him no more. I then explored my way to Stirling, to warn my country of its danger--to unmask to the world the direst hypocrite that ever prostituted the name of virtue."

The countess ceased; and a hundred voices broke out at once, pouring invectives on the traitorous ambition of Sir William Wallace, and invoking the regent to pass some signal condemnation on so monstrous a crime. In vain Kirkpatrick thundered forth his indignant soul; he was unheard in the tumult; but going up to the countess, he accused her to her face of falsehood, and charged her with a design from some really treasonable motive to destroy the only sure hope of her country.

"And will you not speak?" cried Edwin in agony of spirit grasping Wallace's arm; "will you not speak before these ungrateful men shall dare to brand your ever-honored name with infamy! Make yourself be heard, my noblest friend! Confute that wicked woman, who too surely has proved what I suspected--that this self-concealing knight came to be a traitor."

"I will speak, my Edwin," returned Wallace, "at the proper moment; but not in this tumult of my enemies. Rely on it, your friend will submit to no unjust decree."

"Where is this Knight of the Green Plume?" cried Lennox, almost startled in his opinion of Wallace by the consistency of the countess' narrative. "No mark of dishonor shall be passed on Sir William Wallace without the strictest scrutiny. Let the mysterious stranger be found, and confronted with Lady Strathearn."

Notwithstanding the earl's insisting on impartial justice, she perceived the doubt in his countenance, and eager to maintain her advantage, replied--"The knight, I fear, has fled beyond our search; but that I may not want a witness to corroborate the love I once bore this arch-hypocrite, and, consequently, the sacrifice I make to loyalty in thus unveiling him to the world, I call upon you, Lord Lennox, to say whether you did not observe at Dumbarton Castle the state of my too grateful heart?"

Lennox, who well remembered her conduct in the citadel of that fortress, hesitated to answer, aware that his reply might substantiate a guilt which he now feared would be but too strongly manifest. Every ear hung on his answer. Wallace saw what was passing in his mind; and determined to all men to show what was in their hearts toward the earl and said, "Do not hesitate, my lord; speak all that you know or think of me. Could the deeds of my life be written on yon blue vault," added he, pointing to the heavens, "and my breast be laid open for men to scan. I should be content; for then Scotland would know me as my Creator knows me; and the evidence which now makes even friendship doubt, would meet the reception due to calumny."

Lord Lennox felt the last remark, and stung with remorse for having for a moment credited anything against the frank spirit which gave him this permission, he replied, "To Lady Strathearn's questions I must answer, that at Dumbarton I did perceive her preference to Sir William Wallace; but I never saw anything in him to warrant the idea that it was reciprocal. And yet, were it even so, that bears nothing to the point of the countess' accusation; and, notwithstanding her princely rank, and the deference all would pay to the widow of Lord Mar, as true Scots, we cannot relinquish to a single witness our faith in a man who has so eminently served his country."

"No," cried Loch-awe; "if the Knight of the Green Plume be above ground, he shall be brought before this tribunal. He alone can be the traitor; and to destroy us by exciting suspicions against our best defender, he has wrought with his own false pen this device to deceive the patriotic widow of the Earl of Mar."

"No, no," interrupted she; "I read the whole in his own--to me too well known--handwriting; and this list of the chiefs, condemned by you, indeed, traitor! to die, shall fully evince his guilt. Even your name, too generous earl, is in the horrid catalogue." While she spoke, she rose eagerly, to hand to him the scroll.

"Let me now speak, or stab me to the heart!" hastily whispered Edwin to his friend. Wallace did not withhold him, for he guessed what would be the remark of his ardent soul. "Hear that woman!" cried the vehement youth to the regent, "and say whether she now speaks the language of one who had ever loved the virtues of Sir William Wallace? Were she innocent of malice toward the deliverer of Scotland, would she not have rejoiced in Loch-awe's suggestion, that the Green Knight is the traitor? Or, if that scroll she has now given into the regent's hand be too nicely forged for her to detect its not being indeed the handwriting of the noblest of men, would she not have shown some sorrow at the guilt of one she professes once to have loved?--of one who saved herself, her husband, and her child from perishing! But here her malice has overstepped her art; and after having promoted the success of her tale by so mingling insignificant truths with falsehoods of capital import--that in acknowledging the one we seem to grant the other--she falls into her own snare! Even a beardless boy can now discern that, however vile the Green Knight may be, she shares his wickedness!"

While Edwin spoke, Lady Stathearn's countenance underwent a thousand changes. Twice she attempted to rise and interrupt him, but Sir Roger Kirkpatrick having fixed his eyes on her with a menacing determination to prevent her, she found herself obliged to remain quiescent. Full of a newly-excited fear that Wallace had confided to her nephew the last scene in his tent, she started up as he seemed to pause, and with assumed mildness, again addressing the regent, said--that before this apparently ingenuous defense could mislead impartial minds, she thought it just to inform the council of the infatuated attachment of Edwin Ruthven to the accused; for she had ample cause to assert that the boy was so bewitched by his commander--who had flattered his youthful vanity by loading him with distinctions only due to approved valor in manhood--that he was ready at any time to sacrifice every consideration of truth, reason, and duty, to please Sir William Wallace.

"Such may be in a boy," observed Lord Loch-awe, interrupting her "but as I know no occasion in which it is possible for Sir William Wallace to falsify the truth, I call upon him, in justice to himself and to his country, to reply to three questions!" Wallace bowed to the venerable earl, and he proceeded: "Sir William Wallace, are you guilty of the charge brought against you, of a design to mount the throne of Scotland by means of the King of France?"

Wallace replied, "I never designed to mount the throne of Scotland, either by my own means or by any other man's."

Loch-awe proceeded: "Was this scroll, containing the names of certain Scottish chiefs noted down for assassination, written by you, or under your connivance?"

"I never saw the scroll, nor heard of the scroll, until this hour. And harder than death is the pang at my heart when a Scottish chief finds it necessary to ask me such a question regarding a people, to save even the least of whom he has often seen me risk my life!"

"Another question," replied Loch-awe, "and then, bravest of men, if your country acquits you not in thought and deed, Campbell of Loch-awe sits no more amongst its judges! What is your knowledge of the Knight of the Green Plume, that, in preference to any Scottish friend, you should intrust him with your wishes respecting the Countess of Strathearn?"

Wallace's answer was brief: "I never had any wishes respecting the wife or the widow of my friend the Earl of Mar that I did not impart to every chief in the camp, and those wishes went no further than for her safety. As to love, that is a passion I shall know no more; and Lady Strathearn alone can say what is the end she aims at, by attributing feelings to me with regard to her which I never conceived, and words which I never uttered. Like this passion, with which she says she inspired me," added he, turning his eyes steadfastly on her face, "was the Knight of the Green Plume! You are all acquainted with the manner of his introduction to me at Linlithgow. By the account that he then gave of himself, you all know as much of him as I did, till on the night that he left me at Berwick and then I found him, like this story of Lady Strathearn, all a fable."

"What is his proper title? Name him, on your knighthood!" exclaimed Buchan; "for he shall yet be dragged forth to support the veracity of my illustrious kinswoman, and to fully unmask his insidious accomplice!"

"Your kinswoman, Earl Buchan," replied Wallace, "can best answer your question."

Lord Athol approached the regent, and whispered something in his ear. This unworthy representative of the generous Bruce, immediate rose from his seat. "Sir William Wallace," said he, "you have replied to the questions of Lord Loch-awe, but where are your witnesses to prove that what you have spoken is the truth?"

Wallace was struck with surprise at this address from a man who, whatever might be demanded of him in the fulfillment of his office, he believed could not be otherwise than his friend because, from the confidence reposed in him both by Bruce and himself, he must be fully aware of the impossibility of these allegations being true. But Wallace's astonishment was only for a moment; he now saw with an eye that pierced through the souls of the whole assembly, and, with collected firmness, he replied; "My witnesses are in the bosom of every Scotsman."

"I cannot find them in mine," interrupted Athol.

"Nor in mine!" was echoed from various parts of the hall.

"Invalidate the facts brought against you by legal evidence, not a mere rhetorical appeal, Sir William Wallace," added the regent, "else the sentence of the law must be passed on so tacit an acknowledgment of guilt."

"Acknowledgment of guilt!" cried Wallace, with a flush of god-like indignation suffusing his noble brow. "If any one of the chiefs who have just spoken knew the beat of an honest heart, they would not have declared that they heard no voice proclaim the integrity of William Wallace. Let them look out on yon carse, where they saw me refuse that crown, offered by themselves, which my accuser alleges I would yet obtain by their blood. Let them remember the banks of the Clyde, where I rejected the Scottish throne offered me by Edward! Let these facts bear witness for me; and, if they be insufficient, look on Scotland, now, for the third time, rescued by my arm from the grasp of a usurper!--That scroll locks the door of the kingdom upon her enemies." As he spoke he threw the capitulation of Berwick on the table. It struck a pause into the minds of the lords; they gazed with pallid countenances, and without a word, on the parchment where it lay, while he proceeded: "If my actions that you see, do not convince you of my integrity, then believe the unsupported evidence of words, the tale of a woman, whose mystery, were it not for the memory of the honorable man whose name she once bore, I would publicly unravel--believe her! and leave Wallace naught of his country to remember, but that he has served it, and that it is unjust!"

"Noblest of Scots!" cried Loch-awe, coming toward him, "did your accuser come in the shape of an angel of light, still we believe your life in preference to her testimony, for God himself speaks on your side. 'My servants,' he declares, 'shall be known by their fruits!' And have not yours been peace to Scotland and good-will to men?"

"They are the serpent-folds of his hypocrisy!" cried Athol, alarmed at the awe-struck looks of the assembly.

"They are the baits by which he cheats fools!" re-echoed Soulis.

"They are snares, which shall catch us no more!" was now the general acclamation; and in proportion to the transitory respect which had made them bow, but for a moment, to virtue, they now vociferated their center both of Wallace and this his last achievement. Inflamed with rage at the manifest determination to misjudge his commander, and maddened at the contumely with which their envy affected to treat him, Kirkpatrick threw off all restraint, and with the bitterness of his reproaches still more incensed the jealousy of the nobles and augmented the tumult. Lennox, vainly attempting to make himself heard, drew toward Wallace, hoping, by that movement to at least show on whose side he thought justice lay. At this moment, while the uproar raged with redoubled clamor--the one party denouncing the Cummins as the source of this conspiracy against the life of Wallace; the other demanding that sentence should instantly be passed upon him as a traitor--the door burst open and Bothwell, covered with dust, and followed by a throng of armed knights, rushed into the center of the hall.

"Who is it ye arraign?" cried the young chief, looking indignantly around him. "Is it not your deliverer you would destroy? The Romans could not accuse the guilty Manlius in sight of the capitol he had preserved, but you, worse than heathens, bring your benefactor to the scene of his victories, and there condemn him for serving you too well! Has he not plucked you this third time out of the furnace that would have consumed you? And yet in this hour, you would sacrifice him to the disappointed passions of a woman! Falsest of thy sex!" cried he, turning to the countess, who shrunk before the penetrating eyes of Andrew Murray; "do I not know thee? Have I not read thine unfeminine, thy vindictive heart? You would destroy the man you could not seduce! Wallace!" cried he, "speak. Would not this woman have persuaded you to disgrace the name of Mar? When my uncle died, did she not urge you to intrigue for that crown which she knew you had so loyally declined?"

"My errand here," answered Wallace, "is to defend myself, not to accuse others. I have shown that I am innocent, and my judges will not look on the proofs. They obey not the laws in their judgment, and whatever may be the decree, I shall not acknowledge its authority."

As he spoke he turned away, and walked with a firm step out of the hall.

His disappearance gave the signal for a tumult more threatening to the welfare of the state, than if the armies of Edward had been in the midst of them. It was brother against brother, friend against friend. The Lords Lennox, Bothwell, and Loch-awe, were vehement against the unfairness with which Sir William Wallace bad been treated; Kirkpatrick declared that no arguments could be used with men so devoid of reason, and words of reproach and reviling passing on all sides, swords were fiercely drawn. The Countess of Strathearn seeing herself neglected by even her friends in the strife, and fearful that the party of Wallace might at last gain the ascendancy, and that herself, then without her traitor corslet on her breast, might meet their hasty vengeance, rose abruptly, and giving her hand to a herald, hurried out of the assembly.

LXXIII. Ballochgeich

The marshals with difficulty interrupted the mortal attack which the enemies and friends of Wallace made on each other; several of the Cummins were maimed, Lord Athol himself was severely wounded by Kirkpatrick, but the teacherous regent gladly saw that none on his side were hurt unto death. With horrid menaces the two parties separated, the one to the regent's apartments, the other to the camp of Wallace.

Lord Bothwell found him encircled by his veterans, in whose breasts he was trying to allay the storm raging there against the injustice of the regent and the ingratitude of the Scottish lords. At sight of the young and ardent Bothwell, their clamor to be led instantly to revenge the indignity offered to their general redoubled, and Murray, not less incensed, turning to them exclaimed:

"Yes, my friends, keep quiet for a few hours, and then, what honor commands we will do!" At this assurance they retired to their quarters, and Bothwell turned with Wallace into his tent.

"Before you utter a word concerning the present scenes," cried Wallace, "tell me how is the hope of Scotland? the only earthly stiller of these horrid tumults!"

"Alas!" replied Bothwell. "After regaining, by a valor worthy of his destiny, every fortress north of the Forth, his last and greatest achievement was making himself master of Scone; but in storming its walls a fragment of stone falling heavily, terribly rent the muscles of his breast, and now--woe to Scotland!--he lies at Huntingtower reduced to infant weakness. All this you would have known had you received his letters; but villainy must have been widely at work, for none of yours have reached his hands."

This intelligence respecting Bruce was a more mortal blow to Wallace than all he had just sustained in his own person. He remained silent, but his mind was thronged with thoughts. Was Scotland to be indeed lost? Was all that he had suffered and achieved to have been done in vain? and should he be fated to behold her again made a sacrifice to the jealous rivalry of her selfish and contending nobles?

Bothwell continued to speak of the prince, and added, that it was with reluctance he had left him, even to share the anticipated success at Berwick. But Bruce, impatient to learn the issue of the siege (as still no letters arrived from that quarter), had dispatched him back to the borders. At Dunfermline he was stricken with horror by the information that treason had been alleged against Wallace, and turning his steps westward, he flew to give that support to his friend's innocence which the malignity of his enemies might render needful.

"The moment I heard how you were beset," continued Bothwell, "I dispatched a messenger to Lord Ruthven, warning him not to alarm Bruce with such tidings, but to send hither all the spare forces in Perthshire, to maintain you in your rights."

"No force, my dear Bothwell, must be used so hold me in a power which now would only keep alive a spirit of discord in my country. If I dare apply the words of my Divine Master, I would say, I came not to bring a sword but peace to the people of Scotland! Then, if they are weary of me, let me go. Bruce will recover, they will rally round his standard, and all be well."

"Oh, Wallace! Wallace!" cried Bothwell, "the scene I have this day witnessed is enough to make a traitor of me. I could forswear my insensible country--I could immolate its ungrateful chieftains on those very lands which your generous arm restored to these worthless men!" He threw himself into a seat, and leaned his burning forehead against his hand.

"Cousin, you declare my sentiments," rejoined Edwin; "my soul can never again associate with these sons of Envy. I cannot recognize a countryman in any one of them; and, should Sir William Wallace quit a land so unworthy of his virtues, where he goes I will go--his asylum shall be my country, and Edwin Ruthven will forget that he ever was a Scot."

"Never," cried Wallace, turning on him one of those looks which struck conviction into the heart. "Is man more just than God? Though a thousand of your countrymen offend you by their crimes, yet while there remains one honest Scot, for his sake and his posterity it is your duty to be a patriot. A nation is one great family, and every individual in it is as much bound to promote the general good as a brother or a father to maintain the welfare of his nearest kindred. And it the transgression of one son be no arouse for the omission of another, in like manner, the ruin these turbulent lords would bring upon Scotland is no excuse for your desertion of your interest. I would not leave the helm of my country did she not thrust me from it; but though cast by her into the waves, would you not blush for your friend should he wish her other than a peaceful haven?" Edwin spoke not, but putting the hand of Wallace to his lips, left the tent.

"Oh!" cried Bothwell, looking after him, "that the breast of woman had but half that boy's tenderness! And yet all of that dangerous sex are not like this hyena-hearted Lady Strathearn. Tell me, try friend, did she not, when she disappeared so strangely from Huntingtower, fly to you? I now suspect, from certain remembrances, that she and the Green Knight are one aid the same person. Acknowledge it, and I will unmask her at once to the court she has deceived."

"She has deceived no one," replied Wallace. "Before she spoke, the members of that court were determined to brand me with guilt, and her charge merely supplied the place of others which they would have devised against me. Whatever she may be, my dear Bothwell, for the sake of whose name she once bore, let us not expose her to open shame. Her love or her hatred are alike indifferent to me now, for I neither of them do I owe that innate malice of my countrymen which has only made her calumny the occasion of manifesting their resolution to make me infamous. But that, my friend, is beyond her compass. I have done my duty to Scotland, and that conviction must live in every honest heart--ay, and with dishonest too--for did they not fear my integrity, they would not have thought it necessary to deprive me of power. Heaven shield our prince! I dread that Badenoch's next shaft may be at him!"

"No," cried Bothwell, "all is leveled at his best friend. In a low voice, I taxed the regent with disloyalty for permitting this outrage on you, and his basely envious answer was: 'Wallace's removal is Bruce's security; who will acknowledge him when they know that this man is his dictator?'"

Wallace sighed at this reply, which only confirmed him in his resolution, and he told Bothwell that he saw no alternative, if he wished to still the agitations of his country, and preserve its prince from premature discovery, but to indeed remove the subject of all these contentions from their sight.

"Attempt it not!" exclaimed Bothwell; "propose but a step toward that end, and you will determine me to avenge my country, at the peril of my own life, on all in that accursed assembly who have menaced yours!" In short, the young earl's denunciations were so earnest against the lords in Stirling, that Wallace, thinking it dangerous to exasperate him further, consented to remain in his camp till the arrival of Ruthven should bring him the advantage of his counsel.

The issue showed that Bothwell was not mistaken. The majority of the Scottish nobles envied Wallace his glory, and hated him for that virtue which drew the eyes of the people to compare him with their selfish courses. The regent, hoping to become the first in Bruce's favor, was not less urgent to ruin the man who so deservedly stood the highest in that prince's esteem. He had therefore entered warmly into the project of Lady Strathearn. But when, during a select conference between them, previous to her open charge of Wallace, she named Sir Thomas de Longueville as one of his foreign emissaries, Cummin observed:

"If you would have your accusation succeed, do not mention that knight at all. He is my friend. He is now ill near Perth, and must know nothing of this affair till it be over. Should he live, he will nobly thank you for your forbearance; should he die, I will repay you as becomes your nearest kinsman."

All were thus united in one determined effort to hurl Wallace from his station in the state. But when they believed that done, they quarreled amongst themselves in deciding who was to fill the great military office, which his prowess had now rendered a post rather of honor than of danger.

In the midst of these feuds Sir Simon Fraser abruptly appeared in the council-hall. His countenance proclaimed his tidings. Lennox and Loch-awe (who had duly attended, in hopes of bringing over some of the more pliable chiefs to embrace the cause of justice) listened with something like exultation to his suddenly disastrous information. When the English governor at Berwick learned the removal of Wallace from his command and the consequent consternation of the Scottish troops, instead of surrendering at sunset as was expected, he sallied out at the head of the whole garrison, and attacking the Scots by surprise, gave them a total defeat. Every outpost around the town was retaken by the Southrons, the army of Fraser was cut to pieces or put to flight, and himself now arriving at Stirling, smarting with many a wound but more under his dishonor, to show to the Regent of Scotland the evil of having superseded the only man whom the enemy feared. The council stood in silence, staring on each other; and, to add to their dismay, Fraser had hardly completed his narration, before a messenger from Tiviotdale arrived to inform the regent that King Edward was himself within a few miles of the Cheviots; and, from the recovered position of Berwick, must have even now poured his thousands over those hills upon the plains beneath. While all the citadel was indecision, tumult, and alarm, Lennox hastened to Wallace's camp with the news.

Lord Ruthven and the Perthshire chiefs were already there. They had arrived early in the morning, but with unpromising tidings of Bruce. The state of his wound had induced a constant delirium. But still Wallace clung to the hope that his country was not doomed to perish--that its prince's recovery was only protracted. In the midst of this anxiety, Lennox entered; and relating what he had just heard, turned the whole current of the auditor's ideas. Wallace started from his seat. His hand mechanically caught up his sword, which lay upon the table. Lennox gazed at him with animated veneration. "There is not a man in the citadel," cried he, "who does not appear at his wits' end, and incapable of facing this often-beaten foe. Will you, Wallace, again condescend to save a country that has treated you so ungratefully?"

"I would die in its trenches!" cried the chief, with a generous forgiveness of all his injuries suffusing his magnanimous heart.

Lord Loch-awe soon after appeared, and corroborating the testimony of Lennox added, that on the regent's sending word to the troops on the south of Stirling, that in consequence of the treason of Sir William Wallace the supreme command was taken from him, and they must immediately march out under the orders of Sir Simon Fraser, to face a new incursion of the enemy, they began to murmur among themselves, saying that since Wallace was found to be a traitor, they knew not whom to trust; but certainly it should not be a beaten general. With these whisperings, they slid away from their standards; and when Loch-awe left them they were dispersed on all sides, like an already discomfited army.

LXXIV. Arthur's Seat

For a day or two the paralyzed terrors of the people, and the tumults in the citadel, seemed portentous of immediate ruin. A large detachment from the royal army had entered Scotland by the marine gate of Berwick; and, headed by De Warenne, was advancing rapidly toward Edinburgh. Not a soldier belonging to the regent remained on the carse; and the distant chiefs to whom he sent for aid refused it, alleging that the discovery of Wallace's patriotism having been a delusion, had made them suspect all men; and, now locking themselves within their own castles, each true Scot would there securely view a struggle in which they could feel no personal interest.

Seeing the danger of the realm, and hearing from the Lords Ruthven and Bothwell that their troops would follow no other leader than Sir William Wallace, and hopeless of any prompt decision from amongst the contusion of the council, Badenoch yielded a stern assent to the only apparent means of saving his sinking country. He turned ashy pale, while his silence granted to Lord Loch-awe the necessity of imploring Sir William Wallace to again stretch out his arm in their behalf. With this embassy the venerable chief had returned exultingly to Ballochgeich; and the so lately branded Wallace, branded as the intended betrayer of Scotland, was solicited by his very accusers to assume the trust of their sole defense!

"Such is the triumph of virtue!" whispered Edwin to his friend, as he vaulted on his horse.

A luminous smile from Wallace acknowledged that he felt the tribute and, looking up to Heaven ere he placed his helmet on his head, he said:

"Thence comes my power! and the satisfaction it brings, whether attended by man's applause or his blame, he cannot take from me. I now, perhaps for the last time, arm this head for Scotland. May the God in whom I trust again crown it with victory, and forever after bind the brows of our rightful sovereign with peace!"

While Wallace pursued his march, the regent was quite at a stand, confounded at the turn which events had taken, and hardly knowing whether to make another essay to collect forces for the support of their former leader, or to follow the refractory counsels of his lords, and await in inactivity the issue of the expected battle. He knew not bow to act, but a letter from Lady Strathearn decided him.

Though partly triumphant in her charges, yet the accusations of Bothwell had disconcerted her; and though the restoration of Wallace to his undisputed authority in the state; seemed to her next to impossible, still she resolved to take another step, to confirm her influence over the discontented of her country, and most likely to insure the vengeance she panted to bring upon her victim's head. To this end, on the very evening that she retreated in terror from the council hall, she set forward to the borders; and, easily passing thence to the English camp (then pitched at Alnwick), was soon admitted to the castle, where De Warenne lodged. She was too well taught in the school of vanity not to have remarked the admiration with which that earl had regarded her while he was a prisoner in Stirling; and, hoping that he might not be able to withstand the persuasion of her charms, she opened her mission with no less art than effect. De Warren was made to believe, that on the strength of a passion Wallace had conceived for her, and which she treated with disdain, he had repented of his former refusal of the crown of Scotland; and, misled by a hope that she would not repeat her rejection of his hand could it present her a scepter, he was now attempting to compass that dignity by the most complicated intrigues. She then related how, at her instigation, the regent had deposed him from his military command, and she ended with saying, that impelled by loyalty to Edward (whom her better reason now recognized as the lawful sovereign of her country), she had come to exhort that monarch to renew his invasion of the kingdom.

Intoxicated with her beauty, and enraptured, by a manner which seemed to tell him that a softer sentiment than usual had made her select him as the embassador to the king, De Warenne greedily drank in all her words; and ere he allowed this, to him, romantic conference to break up, he had thrown himself at her feet, and implored her, by every impassioned argument, to grant him the privilege of presenting her to Edward as his intended bride. De Warenne was in the meridian of life; and being fraught with a power at court beyond most of his peers, she determined to accept his hand and wield its high influence to the destruction of Wallace, even should she be compelled in the act to precipitate her country in his fall. De Warenne drew from her a half-reluctant consent; and, while he poured forth the transports of a happy lover, he was not so much enamored of the fine person of Lady Strathearn as to be altogether insensible to the advantages which his alliance with her would give to Edward in his Scottish pretensions. And as it would consequently increase his own importance with that monarch, he lost no time in communicating the circumstances to him. Edward suspected something in this sudden attachment of the countess, which, should it transpire, might cool the ardor of his officer for uniting so useful an agent to his cause; therefore, having highly approved De Warenne's conduct in affair, to hasten the nuptials, he proposed being present at their solemnization that very evening. The solemn vows which Lady Strathearn then pledged at the altar to be pronounced by her with no holy awe of the marriage contract; but rather as those alone by which she swore to complete her revenge on Wallace, and, by depriving him of life, prevent the climax to her misery, of seeing him (what she believed he intended to become) the husband of Helen Mar.

The day after she became De Warenne's wife, she accompanied him by sea to Berwick; and from that place she dispatched messengers to the regent, and to other nobles, her kinsmen, fraught with promises, which Edward, in the event of success had solemnly pledged himself to ratify. Her embassador arrived at Stirling the day succeeding that in which Wallace and his troops had marched from Ballochgeich. The letters brought were eagerly opened by Badenoch and his chieftains, and they found their contents to this effect. She announced to them her marriage with the lord warden, who was returned into Scotland with every power for the final subjugation of the country; and therefore she besought the regent and his council, not to raise a hostile arm against him if they would not merely escape the indignation of a great king, but insure his favor. She cast out hints to Badenoch, as if Edward meant to reward his acquiescence with the crown of Scotland; and with similar baits, proportioned to the views of all her other kinsmen, she smoothed their anger against that monarch's former insults persuading them to at least remain inactive during the last struggle of their country.

Meanwhile Wallace, taking his course along the banks of the Forth, when the night drew near, encamped his little army at the base of the craigs, east of Edinburgh Castle. His march having been long and rapid, the men were much fatigued, and hardly were laid upon their heather beds before they fell asleep. Wallace had learned from his scouts that the main body of the Southrons had approached within a few miles of Dalkeith. Thither he hoped to go next morning, and there, he trusted, strike the conclusive blow for Scotland, by the destruction of a division which he understood comprised the flower of the English army. With these expectations he gladly saw his troops lying in that repose which would rebrace their strength for the combat, and, as the hours of night stole on while his possessed mind waked for all around, he was pleased to see his ever-watchful Edwin sink down in a profound sleep.

It was Wallace's custom, once at least in the night, to go himself the rounds of his posts, to see that all was safe. The air was serene and he walked out on this duty. He passed from line to line, from station to station, and all was in order. One post alone remained to be visited, and that was a point of observation on the craigs near Arthur's Seat. As he proceeded along a lonely defile between the rocks which overhang the ascent of the mountain, he was startled by the indistinct sight of a figure amongst the rolling vapors of the night, seated on a towering cliff directly in the way he was to go. The broad light of the moon, breaking from behind the clouds, shone full upon the spot, and discovered a majestic form in gray robes, leaning on a harp; while his face, mournfully gazing upward, was rendered venerable by a long white beard that mingled with the floating mist. Wallace paused, and stopping some distance from this extraordinary apparition, looked on it in silence. The strings of the harp seemed softly touched, but it was only the sighing of a transitory breeze passing over them. The vibration ceased, but, in the next moment the hand of the master indeed struck the chords, and with so full and melancholy a sound that Wallace for a few minutes was riveted to the ground; then moving forward with a breathless caution, not to disturb the nocturnal bard, he gently approached. He was, however, descried! The venerable figure clasped his hands, and in a voice of mournful solemnity exclaimed:

"Art thou come, doomed of Heaven, to hear thy sad coronach?" Wallace started at this salutation. The bard, with the same emotion, continued; "No choral hymns hallow thy bleeding corpse--wolves howl thy requiem--eagles scream over thy desolate grave! Fly, chieftain, fly!"

"What, venerable father of the harp," cried Wallace, interrupting the awful pause, "thus addresses one whom he must mistake for some other warrior?"

"Can the spirit of inspiration mistake its object?" demanded the bard. "Can he whose eyes have been opened be blind to Sir William Wallace--to the blood which clogs his mounting footsteps?"

"And what or who am I to understand art thou?" replied Wallace. "Who is the saint whose holy charity would anticipate the obsequies of a man who yet may be destined to a long pilgrimage?"

"Who I am," resumed the bard, "will be sthown to thee when thou hast passed yon starry firmament. But the galaxy streams with blood; the bugle of death is alone heard; and thy lacerated breast heaves in vain against the hoofs of opposing squadrons. They charge--Scotland falls! Look not on me, champion of thy country! Sold by thine enemies--betrayed by thy friends! It was not the seer of St. Anton who gave thee these wounds--that heart's blood was not drawn by me: a woman's hand in mail, ten thousand armed warriors strike the mortal steel--he sinks, he falls! Red is the blood of Eske! Thy vital stream hath dyed it. Fly, bravest of the brave, and live! Stay, and perish!" With a shriek of horror, and throwing his aged arms extended toward the heavens, while his gray beard mingled in the rising blast, the seer rushed from sight. Wallace saw the misty rocks alone, and was left in awful solitude.

For a few minutes he stood in profound silence. His very soul seemed deprived of power to answer so terrible a denunciation, with even a questioning thought. He had heard the destruction of Scotland declared, and himself sentenced to perish if he did not escape the general ruin by flying from her side! This terrible decree of fate, so disastrously corroborated by the extremity of Bruce, and the divisions in the kingdom, had been sounded in his ear, had been pronounced by one of those sages of his country, on whom the spirit of prophecy, it was believed, yet descended, with all the horrors of a woe-denouncing prophet. Could he then doubt its truth? He did not doubt; he believed the midnight voice he had heard. But recovering from the first shock of such a doom, and remembering that it still left the choice to himself, between dishonored life or glorious death, he resolved to show his respect to the oracle by manifesting a persevering obedience to the eternal voice which gave those agents utterance: and while he bowed to the warning, he vowed to be the last who should fall from the side of his devoted country. "If devoted," cried he, "then our fates shall be the same. My fall from thee shall be into my grave. Scotland may have struck the breast the breast that shielded her, yet, Father of Mercies, forgive her blindness, and grant me still permission a little longer to oppose my heart between her and this fearful doom!"

LXXV. Dalkeith

Awed, but not intimidated by the prophecy of the seer, Wallace next day drew up his army in order for the new battle near a convent of Cistercian monks on the narrow plain of Dalkeith. The two rivers Eske, flowing on each side of the little phalanx, formed a temporary barrier between it and the pressing legions of De Warenne. The earl's troops seemed countless, while the Southron lords who led them on, being elated by the representations which the Countess of Strathearn had given to them of the disunited state of the Scottish army, and the consequent dismay which had seized their hitherto all-conquering commander, bore down upon the Scots with an impetuosity which threatened their universal destruction. Deceived by the blandishing falsehoods of his bride, De Warenne had entirely changed his former opinion of his brave opponent, and by her sophistries having brought his mind to adopt stratagems of intimidation unworthy of his nobleness (so contagious is baseness, in too fond a contact with the unprincipled!), he placed himself on an adjoining height, intending from that commanding post to dispense his orders and behold his victory.

"Soldiers!" cried he, "the rebel's hour is come. The sentence of Heaven is gone forth against him. Charge resolutely, and he and his host are yours!"

The sky was obscured; an awful stillness reigned through the air, and the spirits of the mighty dead seemed leaning from the clouds, to witness this last struggle of their sons. Fate did indeed hover over the opposing armies. She descended on the head of Wallace, and dictated from amidst his waving plumes. She pointed his spear, she wielded his flaming sword, she charged with him in the dreadful shock of battle. De Warenne saw his foremost thousands fall. He heard the shouts of the Scots, the cries of his men, and the plains of Stirling rose to his remembrance. He hastily ordered the knights around him to bear his wife from the field; and descending the field to lead forward himself, was met and almost overwhelmed by his flying troops; horses without riders, men without shield or sword, but all in dismay, rushed past him. He called to them, he waved the royal standard, he urged, he reproached, he rallied, and led them back again. The fight recommenced. Long and bloody was the conflict. De Warenne fought for conquest and to recover a lost reputation. Wallace contended for his country, and to show himself always worthy of her latest blessing "before he should go hence and be no more seen."

The issue declared for Scotland. But the ground was covered with the slain, and Wallace chased a wounded foe with troops which dropped as they pursued. At sight of the melancholy state of his intrepid soldiers, he tried to check their ardor, but in vain.

"It is for Wallace that we conquer!" cried they; "and we die, or prove him the only captain in this ungrateful country."

Night compelled them to halt, and while they rested on their arms, Wallace was satisfied that he had destroyed the power of De Warenne. As he leaned on his sword, and stood with Edwin near the watch-fire, over which that youthful hero kept a guard, he contemplated with generous forbearance the terrified Southrons as they fled precipitately by the foot of the hill toward the Tweed. Wallace now told his friend the history of his adventure with the seer of the craigs, and finding within himself how much the brightness of true religion excludes the glooms of superstition, he added, "The proof of the Divine Spirit in prophecy is its completion. Hence let the false seer I met last night warn you, my Edwin, by my example, how you give credit to any prediction that might slacken the sinews of duty. God can speak but one language. He is not a man, that he should repent; neither a mortal, that he should change his purpose. This prophet of Baal beguiled me into a credence of his denunciation; but not to adopt the conduct his offered alternative would have persuaded me to pursue. I now see that he was a traitor in both, and henceforth shall read my fate in the oracles of God alone. Obeying them, my Edwin, we need not fear the curses of our enemy, nor the lying of suborned soothsayers."

The splendor of this victory struck to the souls of the council at Stirling, but with no touch of remorse. Scotland being again rescued from the vengeance of her implacable foe, the disaffected lords in the citadel affected to spurn at her preservation, declaring to the regent that they would rather bear the yoke of the veriest tyrant in the world than owe a moment of freedom to the man who (they pretended to believe) had conspired against their lives. And they had a weighty reason for this decision: though De Warenne was beaten, his wife was a victor. She had made Edward triumphant in the venal hearts of her kinsmen; gold and her persuasions, with promises of future honors from the King of England, had sealed them entirely his. All but the regent was ready to commit everything into the hands of Edward. The rising favor of these other lords with the court of England induced him to recollect that he might rule as the unrivaled friend of Bruce, should that prince live; or, in case of his death, he might have it in his own power to assume the Scottish throne untrammeled. These thoughts made him fluctuate, and his country found him as undetermined in treason as unstable in fidelity.

Immediately on the victory at Dalkeith, Kirkpatrick (eager to be the first communicator of such welcome news to Lennox, who had planted himself as a watch at Stirling) withdrew secretly from Wallace's camp, and, hoping to move the gratitude of the refractory lords, entered full of honest joy into the midst of their council.

He proclaimed the success of his commander. His answer was accusations and insults. All that had been charged against the too-fortunate Wallace, was re-urged with added acrimony. Treachery to the state, hypocrisy in morals, fanaticism in religion--no stigma was too extravagant, too contradictory, to be affixed to his name. They who had been hurt in the fray in the hall, pointed to their still smarting wounds, and called upon Lennox to say if they did not plead against so dangerous a man?

"Dangerous to your crimes, and ruinous to your ambition!" cried Kirkpatrick; "for so help me God, I believe that an honester man than William Wallace lives not in Scotland! And that ye know, and his virtues overtopping your littleness, ye would uproot the greatness which ye cannot equal."

This speech, which a burst of indignation had wrested from him, brought down the wrath of the whole party upon himself. Lord Athol, yet stung with his old wound, furiously struck him; Kirkpatrick drew his sword, and the two chiefs commenced a furious combat, each determined on the extirpation of the other. Gasping with almost the last breathings of life, neither could be torn from their desperate revenge, till many were hurt in attempting to separate them; and then the two were carried off insensible, and covered with wounds.

When this sad news was transmitted to Sir William Wallace, it found him on the banks of the Eske, just returned from the citadel of Berwick, where, once more master of that fortress, he had dictated the terms of a conqueror and a patriot.

In the scene of his former victories, the romantic shades of Hawthorndean, he now pitched his triumphant camp; and from its verdant bounds dispatched the requisite orders to the garrisoned castles on the borders. While employed in this duty, his heart was wrung by an account of the newly-aroused storm in the citadel of Stirling; but as some equivalent, the chieftains of Mid-Lothian poured in on him on every side; and, acknowledging him their protector, he again found himself the idol of gratitude, and the almost deified object of trust. At such a moment, when the one voice they were disclaiming all participation in the insurgent proceedings at Stirling, another messenger arrived from Lord Lennox, to conjure him, if he would avoid open violence or secret treachery, to march his victorious troops immediately to that city, and seize the assembled abthanes** at once as traitors to their country. "Resume the regency," added he; "which you only know how to conduct; and crush a treason which, increasing hourly, now walks openly in the day, threatening all that is virtuous, or faithful to you."

**Abthanes, which means the great lords, was a title of pre-eminence given to the higher order of chiefs.

He did not hesitate to decide against this counsel, for, in following it, it could not be one adversary he must strike, but thousands. "I am only a brother to my countrymen," said he to himself, "and have no right to force them to their duty. When their king appears, then these rebellious heads may be made to bow." While he mused upon the letter of Lennox, Ruthven entered the recess of the tent, whither he had retired to read it.

"I bring you better news of our friends at Huntingtower," cried the good lord. "Here is a packet from Douglas, and another from my wife."

Wallace gladly read them, and found that Bruce was relieved from his delirium; but so weak, that his friends dared not hazard a relapse by imparting to him any idea of the proceedings at Stirling. All he knew was, that Wallace was victorious in arms, and panting for his recovery to render such success really beneficial to his country! Helen and Isabella, with the sage of Ercildown, were the prince's unwearied attendants; and though his life was yet in extreme peril, it was to be hoped that their attentions, and his own constitution, would finally cure the wound, and conquer its attendant fever. Comforted with these tidings, Wallace declared his intentions of visiting his suffering friend as soon as he could establish any principle in the minds of his followers to induce them to bear, even for a little time, with the insolence of the abthanes. "I will then," said he, "watch by the side of our beloved Bruce till his recovered health allows him to proclaim himself king; and with that act I trust all these feuds will be forever laid to sleep!" Ruthven participated in these hopes, and the friends returned into the council-tent. But all there was changed. Most of the Lothian chieftains had also received messages from their friends in Stirling. Allegations against Wallace; arguments to prove "the policy of submitting themselves and their properties to the protection of a great and generous king, though a foreigner, rather than to risk all by attaching themselves to the fortunes of a private person, who made their services the ladder of his ambition," were the contents of their packets; and they had been sufficient to shake the easy faith to which they were addressed. On the reentrance of Wallace, the chieftains, stole suspicious glances at each other, and, without a word, glided severally out of the tent.

LXXVI. Hawthorndean

Next morning, instead of coming as usual directly to their acknowledged protector, the Lothian chieftains were seen at different parts of the camp, closely conversing in groups; and when any of Wallace's officers approached, they separated, or withdrew to a greater distance. This strange conduct Wallace attributed to its right source, and thought of Bruce with a sigh, when he contemplated the variable substance of these men's minds. However, he was so convinced that nothing but the proclamation of Bruce, and that prince's personal exertions, could preserve his country from falling again into the snare from which he had just snatched it, that he was preparing to set out for Perthshire with such persuasions, when Ker hastily entered his tent. He was followed by the Lord Soulis, Lord Buchan, and several other chiefs of equally hostile intentions. Soulis did not hesitate to declare his errand.

"We come, Sir William Wallace, by the command of the regent, and the assembled abthanes of Scotland, to take these brave troops, which have performed such good service to their country, from the power of a man who, we have every reason to believe, means to turn their arms against the liberties of the realm. Without a pardon from the state; without the signature of the regent; in contempt of court, which, having found you guilty of high treason, had in mercy delayed to pronounce the sentence on your crime, you have presumed to place yourself at the head of the national troops, and to take to yourself the merit of a victory won by their prowess alone! Your designs are known, and the authority you have despised is now roused to punish. You are to accompany us this day to Stirling. We have brought a guard of four thousand men to compel your obedience."

Before the indignant spirit of Wallace could utter the answer his wrongs dictated, Bothwell, who at sight of the regent's troops had hastened to his general's tent, entered, followed by his chieftains: "Were your guard forty thousand, instead of four," cried he, "they should not force our commander from us--they should not extinguish the glory of Scotland beneath the traitorous devices of hell-engendered envy and murderous cowardice."

Soulis turned on him with eyes of fire, and laid his hand on his sword.

"Ay, cowardice!" reiterated Bothwell; "the midnight ravisher, the slanderer of virtue, the betrayer of his country, knows in his heart that he fears to draw aught but the assassin's steel. He dreads the scepter of honor: Wallace must fall, that vice and her votaries may reign in Scotland. A thousand brave Scots lie under these sods, and a thousand yet survive who may share their graves; but they never will relinquish their invincible leader into the hands of traitors!"

The clamors of the citadel of Stirling now resounded through the tent of Wallace. Invectives, accusations, threatenings, reproaches, and revilings, joined in one turbulent uproar. Again swords were drawn; and Wallace, in attempting to beat down the weapons of Soulis and Buchan, aimed at Bothwell's heart, must have received the point of Soulis' in his own body, had he not grasped the blade, and wrenching it out of the chief's hand, broke it into shivers: "Such be the fate of every sword which Scot draws against Scot!" cried he. "Put up your weapons, my friends. The arm of Wallace is not shrunk, that he could not defend himself, did he think that violence were necessary. Hear my determination, once and forever!" added he. "I acknowledge no authority in Scotland but the laws. The present regent and his abthanes outrage them in every ordinance, and I should indeed be a traitor to my country did I submit to such men's behests. I shall not obey their summons to Stirling; neither will I permit a hostile arm to be raised in this camp against their delegates, unless the violence begins with them. This is my answer." Uttering these words he motioned Bothwell to follow him, and left the tent.

Crossing a rude plank-bridge, which then lay over the Eske, he met Lord Ruthven, accompanied by Edwin and Lord Sinclair. The latter came to inform Wallace that embassadors from Edward awaited his presence at Roslyn.

"They came to offer peace to our distracted country," cried Sinclair.

"Then," answered Wallace, "I shall not delay going where I may hear the terms." Horses were brought; and, during their short ride, to prevent the impassioned representations of the still raging Bothwell, Wallace communicated, to his not less indignant friends, the particulars of the scene he had left. "These contentions must be terminated," added he; "and with God's blessing, a few days and they shall be so!"

"Heaven grant it!" returned Sinclair, thinking he referred to the proposed negotiation. "If Edward's offers be at all reasonable, I would urge you to accept them; otherwise invasion from without, and civil commotion within, will probably make a desert of poor Scotland."

Ruthven interrupted him: "Despair not, my lord! Whatever be the fate of this embassy, let us remember that it is our steadiest friend who decides, and that his arm is still with us to repel invasion, to chastise treason!"

Edwin's eyes turned with a direful expression upon Wallace, while he lowly murmured: "Treason! hydra treason!"

Wallace understood him, and answered: "Grievous are the alternatives, my friends, which your love for me would persuade you even to welcome. But that which I shall choose will, I trust, indeed lay the land at peace, or point its hostilities to the only aim against which a true Scot ought to direct his sword at this crisis!"

Being arrived at the gate of Roslyn, Wallace, regardless of those ceremonials which often delay the business they pretend to dignify, entered at once into the hall where the embassadors sat. Baron Hilton was one, and Le de Spencer (father of the young and violent envoy of that name) was the other. At sight of the Scottish chief they rose; and the good baron, believing he came on a propitious errand, smiling, said, "Sir William Wallace, it is your private ear I am commanded to seek." While speaking, he looked on Sinclair and the other lords.

"These chiefs are as myself," replied Wallace; "but I will not impede your embassy by crossing the wishes of your master in a trifle." He then turned to his friends: "Indulge the monarch of England in making me the first acquainted with that which can only be a message to the whole nation."

The chiefs withdrew; and Hilton, without further parley, opened the mission. He said that King Edward, more than ever impressed with the wondrous military talents of Sir William Wallace, and solicitous to make a friend of so heroic an enemy, had sent him an offer of grace, which, if he contemned, must be the last. He offered him a theater whereon he might display his peerless endowments to the admiration of the world--the kingdom of Ireland, with its yet unreaped fields of glory, and all the ample riches of its abundant provinces, should be his! Edward only required, in return for this royal gift, that he should abandon the cause of Scotland, swear fealty to him for Ireland, and resign into his hands one whom he had proscribed as the most ungrateful of traitors. In double acknowledgment for the latter sacrifice Wallace need only send to England a list of those Scottish lords against whom he bore resentment, and their fates should be ordered according to his dictates. Edward concluded his offers by inviting him immediately to London, to be invested with his new sovereignty; and Hilton ended his address by showing him the madness of abiding in a country where almost every chief, secretly or openly, carried a dagger against his life; and therefore he exhorted him no longer to contend for a nation so unworthy of freedom, that it bore with impatience the only man who had the courage to maintain its independence by virtue alone.

Wallace replied calmly, and without hesitation:

"To this message an honest man can make but one reply. As well might your sovereign exact of me to dethrone the angels of heaven, as to require me to subscribe to his proposals. They do but mock me; and aware of my rejection, they are thus delivered, to throw the whole blame of this cruelly-persecuting war upon me. Edward knows that as a knight, a true Scot, and a man, I should dishonor myself to accept even life, ay, or the lives of all my kindred, upon these terms."

Hilton interrupted him by declaring the sincerity of Edward; and, contrasting it with the ingratitude of the people whom he had served, he conjured him, with every persuasive of rhetoric, every entreaty dictated by a mind that revered the very firmness he strove to shake, to relinquish his faithless country, and become the friend of a king ready to receive him with open arms. Wallace shook his head; and with an incredulous smile which spoke his thoughts of Edward, while his eyes beamed kindness upon Hilton, he answered:

"Can the man who would bribe me to betray a friend, be faithful in friendship? But that is not the weight with me. I was not brought up in those schools, my good baron, which teach that sound policy or true self-interest can be separated from virtue. When I was a boy, my father often repeated to me this proverb:

"Dico tibi verum, honestas, optima rerum, Nunquam servili sub nexu vivitur fili."**

** This saying of the parental teacher of Wallace is recorded. It means, "Know of a certainty that virtue, the best of possessions, never can exist under the bond of servility."

"I learned it then; I have since made it the standard of my actions, and I answer your monarch in a word. Were all my countrymen to resign their claims to the liberty which is their right, I alone would declare the independence of my country; and by God's assistance, while I live, acknowledge no other master than the laws of St. David, and the legitimate heir of his blood!"

The glow of resolute patriotism which overspread his countenance while he spoke was reflected by a fluctuating color on that of Hilton.

"Noble chief!" cried he; "I admire while I regret; I revere the virtue which I am even now constrained to denounce. These principles, bravest of men, might have suited the simple ages of Greece and Rome; a Phocion or a Fabricius might have uttered the like, and compelled the homage of their enemies; but in these days, such magnanimity is considered frenzy, and ruin is its consequence."

"And shall a Christian," cried Wallace, reddening with the flush of honest shame, "deem the virtue which even heathens practiced with veneration, of too pure a nature to be exercised by men taught by Christ himself? There is blasphemy in the idea, and I can hear no more."

Hilton, in confusion, excused his argument by declaring that it proceeded from his observations on the conduct of men.

"And shall we," replied Wallace, "follow a multitude to do evil? I act to one Being alone. Edward must acknowledge HIS supremacy, and by that know that my soul is above all price!"

"Am I answered?" said Hilton, and then hastily interrupting himself, he added, in a voice even of supplication; "your fate rests on your reply! Oh! noblest of warriors, consider only for the day!"

"Not for a moment," said Wallace; "I am sensible of your kindness; but my answer to Edward has been pronounced."

Baron Hilton turned sorrowfully away, and Le de Spencer rose.

"Sir William Wallace, my part of the embassy must be delivered to you in the assembly of your chieftains."

"In the congregation of my camp?" returned he; and opening the door of the ante-room, in which his friends stood, he sent Edwin to summon his chiefs to the platform before the council tent.

LXXVII. Wallace's Tent

When Wallace approached his tent, he found not only the captains of his own army, but the followers of Soulis and the chieftains of Lothian. He looked on this range of his enemies with a fearless eye, and passing through the crowd, took his station beside the embassadors, on the platform of the tent. The venerable Hilton turned away with tears on his veteran cheeks as the chief advanced, and Le de Spencer came forward to speak. Wallace, with a dignified action, requested his leave for a few minutes, and then addressing the congregated warriors unfolded to them the offer of Edward to him, and his reply.

"And now," added he, "the embassador of England is at liberty to declare his master's alternative."

Le de Spencer again advanced; but the acclamations with which the followers of Wallace acknowledged the nobleness of his answer, excited such an opposite clamor on the side of the Soulis party, that Le de Spencer was obliged to mount a war carriage which stood near, and to vociferate long and loudly for silence before he could be heard. But the first words which caught the ears of his audience acted like a spell, and seemed to hold them in breathless attention.

"Since Sir William Wallace rejects the grace of his liege lord, Edward King of England offered to him this once, and never to be again repeated: thus saith the king in his clemency to the earls, barons, knights, and commonalty of Scotland! To every one of them, chief and vassal, excepting the aforesaid incorrigible rebel, he, the royal Edward, grants an amnesty of all their past treasons against his sacred person and rule, provided that within twenty-four hours after they hear the words of this proclamation they acknowledge their disloyalty, with repentance, and laying down their arms, swear eternal fealty to their only lawful ruler, Edward, the lord of the whole island from sea to sea." Le de Spencer then proclaimed the King of England to be now on the borders with an army of a hundred thousand men, ready to march with fire and sword into the heart of the kingdom, and put to the rack all of every sex, age, and condition, who should venture to dispute his rights. "Yield," added he, "while you may yet not only grasp the mercy extended to you, but the rewards and the honors he is ready to bestow. Adhere to that unhappy man, and by to-morrow's sunset your offended king will be on these hills, and mercy shall be no more! Death is the doom of Sir William Wallace, and a similar fate to every Scot who after this hour dares to give him food, shelter, or succor. He is the prisoner of King Edward, and thus I demand him at your hands!"

Wallace spoke not, but with an unmoved countenance looked around upon the assembly. Edwin precipitated himself into his arms. Bothwell's full soul then forced utterance from his laboring breast:

"Tell your sovereign," cried he, "that he mistakes. We are the conquerors who ought to dictate terms of peace! Wallace is our invincible leader, our redeemer from slavery, the earthly hope in whom we trust, and it is not in the power of men nor devils to bribe us to betray our benefactor. Away to your king and tell him that Andrew Murray, and every honest Scot, is ready to live or to die by the side of Sir William Wallace."

"And by this good sword I swear the same!" cried Ruthven.

"And so do I!" rejoined Scrymgeour, "or may the standard of Scotland be my winding-sheet!"

"Or may the Clyde swallow us up, quick!" exclaimed Lockhart of Lee, shaking his mailed hand at the embassadors.

But not another chief spoke for Wallace. Even Sinclair was intimidated, and like others who wished him well, he feared to utter his sentiments. But most, oh! shame to Scotland and to man, cast up their bonnets and cried aloud, "Long live Kind Edward, the only legitimate Lord of Scotland!" At this outcry, which was echoed even by some in whom he had confided, while it pealed around him like a burst of thunder, Wallace threw out his arms, as if he would yet protect Scotland from herself. "Oh! desolate people," exclaimed he, in a voice of piercing woe, "too credulous of fair speeches, and not aware of the calamities which are coming upon you! Call to remembrance the miseries you have suffered, and start, before it be too late, from this last snare of your oppressor! Have I yet to tell ye that his embrace is death? Oh! look yet to Heaven and ye shall find a rescue!" Bruce seemed to rise at that moment in pale but gallant apparition before his soul.**

**This speech is almost verbatim from one of our old historians.

"Seize that rebellious man," cried Soulis to his marshals. "In the name of the King of England I command you."

"And in the name of the King of kings I denounce death on him who attempts it!" exclaimed Bothwell, throwing himself between Wallace and the men; "put forth a hostile hand toward him, and this bugle shall call a thousand resolute swords to lay this platform in blood!"

Soulis, followed by his knights, pressed forward to execute his treason himself. Scrymgeour, Ruthven, Lockhart, and Ker rushed before their friend. Edwin, starting forward, drew his sword, and the clash of steel was heard. Bothwell and Soulis grappled together, the falchion of Ruthven gleamed amidst a hundred swords, and blood flowed around. The voice, the arm of Wallace, in vain sought to enforce peace; he was not heard, he was not felt in the dreadful warfare; Ker fell with a gasp at his feet, and breathed no more. At such a sight the soul-struck Wallace wrung his hands, and exclaimed in bitter anguish, "Oh, my country! was it for these horrors that my Marion died? that I became a homeless wretch, and passed my days and nights in fields of carnage? Venerable Mar, dear and valiant Graham! is this the consummation for which you fell?" At that moment Bothwell having disabled Soulis, would have blown his bugle to call up his men to a general conflict, but Wallace snatched the horn from his hand, and springing upon the very war-carriage which Le de Spencer had proclaimed Edward's embassy, he drew forth his sword, and stretching the mighty arm that held it over the throng, with more than mortal energy he exclaimed, "Peace! men of Scotland, and for the last time hear the voice of William Wallace." A dead silence immediately ensued, and he proceeded: "If you have aught of nobleness within ye, if a delusion more fell than witchcraft have not blinded your senses, look beyond this field of horror, and behold your country free. Edward, in these apparent demands, sues for peace. Did we not drive his armies into the sea? And were we resolved, he never could cross our borders more. What is it then you do, when you again put your necks under his yoke? Did he not seek to bribe me to betray you? And yet, when I refuse to purchase life and the world's rewards in such baseness, you--you forget that you are free-born Scots, that you are the victors, and he the vanquished; and you give, not sell, your birthright to the demands of a tyrant! You yield yourselves to his extortions, his oppressions, his revenge! Think not he will spare the people he would have sold to purchase his bitterest enemy, or allow them to live unmanacled who possess the power of resistance. On the day in which you are in his hands you will feel that you have exchanged honor for disgrace, liberty for bondage, life for death! Me you abhor, and may God in your extremest hour forget that injustice, and pardon the faithful blood you have shed this day! I draw this sword for you no more. But there yet lives a prince, a descendant of the royal heroes of Scotland, whom Providence may conduct to be your preserver. Reject the proposals of Edward, dare to defend the freedom you now possess, and that prince will soon appear to crown your patriotism with glory and happiness!"

"We acknowledge no prince but King Edward of England!" cried Buchan. "His countenance our glory, his presence our happiness!"

The exclamation was reiterated by a most disgraceful majority on the ground. Wallace was transfixed.

"Then," cried Le de Spencer in the first pause of the tumult, "to every man, woman, and child throughout the realm of Scotland, excepting Sir William Wallace, I proclaim, in the name of King Edward, pardon and peace."

At these words several hundred Scottish chieftains dropped on their knees before Le de Spencer, and murmured their vows of fealty. Indignant, grieved, Wallace took his helmet from his head, and throwing his sword into the hand of Bothwell, "That weapon," cried he, "which I wrested from this very King Edward, and with which I twice drove him from our borders, I give it to you. In your hands it may again serve Scotland, I relinquish a soldier's name, on the spot where I humbled England three times in one day, where I now see my victorious country deliver herself, bound, into the grasp of the vanquished! I go without sword or buckler from this dishonored field, and what Scot, my public or private enemy, will dare to strike the unguarded head of William Wallace?" As he spoke, he threw his shield and helmet to the ground, and leaping from the war-carriage, took his course, with a fearless and dignified step, through the parting ranks of his enemies, who, awe-struck, or kept in check by a suspicion that others might not second the attack they would have made on him, durst not lift an arm or breathe a word as he passed.

Wallace had adopted this manner of leaving the ground, in hopes, if it were possible, to awaken the least spark of honor in the breasts of his persecutors, to prevent the bloodshed which must ensue between his friends and them, should they attempt to seize him. Edwin and Bothwell immediately followed him; but Lockhart and Scrymgeour remained to take charge of the remains of the faithful Ker, and to observe the tendency of the tumult which began to murmur amongst the lower orders of the bystanders.

LXXVIII. Banks of the Eske

A vague suspicion of the regent and his thanes, and yet a panic-struck pusillanimity, which shrunk from supporting that Wallace whom those thanes chose to abandon, carried the spirit of slavery from the platform before the council tent, to the chieftains who thronged the ranks of Ruthven, and even to the perversion of some few who had followed the golden-haired standard of Bothwell. The brave troops of Lanark (which the desperate battle of Dalkeith reduced to not more than sixty men) alone remained unmoved; so catching is the quailing spirit of doubt, abjectness, and fearful submission.

In the moment when the indignant Ruthven saw his Perthshire legions rolling off toward the trumpet of Le de Spencer, Scrymgeour placed himself at the head of the men of Lanark. Unfurling the banner of Scotland, he marched with a steady step to the tent of Bothwell, whither he did not doubt that Wallace had retired. He found him assuaging the impassioned grief of Edwin, and striving to moderate the vehement wrath of the faithful Murray, "Pour not out the energy of your soul upon these worthless men!" said he; "leave them to the fates they seek--the fates they have incurred by the innocent blood shed this day! The few brave hearts who yet remain loyal to this country, are insufficient to stem at this spot the torrent of corruption. Retire beyond the Forth, my friend. Rally all true Scots around Huntingtower. Let the royal inmate proclaim himself, and, at the foot of the Grampians, lock the gates of the Highlands upon our enemies. From those bulwarks he will issue in strength, and Scotland may again be free!"

"Free, but never more honored!" cried Edwin; "never more beloved by me! Ungrateful, treacherous, base land," added he, starting on his feet, and raising his clasped hands with the vehement abjuration of an indignant spirit; "oh, that the salt sea would ingulf thee at once--that thy name and thy ingratitude could be no more remembered! I will never wear a sword for her again."

"Edwin!" ejaculated Wallace, in a reproachful, yet tender tone.

"Exhort me not to forgive my country!" returned he; "tell me to take my deadliest foe to my breast--to pardon the assassin who strikes his steel into my heart, and I will obey you; but to pardon Scotland for the injury she has done to you--for the disgrace with which her self-debasement stains this cheek I never, never can! I abhor these sons of Lucifer. Think not, noblest of masters, dearest of friends," cried he, throwing himself at Wallace's feet, "that I will ever shine in the light of those envious stars which have displayed the sun! No tibi soli shall henceforth be the impress on my shield; to thee alone will I ever turn; and till your beams restore your country and revive me, the springing laurels of Edwin Ruthven shall whither where they grew!"

Wallace folded him to his heart; a tear stood in his eyes, while he said in a low voice:

"If thou art mine, thou art Scotland's. Me, she rejects. Mysterious Heaven wills that I should quit my post; but for thee, Edwin, as a relic of the fond love I yet bear this wretched country, abide by her, bear with her, cherish her, defend her for my sake; and if Bruce lives, he will be to thee a second Wallace, a friend, a brother!"

Edwin listened, wept, and sobbed, but his heart was fixed; unable to speak, he broke from his friend's arms, and hurried into an interior apartment to subdue his emotions by pouring them forth to God.

Ruthven joined in determined opinion with Bothwell, that if ever a civil war could be sanctified, this was the time; and in spite of all that Wallace could urge against the madness of contending for his supremacy over a nation which would not yield him obedience, still they remained firm in their resolution. Bruce they hardly dared hope could recover; and to relinquish the guiding hand of their best approved leader at this crisis, was a sacrifice, they said, no earthly power should compel them to make.

"So far from it," cried Lord Bothwell, dropping on his knees, and grasping the cross hilt of his sword in both hands, "I swear by the blood of the crucified Lord of this ungrateful world, that should Bruce die, I will obey no other king of Scotland than William Wallace!"

Wallace turned ashy pale as he listened to this vow. At that moment Scrymgeour entered, followed by the Lanark veterans, and all kneeling down, repeated the oath of Bothwell; then starting up, called on the outraged chief, by the unburied corpse of his murdered Ker, to lead them forth and avenge them of his enemies.

When the agitation of his soul would allow him to speak to this faithful group, Wallace stretched his hands over them, and with such tears as a father would shed who looks on the children he is to behold no more, he said, in a subdued and faltering voice, "God will avenge our murdered friend; my sword is sheathed forever. May that holy Being, who is the true and best King of the virtuous, always be present with you! I feel your love, and I appreciate it. But Bothwell, Ruthven, Lockhart, Scrymgeour, my faithful Lanark followers, leave me awhile to compose my scattered thoughts. Let me pass this night alone, and to-morrow you shall know the resolution of your grateful Wallace!"

The shades of evening were closing in, and the men of Lanark, first obtaining his permission to keep guard before the wood which skirted the tent, respectfully kissing his hand, withdrew. Ruthven called Edwin from the recess, whither he had retired to unburden his grief: but as soon as he heard that it was the resolution of his friends to preserve the authority of Wallace or to perish in the contest, the gloom passed from his fair brow, a smile of triumph parted his lips, and he exclaimed:

"All will be well again. We shall force this deluded nation to recognize her safety and her honor!"

While the determined chiefs held discourse so congenial with the wishes of the youthful knight, Wallace sat almost silent. He seemed revolving some momentous idea: he frequently turned his eyes on the speakers with a fixed regard, which appeared rather full of a grave sorrow than demonstrative of any sympathy on the subjects of their discussion. On Edwin he at times looked with penetrating tenderness; and when the bell from the neighboring convent sounded the hour of rest, he stretched out his hand to him with a smile, which he wished should speak of comfort as well as of affection; but the soul spoke more eloquently than he had intended: his smile was mournful, and the attempt to render it otherwise, like a transient light over a dark sepulcher, only the more distinctly showed the gloom and melancholy within.

"And am I, too, to leave you?" said Edwin.

"Yes, my brother," replied Wallace; "I have much to do with my own thoughts this night. We separate now to meet more gladly hereafter. I must have solitude to arrange my plans. To-morrow you shall know them. Meanwhile farewell!"

As he spoke he pressed the affectionate youth to his breast, and, warmly grasping the hands of his three other friends, bade them an earnest adieu.

Bothwell lingered a moment at the tent-door, and looking back, "Let your first plan be, that to-morrow you lead us to Lord Soulis' quarters, to teach the traitor what it is to be a Scot and a man!"

"My plans shall be deserving of my brave colleagues," replied Wallace; "and whether they be executed on this or the other side of the Forth, you shall find, my long-tried Bothwell, that Scotland's peace and the honor of her best sons are the dearest considerations of your friend."

When the door closed, and Wallace was left alone, he stood for awhile in the midst of the tent, listening to the departing steps of his friends. When the last sound died on his ear, "I shall hear them no more!" cried he; and throwing himself into a seat, he remained for an hour in a trance of grievous thoughts. Melancholy remembrances and prospects dire for Scotland pressed upon his surcharged heart. "It is to God alone I must confide my country!" cried he; "His mercy will pity its madness, and forgive its deep transgressions. My duty is to remove the object of ruin far from the power of any longer exciting jealousy or awakening zeal." With these words, he took a pen in his hand to write to Bruce.

He briefly narrated the events which compelled him, if he would avoid the grief of having occasioned a civil war, to quit his country forever. The general hostility of the nobles, the unresisting acquiescence of the people in measures which menaced his life and sacrificed the freedom for which he had so long fought, convinced him, he said, that his warlike commission was now closed. He was summoned by Heaven to exchange the field for the cloister; and to the monastery at Chartres he was now hastening, to dedicate the remainder of his days to the peace of a future world. He then exhorted Bruce to confide in the Lords Ruthven and Bothwell, as his soul would commune with his spirit, for he would find them true unto death. He counseled him, as the leading measure to circumvent the treason of Scotland's enemies, to go immediately to Kilchurn Castle, where he knew resources would be; for Loch-awe, who retired thither on the last approach of De Warenne, meaning to call out his vassals for that emergency, needed it not then; for the battle of Dalkeith was fought and gained before they could leave their heights, and the victor did not want them afterward. To use those brave and simple-hearted men for his establishment on the throne of his kingdom, Wallace advised Bruce. And so, amidst the natural fortresses of the Highlands, he might recover his health, collect his friends, and openly proclaim himself. "Then," added he, "when Scotland is your oqn, let its bulwarks be its mountains and its people's arms. Dismantle and raze to the ground the castles of those base chiefs who have only embattled them to betray and enslave their country." Though intent on these political suggestions, he ceased not to remember his own brave engines of war; and he earnestly conjured his prince that he would wear the valiant Kirkpatrick as a buckler on his heart; that he would place Scrymgeour with his Lanark veterans, and the faithful Grimsby next him as his body-guard; and that he would love and cherish the brave and tender Edwin for his sake. "When my prince and friend receives this," added he, "Wallace shall have bidden an eternal farewell to Scotland; but his heart will be amidst its hills. My king, and the friends most dear to me will still be there! The earthly part of my beloved wife rests within its bosom! But I go to rejoin her soul; to meet it in the vigils of days consecrated wholly to the blessed Being in whose presence she rejoices forever. This is no sad destiny, my dear Bruce. Our Almighty Captain recalls me from dividing with you the glory of maintaining the liberty of Scotland, but he brings me closer to himself: I leave the plains of Gilgal to tread with his angel the courts of my God. Mourn not, then, my absence; for my prayers will be with you till we are again united in the only place where you can fully know me as I am--thine and Scotland's never-dying friend! Start not at the bold epithet. My body may sink into the grave, but the affections of my immortal spirit are eternal as its essence, and, in earth or in heaven, I am ever yours.

"Should the endearing Helen--my heart's sister--be near your couch when you read this, tell her that Wallace, in idea, presses her virgin cheek with a brother's farewell; and from his inmost soul he blesses her."

Messages of respectful adieus he sent to Isabella, Lady Ruthven, and the sage of Ercildown; and then kneeling down in that posture, he wrote his last invocations for the prosperity and happiness of Bruce.

This letter finished, with a more tranquil mind he addressed Lord Ruthven; detailing to him his reasons for leaving such faithful friends so clandestinely; and after mentioning his purpose of proceeding to France, he ended with those expressions of gratitude which the worthy chief so well deserved; and exhorting him to transfer his public zeal for him to the maguanimous and royal Bruce, closed the letter with begging him, for the sake of his friend, his king, and his country, to return immediately with all his followers to Huntingtower, and there to rally round their prince. His letter to Scrymgeour spoke nearly the same language. But when he began to write to Bothwell, to bid him that farewell which his heart foreboded would be forever in this world--to part from this, his steady companion in arms, his dauntless champion! he lost some of his composure; and his handwriting testified the emotion of his mind. How, then, was he shaken when he addressed the young and devoted Edwin, the brother of his soul? He dropped the pen from his hand. At that moment he felt all he was going to relinquish, and he exclaimed, "Oh, Scotland! my ungrateful country; what is it you do? Is it thus that you repay your most faithful servants? Is it not enough that the wife of my bosom, the companion of my youth, should be torn from me by your enemies; but your hand must wrest from my bereaved heart its every other solace? You snatch from me my friends; you would deprive me of my life. To preserve you from that crime, I imbitter the cup of death; I go far from the tombs of my fathers--from the grave of my Marion, where I have fondly hoped to rest!" His head sunk on his arm; his heart gave way under the pressure of accumulated regrets, and floods of tears poured from his eyes. Deep and frequent were his sighs--but none answered him. Friendship was far distant; and where was that gentle being who would have soothed his sorrow on her bosom? She it was he lamented. "Dreary, dreary solitude!" cried he, looking around him with an aghast perception of all that he had lost! "how have I been mocked for these three long years! What is renown? what the loud acclaim of admiring throngs? what the loud acclaim of admiring throngs? what the bended knees of worshiping gratefulness but breath and vapor! It seems to shelter the mountain's top; the blast comes; it rolls from its sides; and the lonely hill is left to all the storm! So stand I, my Marion, when bereft of thee. In weal or woe, thy smiles, thy warm embrace, were mine; my head reclined on that faithful breast, and still I found my home, my heaven. But now, desolate and alone, ruin is around me. Destruction waits on all who would steal one pang from the racked heart of William Wallace!--even pity is no more for me. Take me, then, O Power of Mercy!" cried he, stretching forth his hands, "take me to Thyself!"

At these words, a peal of thunder burst on his ear, and seemed to roll over his tent, till, passing off toward the west, it died away in long and solemn reverberation. Wallace rose from his knee, on which he had sunk at this awful response to his Heaven-directed adjuration. "Thou callest me, my Father!" cried he, with a holy confidence dilating his soul. "I go from the world to Thee! I come, and before Thy altars know no human weakness."

In a paroxysm of sacred enthusiasm he rushed from the tent, and, reckless whither he went, struck into the depths of Roslyn woods. With the steps of the wind he pierced their remotest thickets. He reached their boundary--it was traversed by a rapid stream, but that did not stop his course; he sprung over it, and, ascending its moonlight bank, was startled by the sound of his name. Grimsby, attended by a youth, stood before him. The veteran expressed amazement at meeting his master alone at this hour, unhelmeted and unarmed, and in so dangerous a direction. "The road," said he, "between this and Stirling is beset with your enemies." Instead of noticing this information, Wallace inquired what news he brought from Huntingtower. "The worst," said he. "By this time the royal Bruce is no more!" Wallace gasped convulsively, and fell against a tree. Grimsby paused. In a few minutes the heart-struck chief was able to speak. "Listen not to my groans for unhappy Scotland!" cried he; "show me all that is in this last vial of wrath."

Grimsby informed him that Bruce being so far recovered as to have left his sick chamber for the family apartment, while he was sitting with the ladies, a letter was brought to Lady Helen. She opened it, read a few lines, and fell senseless into the arms of her sister. Bruce snatched the packet, but not a word did he speak till he had perused it to the end. It was from the Countess Strathearn, written in the triumph of revenge, cruelly exulting in what she termed the demonstration of Wallace's guilt; congratulating herself on having been the primary means of discovering it, and boasting that his once adored Scotland now held him in such detestation as to have doomed him to die. It was this denunciation which had struck to the soul of Helen; and while the anxious Lady Ruthven removed her inanimate form into another room, Bruce read the barbarous triumphs of this disappointed woman. "No power on earth can save him now," continued she; "your doting heart must yield him, Helen, to another rest than your bridal chamber. His iron breast has met with others as adamantine as his own. A hypcrite! he feels not pity; he knows no beat of human sympathies; and like a rock, he falls, unpitied, undeplored--undeplored by all but you, lost, self-deluded girl! My noble lord, the princely De Warenne, informs me that William Wallace would be burned as a double traitor in England, and a price is now set upon his head in Scotland! hence, there is safety for him no more. Those his base-born heart has outraged shall be avenged; and his cries for mercy, who will answer? No voice on earth! None dare support the man whom friends and enemies abandon to destruction!"

"Yes," cried Bruce, starting from his seat, "I will support him, thou damned traitress! Bruce will declare himself! Bruce will throw himself before his friend, and in his breast receive every arrow meant for that godlike heart! Yes," cried he, glancing on the terrified looks of Isabella, who believed that his delirium was returned. "I would snatch him in these arms, from their murderous flames, did all the fiends of hell guard their infernal fire!" Not a word more did he utter, but darting from the apartment, was soon seen before the barbican-gate, armed from head to foot. Grimsby stood there, to whom he called to bring him a horse, "for that the Light of Scotland was in danger." Grimsby, who understood by that term, his beloved master was in peril, instantly obeyed; and Bruce, as instantly mourning, struck his rowels into the horse, and was out of sight ere Grimsby could reach his stirrup to follow.

But that faithful soldier speeded after him like the win, and came in view of Bruce just as he was leaping a chasm in the mountain path. The horse struck his heel against a loose stone, and it giving way, he fell headlong into the deep ravine. At the moment of his disappearance, Grimsby rushed toward the spot, and saw the animal struggling in the agonies of death at the bottom. Bruce lay insensible, amongst some bushes which grew nearer the top. With difficulty the honest Englishman got him dragged to the surface of the hill; and finding all attempts to recover him ineffectual, he laid him on his own beast, and so carried him slowly back to the castle. The assiduities of the sage of Ercildown restored him to life, but not to recollection. "The fever returned on him, with a delirium, so hopeless of recovery," continued Grimsby, "that the Lady Helen, who again seems like an inspired angel amongst us, has sent me with this youth to implore you to come to Huntingtower, and there embattle yourself against your own and your prince's enemies."

"Send me," cried Walter Hay, grasping Wallace's hand, "send me back to Lady Helen, and let me tell her that our benefactor, the best guardian of our country, will not abandon us! Should you depart, Scotland's genius will go with you! again she must sink, again she will be in ruins. De Valence will regain possession of my dear lady, and you will not be near to save her."

"Grimsby, Walter, my friends!" cried Wallace, in an agitated voice, "I do not abandon Scotland; she drives me from her. Would she have allowed me, I would have borne her in my arms until my latest gasp; but it must not be so. I resign her into the Almighty hands, to which I commit myself; they will also preserve the Lady Helen from violence. I cannot forego my trust, for the Bruce also! If he live, he will protect her for my sake; and should he died, Bothwell and Ruthven will cherish her for their own."

"But you will return with us to Huntingtower," cried Grimsby. "Disguised in these peasant's garments, which we have brought for the purpose, you may pass through the legions of the regent with perfect security."

"Let me implore you, if not for your own sake, for ours! Pity our desolation, and save yourself for them who can know no safety when you are gone!"

Walter clung to his arm while uttering this supplication. Wallace looked tenderly upon him.

"I would save myself; and I will, please God," said he; "but by no means unworthy of myself. I go, but not under any disguise. Openly have I defended Scotland, and openly will I pass through her lands. The chalice of Heaven consecrated me the champion of my country, and no Scot dare lift a hostile hand against this anointed head."

The soul of Wallace swelled high, but devoutly, while uttering this.

"Whither you go," cried Grimsby, "let me follow you, in joy or in sorrow!"

"And me, too, my benefactor!" rejoined Walter, "and when you look on us, think not that Scotland is altogether ungrateful!"

"My faithful friend," returned he, "whither I go, I must go alone. And as a proof of your love, grant me your obedience this once. Rest amongst these thickets till morning. At sunrise, repair to our camp; there you will know my destination. But till Bruce proclaims himself at the head of the country's armies, for my sake never reveal to mortal man, that he who lies debilitated by sickness at Huntingtower, is other than Sir Thomas de Longueville."

"Rest we cannot," replied Grimsby; "but still we will obey our master. You command me to adhere to Bruce; to serve him till the hour of his death! I will--but should he die, then I may seek you, and be again your faithful servant?"

"You will find me before the cross of Christ," returned Wallace, "with saints my fellow-soldiers, and God my only King! Till then, Grimsby, farewell. Walter, carry my fidelity to your mistress. She will share my thoughts, with the Blessed Virgin of Heaven, for in all my prayers shall her name be remembered."

Grimsby and Walter, struck by the holy solemnity of his manner, fell on their knees before him. Wallace raised his hands:

"Bless, O Father of Light!" cried he, "bless this unhappy land, when Wallace is no more; let his memory be lost in the virtues and prosperity of Robert Bruce!"

Grimsby sunk on the earth, and gave way to a burst of manly sorrow. Walter hid his weeping face in the folds of his master's mantle, which had fallen from his shoulders to the ground. Lost in grief, no thought seemed to exist in the young man's heart but the resolution to live only for his persecuted benefactor; and to express this vow with all the energy of determined devotedness, he looked up to seek the face of Wallace--but Wallace had disappeared; and all that remained, to the breaking hearts of his faithful servants, was the tartan plaid which they had clasped in their arms.

LXXIX. Lumloch

Wallace, having turned abruptly away from his lamenting servants, struck into the deep defiles of the Pentland Hills. They pointed to different tracks. Aware that the determined affection of some of his friends might urge them to dare the perils attendant on his fellowship, he hesitated a moment which path to take. Certainly not toward Huntingtower, to bring immediate destruction on its royal inhabitant. Nor to any chieftain of the Highlands, to give rise to a spirit of civil warfare. Neither would he pursue the eastern track; for in that direction, as pointing to France, his friends would most likely seek him. He therefore turned his steps toward the ports of Ayr. The road was circuitous; but it would soon enough take him from the land of his fathers--from the country he must never see again!

As morning dispelled the shades of night, it discovered still more dreary glooms. A heavy mist hung over the hills, and rolled before him along the valley. Still he pursued his way, although, the day advanced, the vapors collected into thicker blackness, and, floating down the heights, at last burst into a deluge of rain. All around was darkened by the descending water; and the accumulating floods, dashing from the projecting craigs above, swelled the burn in his path to a roaring river. Wallace stood in the torrent, with its wild waves breaking against his sides. The rain fell on his uncovered head, and the chilling blast sighed in his streaming hair. Looking around him, he paused amidst this tumult of nature. "Must there be strife, even amongst the elements, to show that this is no longer a land for me? Spirits of these hills," cried he, "pour not thus your rage on a banished man! A man without a friend, without a home." He started and smiled at his own adjuration. "The spirits of Heaven launch not this tempest on a defenseless head; 'tis chance!--but affliction shapes all things to its own likeness. Thou, oh, my Father! would not suffer any demon of the air to bend thy broken reed! Therefore rain on, ye torrents; ye are welcome to William Wallace. He can well breast the mountain's storm, who has stemmed the ingratitude of his country."

Hills, rivers, and vales were measured by his solitary steps, till entering on the heights of Clydesdale, the broad river of his native glen spread its endeared waters before him. Not a wave passed along that had not kissed the feet of some scene consecrated to his memory. Over the western hills lay the lands of his forefathers. There he had first drawn his breath; there he imbibed from the lips of his revered grandfather, now no more, those lessons of virtue by which he had lived, and for which he was now ready to die. Far to the left stretched the wide domains of Lammington: there his youthful heart first knew the pulse of love: there all nature smiled upon him, for Marion was near, and hope hailed him, from every sunlit mountain's brow. Onward in the depths of the cliffs, lay Ellerslie, the home of his heart, where he had tasted the joys of Paradise; but all there, like that once blessed place, now lay in one wide ruin.

"Shall I visit thee again?" said he, as he hurried along the beetling craigs; "Ellerslie! Ellerslie," cried he; "'tis no hero, no triumphant warrior, that approaches! Receive--shelter thy deserted, widowed master! I come, my Marion, to mourn thee in thine own domains!"

He flew forward; he ascended the cliffs; he rushed down the hazel-crowned pathway--but it was no longer smooth; thistles, and thickly-interwoven underwood, obstructed his steps. Breaking through them all, he turned the angle of the rock--the last screen between him and the view of his once beloved home. On this spot he used to stand on moonlight evenings, watching the graceful form of his Marion, as she passed to and fro within her chamber. His eyes now turned instinctively to the point, but it gazed on vacancy. His home had disappeared: one solitary tower alone remained, standing like "a hermit, the last of his race," to mourn over the desolation of all by which it had once been surrounded. Not a human being now moved on the spot which, three years before, was thronged with his grateful vassals. Not a voice was now heard, where then sounded the harp of Halbert--where breathed the soul-entrancing song of his beloved Marion!

"Death!" cried he, striking his breast, "how many ways hast thou to bereave poor mortality! All, all gone! My Marion sleeps in Bothwell: the faithful Halbert at her feet. And my peasantry of Lanark, how many of you have found untimely graves in the bosom of your vainly rescued country!"

A few steps forward, and he stood on a mound of moldering fragments, heaped over the pavement of what had been the hall.

"My wife's blood marks the stones beneath!" cried he.

He flung himself on the ruins, and a groan burst from his heart. It echoed mournfully from the opposite rock. He started and gazed around.

"Solitude!" cried he, with a faint smile; "naught is here, but Wallace and his sorrow. Marion! I call, and even thou dost not answer me; thou, who didst ever fly at the sound of my voice! Look on me, love!" exclaimed he, stretching his arms toward the sky; "look on me, and for once, till ever, cheer thy lonely, heart-stricken Wallace!"

Tears choked his further utterance; and once more laying his head upon the stones, he wept in silence, till exhausted natured found repose in sleep.

The sun was gilding the gray summits of the ruined tower under whose shadow he lay, when Wallace slowly opened his eyes; looking around him, he smote his breast, and with a heavy groan sunk back upon the stones. In the silence which succeeded this burst of memory, he thought he heard a rustling near him, and a half-suppressed sigh. He listened breathless. The sigh was repeated. He gently raised himself on his hand, and with an expectation he dared hardly whisper to himself, turned toward the spot whence the sound proceeded. The branches of a rose-tree that had been planted by his Marion, shook and scattered the leaves of its ungathered flowers upon the brambles which grew beneath. Wallace rose in agitation. The skirts of a human figure appeared, retreating behind the ruins. He advanced toward it, and beheld Edwin Ruthven. The moment their eyes met, Edwin precipitated himself at his feet, and clinging to him, exclaimed:

"Pardon me this pursuit! But we meet to part no more."

Wallace raised him, and strained him to his breast in silence. Edwin, in hardly articulate accents, continued:

"Some kind power checked your hand when writing to your Edwin. You could not command him not to follow you! you left the letter unfinished, and thus I come to bless you for not condemning me to die of a broken heart!"

"I did not write farewell to thee," cried Wallace, looking mournfully on him, "but I meant it, for I must part from all I love in Scotland. It is my doom. The country needs me not, and I have need of Heaven. I go into its outcourts at Chartres. Follow me there, dear boy, when thou hast accomplished thy noble career on earth, and then our gray hairs shall mingle together over the altar of the God of Peace; but now receive the farewell of thy friend. Return to Bruce, and be to him the dearest representative of William Wallace."

"Never!" cried Edwin; "thou alone art my prince, my friend, my brother, my all in this world! My parents, dear as they are, would have buried my youth in a cloister, but your name called me to honor, and to you, in life or in death, I dedicate my being."

"Then," returned Wallace, "that honor summons you to the side of the dying Bruce. He is now in the midst of his foes."

"And where art thou?" interrupted Edwin; "who drove thee hence but enemies? who line these roads, but wretches sent to betray their benefactor? No, my friend, thy fate shall be my fate--thy woe my woe! We live, or we die together: the field, the cloister, or the tomb--all shall be welcomed by Edwin Ruthven, if they separate him not from thee!" Seeing that Wallace was going to speak, and fearful that it was to repeat his commands to be left alone, he suddenly exclaimed with vehemence: "Father of men and angels! grant me thy favor only as I am true to the vow I have sworn, never more to leave the side of Sir William Wallace!"

To urge the dangers in which such a resolution would expose this too faithful friend, Wallace knew would be in vain: he read an invincible determination in the eye and gesture of Edwin; and, therefore, yielding to the demands of friendship, he threw himself upon his neck.

"For thy sake, Edwin, I will endure yet awhile mankind at large! Thy bloom of honor shall not be cropped by my hand. We will go together to France; and while I seek a probationary quiet in some of its remote cities, thou mayest bear the standard of Scotland, in the land of our ally, against the proud enemies of Bruce."

"Make of me what you will," returned Edwin, "only do not divide me from yourself!"

Wallace explained to his friend his design of crossing the hills to Ayrshire, in some port of which he did not doubt finding some vessel bound for France. Edwin overturned this plan by telling him that in the moment the abthanes repledged their secret faith to England, they sent orders into Ayrshire to watch the movements of Wallace's relations, and to prevent their either hearing of or marching to the assistance of their wronged kinsman. And besides this, no sooner was it discovered by the insurgent lords at Roslyn that he had disappeared from the camp, than, supposing he meant to appeal to Philip, they dispatched expresses all along the western and eastern coasts, from the Friths of Forth and Clyde to those of Solway and Berwick-upon-Tweed, to intercept him. On hearing this, and that all avenues from the southern parts of his country were closed upon him, Wallace determined to try the north. Some bay in the Western Highlands might open its yet not ungrateful arms to set its benefactor free! "If not by a ship," continued Edwin, "a fisher's boat will launch us from a country no longer worthy of you!"

Their course was then taken along the Cartlane Craigs, at a distance from villages and mountain cots, which, leaning from their verdant heights, seemed to invite the traveler to refreshment and repose. Though the sword of Wallace had won them this quiet, though his wisdom, like the hand of Creation, had spread the lately barren hills with beauteous harvest, yet had an ear of corn been asked in his name, it would have been denied. A price was set upon his head, and the lives of all who should succor him would be forfeited! He who had given bread and homes to thousands was left to perish--had no where to shelter his head. Edwin looked anxiously on him as at times they sped silently along: "Ah!" thought he, "this heroic endurance of evil is the true cross of our celestial Captain! Let who will carry his insignia to the Holy Land, here is the man who bears the real substance, that walks undismayed in the path of his sacrificed Lord!"

The black plumage of a common Highland bonnet, which Edwin had purchased at one of the cottages to which he had gone alone to buy a few oaten cakes, hung over the face of his friend. That face no longer blazed with the fire of generous valor--it was pale and sad; but whenever he turned his eyes on Edwin, the shades which seemed to envelop it disappeared, a bright smile spoke the peaceful consciousness within, a look of grateful affection expressed his comfort at having found, in defiance of every danger, he was not yet wholly forsaken. Edwin's youthful, happy spirit rejoiced in every glad beam which shone on the face of him he loved. It awoke felicity in his breast. To be occasionally near Wallace to share his confidence with others, had always filled him with joy, but now to be the only one on whom his noble heart leaned for consolation, was bliss unutterable. He trod on air, and even chid his beating heart for a delight which seemed to exult when his friend suffered: "But not so," ejaculated he internally; "to be with thee is the delight! In life or in death thy presence is the sunshine of my soul!"

When they arrived within sight of the high towers of Bothwell Castle, Wallace stopped. "We must not go thither," said Edwin, replying to the sentiment which spoke from the eyes of his friend; "the servants of my cousin Andrew may not be as faithful as their lord!"

"I will not try them," returned Wallace, with a resigned smile; "my presence in Bothwell Chapel shall not pluck danger on the head of my dauntless Murray. She wakes in heaven for me whose body sleeps there; and knowing where to find the jewel, my friend, shall I linger over the vacated casket?"

While he yet spoke, a chieftain on horseback suddenly emerged from the trees which led to the castle, and drew to their side. Edwin was wrapped in his plaid, and, cautiously concealing his face that no chance of his recognition might betray his companion, he walked briskly on, without once looking at the stranger. But Wallace, being without any shade over the noble contour of a form which for majesty and grace was unequaled in Scotland, could not be mistaken. He, too, moved swiftly forward. The horseman spurred after him. Perceiving himself pursued, and therefore known, and aware that he must be overtaken, he suddenly stopped. Edwin drew his sword, and would have given it into the hand of his friend; but Wallace, putting it back, rapidly answered: "Leave my defense to this unweaponed arm. I would not use steel against my countrymen, but none shall take me while I have a sinew to resist."

The chieftain now checked his horse in front of Wallace, and respectfully raising his visor, discovered Sir John Monteith. At sight of him Edwin dropped the point of his yet unlifted sword; and Wallace, stepping back, "Monteith," said he, "I am sorry for this rencounter. If you would be safe from the destiny which pursues me, you must retire immediately, and forget that we have met."

"Never," cried Monteith; "I know the ingratitude of an envious country drives the bravest of her champions from our borders, but I also know what belongs to myself! To serve you at all hazards! And by conjuring you to become my guest, in my castle on the Frith of Clyde, I would demonstrate my grateful sense of the dangers you once incurred for me, and I therefore thank fortune for this rencounter."

In vain Wallace expressed his determination not to bring peril on any of his countrymen, by sojourning under any roof till he were far away from Scotland. In vain he urged to Monteith the outlawry which would await him should the infuriated abthanes discover that he had given shelter to the man whom they had chosen to suppose a traitor, and denounce as one. Monteith, after equally unsuccessful persuasion on his side, at last said, that he knew a vessel was lying at Newark, near his castle, in which Wallace might immediately embark: and he implored him, by past friendship, to allow him to be his guide to its anchorage. To enforce this supplication, he threw himself off his horse, and, with protestations of a fidelity that trampled on all comfort he should ever know in his now degraded country. "Once I saw Scotland's steady champion, the brave Douglas, rifled from her shores! Do not then doom me to a second grief, bitterer than the first; do not you yourself drive me from the side of her last hero! Ah! let me behold you, companion of my school-days, friend, leader, benefactor! till the sea wrests you forever from my eyes!" Exhausted and affected, Wallace gave his hand to Monteith; the tear of gratitude stood in his eye. He looked affectionately from Monteith to Edwin, from Edwin to Monteith: "Wallace shall yet live in the memory of the trusty of this land! you, my friend, prove it. I go richly forth, for the hearts of good men are my companions."

As they journeyed along the devious windings of the Clyde, and saw at a distance the aspiring turrets of Rutherglen, Edwin pointed to them, and said, "From that church a few months ago did you dictate a conqueror's terms to England."

"And now that very England makes me a fugitive," returned Wallace.

"Oh! not England!" interrupted Edwin; "you bow not to her. It is blind, mad Scotland, who thus thrusts her benefactor from her."

"Ah! then, my Edwin," rejoined he, "read in me this history of thousands. So various is the fate of a people's idol; to-day he is worshiped as a god, to-morrow cast into the fire!"

Monteith turned pale at this conversation; and quickening his steps, hurried in silence past the opening of the valley which presented the view of Rutherglen.

Night overtook the travelers near the little village of Lumloch, about two hours' journey from Glasgow. Here a storm coming on, Monteith advised his friends to take shelter and rest. "As you object to implicate others," said he, "you may sleep secure in an old barn which at present has no ostensible owner. I remarked it while passing this way from Newark. But I rather wish you would forget this too chary regard for others, and lodge with me in the neighboring cottage."

Wallace was insensible to the pelting of the elements; his unsubdued spirit wanted rest for neither mind nor body; but the broken voice and lingering step of the young Edwin, who had severely sprained his foot in the dark, penetrated his heart; and notwithstanding that the resolute boy, suddenly rallying himself, declared that he was neither weary nor in pain, Wallace seeing he was both, yielded a sad consent to be conducted from the storm. "But not," said he, "to the house. We will go into the barn, and there, on the dry earth, my Edwin, we may gratefully repose."

Monteith did not oppose him further, and pushing open the door, Wallace and Edwin entered. Their conductor soon after followed with a light from the cottage; and pulling down some heaped straw, strewed it on the ground for a bed. "Here I shall sleep like a prince!" cried Edwin, throwing himself along the scattered truss.

"But not," returned Monteith, "till I have disengaged you from your wet garments, and preserved your arms and brigandine from the rust of this night."

Edwin, sunk in weariness, said little in opposition; and having suffered Monteith to take away his sword and to unbrace his plated vest, dropped at once on the straw in a profound sleep.

Wallace, that he might not disturb him by debate, yielded to the request of Monteith; and having resigned his armor also, waved him a good-night. Monteith nodded the same, and closed the door upon his victims.

Well known to the generals of King Edward as one who estimated his honor as a mere counter of traffic, Sir John Monteith was considered by them all as a hireling fit for any purpose. Though De Warenne had been persuaded to use unworthy means to intimidate his great opponent, he would have shrunk from being a coadjutor of treachery. His removal from the lord-wardenship of Scotland, in consequence of the wounds he had received at Dalkeith, opened a path to the elevation of Aymer de Valence. And when he was named viceroy in the stead of De Warenne, he told Edward that if he would authorize him to offer an earldom, with adequate estates, to Sir John Monteith, the old friend of Wallace, he was sure so rapacious a chieftain would traverse sea and land to put that formidable Scot in the hands of England. To incline Edward to the proffer of so large a bribe, De Valence instanced Monteith's having volunteered, while he commanded with Sir Eustace Maxwell on the borders, to betray the forces under him to the English general. The treachery was accepted; and for its execution he received a casket of uncounted gold. Some other proofs of his devotion to England were mentioned by De Valence.

"You mean his devotion to money," replied the king, "and if that will make him ours at this crisis, give him overflowing coffers, but no earldom! Though I must have the head of Wallace, I would not have one of my peers show a title written in his blood. Ill deeds must sometimes be done; but we do not emblazon their perpetrators!"

De Valence having received his credentials, sent Haliburton (a Scottish prisoner, who bought his liberty too dear by such an embassage) to impart to Sir John Monteith the King of England's approval. Monteith was then castellan of Newark, where he had immured himself for many months, under a pretense of the reopening of old wounds; but the fact was his treasons were connected with so many accomplices that he feared some disgraceful disclosure, and therefore kept out of the way of exciting public attention. Avarice was his master passion; and the sudden idea that there might be treasure in the iron box, which, unwitting of such a thought at the time, he had consigned to Wallace, first bound him a sordid slave. His murmurs for having allowed the box to leave his possession, gave the alarm which caused the disasters at Ellerslie, and his own immediate arrest. He was then sent a prisoner to Cressingham at Stirling; but in his way thither he made his escape, though only to fall into the hands of Soulis. That inhuman chief threatened to return him to his dungeons; and to avoid such a misfortune, Monteith engaged in the conspiracy to bring Lady Helen from the priory to the arms of this monster. On her escape, Soulis would have wreaked his vengeance on his vile emissary; but Monteith, aware of his design, fled, and fled even into the danger he would have avoided. He fell in with a party of roaming Southrons, who conveyed him to Ayr. Once having immolated his honor, he kept no terms with conscience. Arnulf soon understood what manner of man was in his custody; and by sharing with him the pleasures of his table, soon drew from him every information respecting the strength and resources of his country. His after history was a series of secret treacheries to Scotland; and in return for them, an accumulation of wealth from England, the comtemplation of which seemed to be his sole enjoyment.

This new offer from De Valence was therefore greedily embraced. He happened to be at Rutherglen when Haliburton brought the proposal; and in the cloisters of its church** was its fell agreement signed. He transmitted an oath to De Valence that he would die or win his hire. And immediately dispatching spies to the camp at Roslyn, as soon as he was informed of Wallace's disappearance, he judged, from the knowledge of that chief's retentive affections, that whithersoever he intended finally to go, he would first visit Ellerslie, and the tomb of his wife. According to this opinion, he planted his emissaries in favorable situations on the road, and then proceeded himself to intercept his victim at the most probable places.

Not finding him at Bothwell, he was issuing forth to take the way to Ellerslie, when the object of his search presented himself at the opening of the wood. The evil plan too well succeeded.

Triumphant in his deceit, this master of hypocrisy left the barn, in which he had seen Wallace and his young friend lie down on that ground from which he had determined they should never more rise. Aware that the unconquerable soul of Wallace would never allow himself to be taken alive, he had stipulated with De Valence that the delivery of his head should entitle him to a full reward. From Rutherglen to Lumloch no place had presented itself in which he thought he could so judiciously plant an ambuscade to surprise the unsuspecting Wallace. And in this village he had stationed so large a force of ruthless savages (brought for the occasion by Haliburton from the Irish island of Rathlin), that their employer had hardly a doubt of this night being the last of his too-trusting friend's existence. These Rathliners neither knew of Wallace nor his exploits; but the lower order of Scots, however they might fear to succor his distress, loved his person, and felt so bound to him by his actions, that Monteith durst not apply to any one of them to second his villainy.

**The events of Wallace having dictated terms of peace with England, and Monteith pledging himself to that country's emissary to betray Wallace, having taken place in this church, are traditionary facts.

The hour of midnight passed, and yet he could not summon courage to lead his men to their nefarious attack. Twice they urged him, before he arose from his affected sleep--for sleep he could not; guilt had "murdered sleep!" and he lay awake, restless, and longing for the dawn; and yet, ere that dawn, the deed must be accomplished! A cock crew from the neighboring farm.

"That is the sign of morning, and we have yet done nothing," exclaimed a surly ruffian, who leaned on his battle-ax in an ssopposite corner of the apartment.

"No, it is the signal of our enemy's captivity!" cried Monteith. "Follow me, but gently. If ye speak a word or a single target rattle, before ye all fall upon him, we are lost. It is a being of supernatural might, not a mere man, whom ye go to encounter. He that first disables him shall have a double reward."

"Depend upon us," returned the sturdiest ruffian; and stealing cautiously out of the cottage, the party advanced with noiseless steps toward the barn. Monteith paused at the door, making a sign to his men to halt while he listened. He put his ear to a crevice--not a murmur was within. He gently raised the latch, and setting the door wide open, with his finger on his lip, beckoned his followers. Without venturing to draw a breath, they approached the threshold. The meridian moon shone full into the hovel, and shed a broad light upon their victims. The innocent face of Edwin rested on the bosom of his friend, and the arm of Wallace lay on the spread straw with which he had covered the tender body of his companion. So fair a picture of mortal friendship was never before beheld. But the hearts were blind which looked on it, and Monteith gave the signal. He retreated out of the door, while his men threw themselves forward to bind Wallace where he lay; but the first man, in his eagerness, striking his head against a joist in the roof, uttered a fierce oath. The noise roused Wallace, whose wakeful senses had rather slumbered than slept, and opening his eyes, he sprung on his feet.

A moment told him enemies were around. Seeing him rise, they rushed on him with imprecations. His eyes blazed like two terrible meteors; and, with a sudden motion of his arm, he seemed to hold the men at a distance, while his god-like figure stood, a tower in collected might. Awe-struck, they paused, but it was only for an instant. The sight of Edwin, now starting from his sleep, his aghast countenance, while he felt for his weapons, his cry when he recollected they were gone, inspired the assassins with fresh courage. Battle-axes, swords, and rattling chains, now flashed before the eyes of Wallace. The pointed steel in many places entered his body, while with part of a broken bench, which chanced to lie near him, he defended himself and Edwin from this merciless host. Edwin, seeing naught but the death of his friend before his sight, regardless of himself, made a spring from his side, and snatched a dagger from the belt of one of the murderers. The ruffian instantly caught the intrepid boy by the throat, and in that horrible clutch would certainly have deprived him of life had not the lion grasp of Wallace seized the man in his arms, and with a pressure that made his mouth and nostrils burst with blood, compelled him to forego his hold. Edwin released, Wallace dropped his assailant, who, staggering a few paces, fell senseless to the ground, and instantly expired.

The conflict now became doubly desperate--Edwin's dagger twice defended the breast of his friend. Two of his assassins he stabbed to the heart.

"Murder that urchin!" cried Monteith, who, seeing from without the carnage of his men, feared that Wallace might yet make his escape.

"Hah!" cried Wallace, at the sound of Monteith's voice giving such an order--"then we are betrayed--but not by Heaven! Strike, one of you, that angel youth," cried he, "and you will incur damnation!"

He spoke to the winds. They poured toward Edwin; Wallace, with a giant's strength, dispersed them as they advanced; the beam of wood fell on the heads, the breasts of his assailants. Himself bleeding at every pore, he felt not a smart while yet he defended Edwin. But a shout was heard from the door, a faint cry was heard at his side. He looked around. Edwin lay extended on the ground, with an arrow quivering in his breast, his closing eyes still looking upward to his friend. The beam fell from the hands of Wallace. He threw himself on his knees beside him. The dying boy pressed his hand to his heart, and dropped his head upon his bosom--Wallace moved not, spoke not. His hand was bathed in the blood of his friend, but not a pulse beat beneath it; no breath warmed the paralyzed chill of his face as it hung over the motionless lips of Edwin.

The men were more terrified at this unresisting stillness than at the invincible prowess of his arm, and stood gazing on him in mute wonder. But Monteith, in whom the fell appetite of avarice had destroyed every perception of humanity, sent in other ruffians with new orders to bind Wallace. They approached him with terror; two of the strongest stealing behind him, and taking advantage of his face being bent upon that of his murdered Edwin, each in the same moment seized his hands. As they griped them fast, the others advanced eagerly to fasten the bands, he looked calmly up, but it was a dreadful calm; it spoke of despair, of the full completion of all woe. "Bring chains," cried one of the men, "he will burst these thongs."

"You may bind me with a hair," said he; "I contend no more." The bonds were fastened on his wrists; and then, turning toward the lifeless body of Edwin, he raised it gently in his arms. The rosy red of youth yet tinged his cold cheek; his parted lips still beamed with the same--but the breath that had so sweetly informed them, was flown. "Oh! my best brother that ever I had," cried Wallace in a sudden transport, and kissing his pale forehead; "my sincerest friend in my greatest need! In thee was truth, manhood, and nobleness; in thee was all man's fidelity with woman's tenderness. My friend, my brother, oh! would to God I had died for thee!"

LXXX. Huntingtower

Lord Ruthven was yet musing, in fearful anxiety, on Wallace's solemn adieu, and the confirmation which the recitals of Grimsby and Hay had brought of his determined exile, when he was struck with a new consternation by the flight of his son. A billet, which Edwin had left with Scrymgeour, who guessed not its contents, told his father that he was gone to seek their friend, and to unite himself forever to his fortunes.

Bothwell not less eager to preserve Wallace to the world, with an intent to persuade him to at least abandon his monastic project, set off direct for France, hoping to arrive before his friend, and engage the French monarch to assist in preventing so grievous a sacrifice. Ruthven, meanwhile, fearful that the unarmed Wallace and the self-regardless Edwin might fall into the hands of the venal wretches now widely dispersed to seize the chief and his adherents, sent out the veterans, in divers disguises, to pursue the roads it was probable he might take, and finding him, guard him safely to the coast. Till Ruthven should receive accounts of their success, he forbore to forward the letter which Wallace had left for Bruce, or to increase the solicitude of the already anxious inhabitants of Huntingtower with any intimation of what had happened. But on the fourth day, Scrymgeour and his party returned with the horrible narrative of Lumloch.

After the murder of his youthful friend, Wallace had been loaded with irons, and conveyed, so unresistingly that he seemed in a stupor, on board a vessel, to be carried without loss of time to the Tower of London. Sir John Monteith, though he never ventured into his sight, attended as the accuser, who, to put a visor on cruelty, was to swear away his victim's life. The horror and grief of Ruthven at these tidings were unutterable; and Scrymgeour, to turn the tide of the bereaved father's thoughts to the inspiring recollection of the early glory of his son, proceeded to narrate, that he found the beauteous remains in the hovel, but bedecked with flowers by the village girls. They were weeping over it, and lamenting the pitiless heart which could slay such youth and loveliness. To bury him in so obscure a spot, Scrymgeour would not allow, and he had sent Stephen Ireland with the sacred corpse to Dumbarton, with orders to see him entombed in the chapel of that fortress.

"It is done," continued the worthy knight, "and those towers he so bravely scaled with stand forever the monument of Edwin Ruthven."

"Scrymgeour," said the stricken father, "the shafts fall thick upon us, but we must fulfill our duty."

Cautious of inflicting too heavy a blow on the fortitude of his wife and of Helen, he commanded Grimsby and Hay to withhold from everybody at Huntingtower the tidings of its young lord's fate; but he believed it his duty not to delay the letter of Wallace to Bruce, and the dreadful information to him of Monteith's treachery. Ruthven ended his short epistle to his wife by saying he should soon follow his messenger; but that at present he could not bring himself to entirely abandon the Lowlands to even a temporary empire of the seditious chiefs.

Ruthven ended his short epistle to his wife by saying he should soon follow his messenger; but that at present he could not bring himself to entirely abandon the Lowlands to even a temporary empire of the seditious chiefs.

On Grimsby's arrival at Huntingtower he was conducted immediately to Bruce. Some cheering symptoms having appeared that morning, he had just exchanged his bed for a couch when Grimsby entered the room. The countenance of the honest Southron was the harbinger of his news. Lady Helen started from her seat, and Bruce, stretching out his arms, eagerly caught the packets the soldier presented. Isabella inquired if all were well with Sir William Wallace; but ere he could make an answer, Lady Ruthven ran breathless into the room, holding out the open letter brought by Hay to her. Bruce had just read the first line of his, which announced the captivity of Wallace; and, with a groan that pierced through the souls of every one present, he made an attempt to spring from the couch; but in the act he reeled, and fell back in a fearful but mute mental agony. The apprehensive heart of Helen guessed some direful explanation; she looked with speechless inquiry upon her aunt and Grimsby. Isabella and Ercildown hastened to Bruce; and Lady Ruthven being too much appalled in her own feelings to think for a moment on the aghast Helen, hurriedly read to her from Lord Ruthven's letter the brief but decisive account of Wallace's dangerous situation--his seizure and conveyance to the Tower of England. Helen listened without a word; her heart seemed locked within her; her brain was on fire; and gazing fixedly on the floor while she listened, all else that was transacted around her passed unnoticed.

The pangs of a convulsion fit did not long shackle the determined Bruce. The energy of his spirit struggling to gain the side of Wallace in this his extreme need (for he well knew Edward's implacable soul), roused him from his worse than swoon. With his extended arms dashing away the restoratives with which both Isabella and Ercildown hung over him, he would have leaped on the floor had not the latter held him down.

"Withhold me not!" cried he; "this is not the time for sickness and indulgence. My friend is in the fangs of the tyrant, and shall I lie here? No, not for all the empires in the globe will I be detained another hour."

Isabella, affrighted at the furies which raged in his eyes, but yet more terrified at the perils attendant on his desperate resolution, threw herself at his feet, and implored him to stay for her sake.

"No," cried Bruce, "not for thy life, Isabella, which is dearer to me than my own! not to save this ungrateful country from the doom it merits would I linger one moment from the side of him who has fought, bled, and suffered for me and mine, who is now treated with ignominy, and sentenced to die, for my delinquency! Had I consented to proclaim myself on my landing, secure with Bruce the king envy would have feared to strike; but I must first win a fame like his! And while I lay here, they tore him from the vain and impotent Bruce! But, Almighty pardoner of my sins!" cried he, with vehemence, "grant me strength to wrest him from their grip, and I will go barefoot to Palestine, to utter all my gratitude!"

Isabella sunk weeping into the arms of her aunt. And the venerable Ercildown, wishing to curb an impetuosity which could only involve its generous agent in a ruin deeper than that it sought to revenge, with more zeal than judgment, urged to the prince the danger into which such boundless resentment would precipitate his own person. At this intimation the impassioned Bruce, stung to the soul that such an argument could be expected to have weight with him, solemnly bent his knees, and clasping his sword, vowed before Heaven "either to release Wallace or--" to share his fate! he would have added; but Isabella, watchful of his words, suddenly interrupted him, by throwing herself wildly on his neck, and exclaiming:

"Oh, say not so! Rather swear to pluck the tyrant from his throne; that the scepter of my Bruce may bless England, as it will yet do this unhappy land!"

"She says right!" ejaculated Ercildown, in a prophetic transport; "and the scepter of Bruce, in the hands of his offspring, shall bless the united countries to the latest generations! The walls of separation shall then be thrown down, and England and Scotland be one people."

Bruce looked steadfastly on the sage: "Then if thy voice utter holy verity, it will not again deny my call to wield the power that Heaven bestows! I follow my fate! To-morrow's dawn sees me in the path to snatch my best treasure, my counselor, my guide, from the judgment of his enemies--or woe to England, woe to all Scotland born who have breathed one hostile word against his sacred life! Helen dost thou hear me?" cried he: "Wilt thou not assist me to persuade thy too timid sister that her Bruce's honor, his happiness, lives in the preservation of his friend? Speak to her, counsel her, sweet Helen, and, and, please the Almighty arm of Heaven, I will reward thy tenderness with the return of Wallace!"

Helen gazed intently on him while he spoke. She smiled when he ended, but she did not answer, and there was a wild vacancy in the smile that seemed to say she knew not what had been spoken, and that her thoughts were far away. Without further regarding him or any present, she arose and left the room. At this moment of fearful abstraction, her whole soul was bent with an intensity that touched on madness, on the execution of a project which had rushed into her mind in the moment she heard of Wallace's deathful captivity and destination.

Helen gazed intently on him while he spoke. She smiled when he ended, but she did not answer, and there was a wild vacancy in the smile that seemed to say she knew not what had been spoken, and that her thoughts were far away. Without further regarding him or any present, she arose and left the room. At this moment of fearful abstraction, her whole soul was bent with an intensity that touched on madness, on the execution of a project which had rushed into her mind in the moment she heard of Wallace's deathful captivity and destination.

The approach of night favored her design. Hurrying to her chamber, she dismissed her maids with the prompt excuse that she was ill, and desired not to be disturbed until morning, then bolting the door, she quickly habited herself as the dear memorial of her happy days in France, and dropping from her window into the pleasance beneath, ran swiftly through its woody precincts toward Dundee.

Before she arrived at the suburbs of Ferth, her tender feet became so blistered, she found the necessity of stopping at the first cottage. But her perturbed spirits rendered it impossible for her to take rest, and she answered the hospitable offer of its humble owner, with a request that he would go into the town and immediately purchase a horse, to carry her that night to Dundee. She put her purse into the man's hand, who without further discussion obeyed. When the animal was brought and the honest Scot returned her the purse with its remaining contents, she divided them with him, and turning from his thanks, mounted the horse, and rode away.

About an hour before dawn, she arrived within view of the ships lying in the harbor at Dundee. At this sight she threw herself off the panting animal, and leaving it to rest and liberty, hastened to the beach. A gentle breeze blew freshly from the northwest, and several vessels were heaving their anchors to get under weigh.

"Are any," demanded she, "bound for the Tower of London?"

"None," were the replies. Despair was now in her heart and gesture. But suddenly recollecting that in dressing herself for flight she had not taken off the jewels she usually wore, she exclaimed with renovated hope, "Will not gold tempt some one to carry me thither?" A rough Norwegian sailor jumped from the side of the nearest vessel, and readily answered in the affirmative. "My life," rejoined she, "or a necklace of pearls shall be yours, in the moment you land me at the Tower of London." The man seeing the youth and agitation of the seeming boy, doubted his power to perform so magnificent a promise, and was half inclined to retract his assent; but Helen pointing to a jewel on her finger as a proof that she did not speak of things beyond her read, he no longer hesitated; and pledging his word that wind and tide in his favor, he would land her at the Tower Stairs, she, as if all happiness must meet her at that point, sprung into his vessel. The sails were unfurled, the voices of the men chanted forth their cheering responses on clearing the harbor, and Helen throwing herself along the floor of her little cabin, in that prostration of body and soul, silently breathed her thanks to God for being indeed launched on the ocean, whose waves she trusted would soon convey her to Wallace; to sooth, to serve--to die, or to compass the release of him who had sacrificed more than his life for her father's preservation--for him who had saved herself from worse than death.

LXXXI. The Thames

On the evening of the fourteenth day from the one in which Helen had embarked, the little ship of Dundee entered on the bright bosom of the Nore. While she sat on the deck watching the progress of the vessel with an eager spirit, which would gladly have taken wings to have flown to the object of her voyage, she first saw the majestic waters of the Thames. But it was a tyrannous flood to her, and she marked not the diverging shores crowned with palaces; her eyes looked over every stately dome to seek the black summits of the Tower. At a certain point the captain of the vessel spoke through his trumpet to summon a pilot from the land. In a few minutes he was obeyed. The Englishman took the helm. Helen was reclined on a coil of ropes near him. He entered into conversation with the Norwegian, and she listened in speechless attention to a recital which bound up her every sense in that hearing. The captain had made some unprincipled jest on the present troubles of Scotland, now his adopted country from his commercial interests, and he added with a laugh, "that he though any ruler the right one who gave him a free course in traffic." In answer to this remark, and with an observation not very flattering to the Norwegian's estimation of right and wrong, the Englishman mentioned the capture of the once renowned champion of Scotland. Even the enemy who recounted the particulars, showed a truth in the recital which shamed the man who had benefited by the patriotism he affected to despise, and for which Sir William Wallace was now likely to shed his blood.

"I was present," continued the pilot, "when the brave Scot was put on the raft, which carried him through the Traitor's Gate into the Tower. His hands and feet were bound with iron; but his head, owing to faintness from the wounds he had received at Lumloch, was so bent down on his breast as he reclined on the float, that I could not then see his face. There was a great pause, for none of us, when he did appear in sight, could shout over the downfall of so merciful a conqueror. Many were spectators of this scene whose lives he had spared on the fields of Scotland; and my brother was amongst them. However, that I might have a distinct view of the man who has so long held our warlike monarch in dread, I went to Westminster Hall on the day appointed for his trial. The great judges of the land, and almost all the lords besides were there, and a very grand spectacle they made. But when the hall-door was opened, and the dauntless prisoner appeared, then it was that I saw true majesty. King Edward on his throne never looked with such a royal air. His very chains seemed given to be graced by him as he moved through the parting crowd with the step of one who had been used to have all his accusers at his feet. Though pale with loss of blood, and his countenance bore traces of the suffering occasioned by the state of his yet unhealed wounds, his head was now erect, and he looked with undisturbed dignity on all around. The Earl of Gloucester, whose life and liberty he had granted at Berwick, sat on the right of the lord chancellor. Bishop Beck, the Lords de Valence and Soulis, with one Monteith (who it seems was the man that betrayed him into our hands), charged him with high treason against the life of King Edward and the peace of his majesty's realms of England and Scotland. Grievous were the accusations brought against him, and bitter the revilings with which he was denounced as a traitor too mischievous to deserve any show of mercy. The Earl of Gloucester at last rose indignantly, and in energetic and respectful terms, called on Sir William Wallace, by the reverence in which he held the tribunal of future ages, to answer for himself!

"'On this adjuration, brave earl!' replied he, 'I will speak!' O! men of Scotland, what a voice was that! In it was all honesty and nobleness! and a murmur arose from some who feared its power, which Gloucester was obliged to check by exclaiming aloud with a stern voice; 'Silence, while Sir William Wallace answers. He who disobeys, sergeant-at-arms, take into custody!' A pause succeeded, and the chieftain, with god-like majesty of truth, denied the possibility of being a traitor where he never had owed allegiance. But with a matchless fearlessness, he avowed the facts alleged against him, which told the havoc he had made of the English on the Scottish plains, and the devastations he had afterward wrought in the lands of England. 'It was a son,' cried he, 'defending the orphans of his father from the steel and rapine of a treacherous friend! It was the sword of restitution gathering on that false friend's fields the harvests he had ravaged from theirs!' He spoke more and nobly--too nobly for them who heard him. They rose to a man to silence what they could not confute; and the sentence of death was pronounced on him--the cruel death of a traitor! The Earl of Gloucester turned pale on his seat, but the countenance of Wallace was unmoved. As he was led forth, I followed, and of Wallace was unmoved. As he was led forth, I followed, and saw the young Le de Spencer, with several other reprobate gallants of our court, ready to receive him. With shameful mockery they flew laurels on his head, and with torrents of derision, told him, it was meet they should so salute the champion of Scotland! Wallace glanced on them a look which spoke pity rather than contempt, and, with a serene countenance, he followed the warden toward the Tower. The hirelings of his accusers loaded him with invectives as he passed along; but the populace who beheld his noble mien, with those individuals who had heard of--while many had felt--his generous virtues, deplored and wept his sentence. To-morrow at sunrise he dies."

Helen's face being overshadowed by the low brim of her hat, the agony of her mind could not have been read in her countenance had the good Southron been sufficiently uninterested in his story to regard the sympathy of others; but as soon as he had uttered the last dreadful words, "To-morrow at sunrise he dies!" she started from her seat; her horror-struck senses apprehended nothing further, and turning to the Norwegian, "Captain," cried she, "I must reach the Tower this night!"

"Impossible!" was the reply: "the tide will not take us up till to-morrow at noon."

"Then the waves shall!" cried she, and frantically rushing toward the ship's side, she would have thrown herself into the water, had not the pilot caught her arm.

"Boy!" said he, "are you mad? your action, your looks--"

"No," interrupted she, wringing her hands; "but in the Tower I must be this night, or-- Oh! God of mercy, end my misery!"

The unutterable anguish of her voice, countenance, and gesture excited a suspicion in the Englishman, that this youth was connected with the Scottish chief; and not choosing to hint his surmise to the unfeeling Norwegian, in a different tone he exhorted Helen to composure, and offered her his own boat, which was then towed at the side of the vessel, to take her to the Tower. Helen grasped the pilot's rough hand, and in a paroxysm of gratitude pressed it to her lips; then forgetful of her engagements with the insensible man who stood unmoved by his side, sprung into the boat. The Norwegian followed her, and in a threatening tone demanded his hire. She now recollected it, and putting her hand into her vest, gave him the string of pearls which had been her necklace. He was satisfied, and the boat pushed off.

The cross, the cherished memorial of her hallowed meeting with Wallace in the chapel of Snawdoun, and which always hung suspended on her bosom, was now in her hand and pressed close to her heart. The rowers plied their oars, and her eyes, with a gaze as if they would pierce the horizon, looked intently onward, while the men labored through the tide. Even to see the walls which contained Wallace, seemed to promise her a degree of comfort she dared hardly hope herself to enjoy. At last the awful battlements of England's state prison rose before her. She could not mistake them. "That is the Tower," said one of the rowers. A shriek escaped her, and instantly covering her face with her hands, she tried to shut from her sight those very walls she had so long sought amongst the clouds. They imprisoned Wallace! He groaned within their confines! and their presence paralyzed her heart.

"Shall I die before I reach thee, Wallace?" was the question her almost flitting soul uttered, as she, trembling, yet with swift steps, ascended the stone stairs which led from the water's edge to the entrance to the Tower. She flew through the different courts to the one in which stood the prison of Wallace. One of the boatmen, being bargeman to the Governor of the Tower, as a privileged person, conducted her unmolested through every ward till she reached the place of her destination. There she dismissed him with a ring from her finger as his reward; and passing a body of soldiers, who kept guard before a large porch that led to the dungeons, she entered, and found herself in an immense paved room. A single sentinel stood at the end near to an iron grating, or small portcullis; there, then, was Wallace! Forgetting her disguise and situation, in the frantic eagerness of her pursuit, she hastily advanced to the man:

"Let me pass to Sir William Wallace," cried she, "and treasures shall be your reward."

"Whose treasures, my pretty page?" demanded the soldier; "I dare not, were it at the suit of the Countess of Gloucester herself."

"Oh!" cried Helen, "for the sake of a greater than any countess in the land, take this jeweled bracelet, and let me pass!"

The man, misapprehending the words of this adjuration, at sight of the diamonds, supposing the page must come from the good queen, no longer demurred. Putting the bracelet into his bosom, he whispered Helen, that as he granted this permission at the risk of his life, she must conceal herself in the interior chamber of the prisoner's dungeon should any person from the warden visit him during their interview. She readily promised this; and he informed her that, when through this door, she must cross two other apartments, the bolts to the entrances of which she must undraw; and then, at the extremity of a long passage, a door, fastened by a latch, would admit her to Sir William Wallace. With these words, the soldier removed the massy bars, and Helen entered.

LXXXII. The Tower of London

Helen's fleet steps carried her in a few minutes through the intervening dungeons to the door which would restore to her eyes the being with whose life her existence seemed blended. The bolts had yielded to her hands. The iron latch now gave way; and the ponderous oak, grating dismally on its hinges, she looked forward, and beheld the object of all her solicitude leaning along a couch; a stone table was before him, at which he seemed writing. He raised his head at the sound. The peace of virtue was in his eyes, and a smile on his lips, as if he had expected some angel visitant.

The first glance at his pale, but heavenly countenance struck to the heart of Helen; veneration, anguish, shame, all rushed on her at once. She was in his presence! but how might he turn from consolations he had not sought! The intemperate passion of her step-mother now glared before her; his contempt of the countess' unsolicited advances appeared ready to be extended to her rash daughter-in-law; and with an irrepressible cry, which seemed to breathe out her life, Helen would have fled, but her failing limbs bent under her, and she fell senseless into the dungeon. Wallace started from his reclining position. He thought his senses must deceive him--and yet the shriek was Lady Helen's. He had heard the same cry on the Pentland Hills; in the chamber of Chateau Galliard! He rose agitated; he approached the prostrate youth, and bending to the inanimate form, took off the Norman hat; he parted the heavy locks which fell over her brow, and recognized the features of her who alone had ever shared his meditations with his Marion. He sprinkled water on her face and hands; he touched her cheek; it was ashy cold, and the chill struck to his heart. "Helen!" exclaimed he; "Helen, awake! Speak to thy friend!"

Still she was motionless. "Dead!" cried he, with increased emotion. His eye and his heart in a moment discerned and understood the rapid emaciation of those lovely features--now fearing the worst; "Gone so soon!" repeated he, "gone to tell my Marion that her Wallace comes. Blessed angel!" cried he, clasping her to his breast, with an energy of which he was not aware, "take me, take me with thee!" The pressure, the voice, roused the dormant life of Helen. With a torturing sigh she unsealed her eyes from the death-like load that oppressed them, and found herself in the arms of Wallace.

All her wandering senses, which from the first promulgation of his danger had been kept in a bewildered state, now rallied; and, in recovered sanity, smote her to the soul. Though still overwhelmed with grief at the fate which threatened to tear him from her and life, she now wondered how she could ever have so trampled on the retreating modesty of her nature, as to have brought herself thus into his presence; and in a voice of horror, of despair, believing that she had forever destroyed herself in his opinion, she exclaimed: "O! Wallace! how came I here? I am lost--and innocently; but God--the pure God--can read the soul!"

She lay in hopeless misery on his breast, with her eyes again closed, almost unconscious of the support on which she leaned.

"Lady Helen," returned he, "was it other than Wallace you sought in these dungeons? I dared to think that the Parent we both adore had sent you hither to be His harbinger of consolation!" Recalled to self-possession by the kindness of these words, Helen turned her head on his bosom, and in a burst of grateful tears, hardly articulated:

"And will you not abhor me for this act of madness? But I was not myself. And yet, where should I live but at the feet of my benefactor?"

The steadfast soul of Wallace was subdued by this language, and the manner of its utterance. It was the disinterested dictates of a pure though agitated spirit, which he now was convinced did most exclusively love him, but with the passion of an angel; and the tears of a sympathy which spoke their kindred natures stole from his eyes as he bent his cheek on her head. She felt them; and rejoicing in such an assurance that she yet possessed his esteem, a blessed calm diffused itself over her mind, and raising herself, with a look of virtuous confidence, she exclaimed:

"Then you do understand me, Wallace? you pardon me this apparent forgetfulness of my sex; and you recognize a true sister in Helen Mar? I may administer to that noble heart, till--" she paused, turning deathly pale, and then clasping his hand in both hers, in bitter agony added, "till we meet in heaven!"

"And blissful, dearest saint, will be our union there," replied he, "where soul meets soul, unencumbered of these earthly fetters; and mingles with each other, even as thy tender teardrops now glide into mine! But there, my Helen, we shall never weep. No heart will be left unsatisfied; no spirit will mourn in unrequited love, for that happy region is the abode of love--of love without the defilements or the disquietudes of mortality, for there it is an everlasting, pure enjoyment. It is a full, diffusive tenderness, which, penetrating all hearts, unites the whole in one spirit of boundless love in the bosom of our God! Who, the source of all love, as John the beloved disciple saith, 'so loved a lost world, that he sent his only Son to redeem it from its sins, and to bring it to eternal blessedness!'"

"Ah!" cried Helen, throwing herself on her knees in holy enthusiasm; "join then your prayers with mine, most revered of friends, that I may be admitted into such blessedness! Petition our God to forgive me, and do you forgive me, that I have sometimes envied the love you bear your Marion! But now I love her so entirely, that to be her and your ministering spirit in Paradise would amply satisfy my soul."

"O! Helen," cried Wallace, grasping her uplifted hands in his, and clasping them to his heart, "thy soul and Marion's are indeed one, and as one I love ye!"

This unlooked-for declaration almost overpowered Helen in its flood of happiness; and, with a smile, which seemed to picture the very heavens opening before her, she turned her eyes from him to a crucifix which stood on a table, and bowing her head on its pedestal, was lost in the devotion of rapturous gratitude.

At this juncture, when, perhaps, the purest bliss that ever descended on woman's heart now glowed in that of Helen, the Earl of Gloucester entered. His were not visits of consolation, for he knew that his friend, who had built his heroism on the rock of Christianity, did not require the comfortings of any mortal hand. At sight of him Wallace pointing to the kneeling Helen, beckoned him into the inner cell, where his straw pallet lay; and there, in a low voice, declared who she was, and requested the earl to use his authority to allow her to remain with him to the last.

"After that," said he, "I rely on you, generous Gloucester, to convey safely back to her country a being who seems to have nothing of earth about her but the terrestrial body which enshrines her angelic soul!"

The sound of a voice speaking with Wallace roused Helen from her happy trance. Alarmed that it might be the fatal emissaries of the tyrant, come prematurely to summon him to his last hour, she started on her feet. "Where are you, Wallace?" cried she, looking distractedly around her; "I must be with you even in death!"

Hearing her fearful cry, he hastened into the dungeon, and relieved her immediate terror by naming the Earl of Gloucester, who followed him. The conviction that Wallace was under mortal sentence, which the heaven-sent impression of his eternal bliss had just almost obliterated, now glared upon her with redoubled horrors. This world again rose before her in the person of Gloucester. It reminded her that she and Wallace were not yet passed into the hereafter, whose anticipated reunion had wrapt her in such sweet elysium. He had yet the bitter cup of death to drink to the dregs; and all of human weakness again writhed within her bosom. "And is there no hope?" faltered she, looking earnestly on the disturbed face of Gloucester, who had bowed with a pitying respect to her as he approached her. And then, while he seemed hesitating for an answer, she more firmly, but imploringly resumed: "Oh, let me seek your king? once he was a crusade prince! The cross was then on his breast, and the love of Him who came to redeem lost man, nay, even his direst enemies, from death unto life, must have been then in your king's heart. Oh, if once there, it cannot be wholly extinguished now! Let me, gracious earl, but recall to him that he was then beloved by a queen who to this day is the glory of her sex. On that spot of holy contest she preserved his life from an assassin's poison, by daring the sacrifice of her own! But she lived to bless him, and to be blessed herself! While Sir William Wallace, also a Christian knight, anointed by virtue and his cause, hath only done for his own country and its trampled land what King Edward then did for Christendom in Palestine. And he was roused to the defense, by a deed worse than ever infidel inflicted! The wife of his bosom--who had all of angel about her, but that of her mortal body--was stabbed by a murderous Southron governor in Scotland, because she would not betray her husband to his desolating brand! I would relate this on my knees, to your royal Edward, and call on the spirit of his sainted queen to enforce my suit, by the memory of her love and her devotedness."

Helen, who had risen in her energy of speech and supplication, suddenly paused, clasped her hands, and stood with upward eyes, looking as if she beheld the beatified object of her invocation.

"Dearest sister of my soul!" cried Wallace, who had forborne to interrupt her, taking her clasped hands in his, "thy knees shall never bend to any less than to the blessed Lord of all mankind, for me! Did He will my longer pilgrimage on this earth, of which my spirit is already weary, it would not be in the power of any human tyrant to hold me in these bonds. And, for Edward! believe, that not all thy tender eloquence could make one impression, where a long obdurate ambition hath set so deep a seal. I am content to go, my sister--and angels whisper me," (and his voice became subdued, though still calm, while he added, in a lowered tone, like that angel whisper) "that thy bridal bed will be in William Wallace's grave!" She spoke not, but at this assurance turned her tearful eyes upon him, with a beam of delight; with such delight, the vestal consigns herself to the cloister; with such delight, the widowed mourner lays her head to rest on the tomb of him she loved. But with such delight none are acquainted who know not what it is to be wedded to the soul of a beloved being, when the body which was once its vestment lies moldering in the earth.

Gloucester contemplated this chaste union of two spotless hearts, with an admiration almost amounting to devotion. "Noble lady," said he, "the message that I came to impart to Sir William Wallace bears with it a show of hope; and, I trust that your gentle spirit will yet be as persuasive as consolatory. A deputation has just arrived from our border-counties, headed by the good Barons de Hilton and De Blenkinsopp, praying the royal mercy for their gallant foe, who had been most generous to them, they set forth, in their extremity. And the king was listening to them, with what temper I know not, when a private embassy, as opportunely, made its appearance from France, on the same errand; in short, to negotiate with Edward for the safety of our friend, as a prince of that realm. I left the embassadors," continued the earl, turning to Wallace, "in debate with his majesty; and he has at length granted a suspension--nay, has even promised a repeal of the horrible injustice that was to be completed to-morrow, if you can be brought to accord with certain proposals, now to be laid before you. Accept them, and Edward will comply with all King Philip's demands in your behalf."

"Then you will accept them!" cried Helen, in a tumult of suspense. The communication of Gloucester had made no change in the equable pulse of Wallace; and he replied, with a look of tender pity upon her animated countenance. "The proposals of Edward are too likely to be snares for that honor which I would bear with me uncontaminated to the grave. Therefore, dearest consoler of my last hours, do not give way to hopes which a greater King than Edward may command me to disappoint." Helen bowed her head in silence. The color again faded from her cheek, and despair once more seized on her heart.

Gloucester resumed; and, after narrating some particulars concerning the conference between the king and the embassadors, he suggested the impracticality of secretly retaining Lady Helen, for any length of time, in the state dungeon. "I dare not," continued he, "be privy to her presence here, and yet conceal it from the king. I know not what messengers he may send to impart his conditions to you; and should she be discovered, Edward, doubly incensed, would tear her from you; and, as an accessory, so involve me in his displeasure, that I should be disabled from serving either of you further. Were I so to honor his feelings as a man as to mention it to him, I do not believe that he would oppose her wishes; but how to reveal such a circumstance with any regard to her fair fame, I know not; for all are not sufficiently virtuous to believe her spotless innocence."

Helen hastily interrupted Gloucester, and with firmness said, "When I entered these walls, the world and I parted forever. The good or the evil opinion of the impure in heart can never affect me--they shall never see me more. The innocent will judge me by themselves, and by the end of my race. I came to minister with a sister's duty to my own and my father's preserver; and while he abides here, I will never consent to leave his feet. When he goes hence, if it be to bless mankind again, I shall find the longest life too short to pour forth all my gratitude; and for that purpose I will dedicate myself in some nunnery of my native land. But should he be taken from a world so unworthy of him, soon, very soon, I shall cease to feel its aspersions in the grave."

"No aspersions which I can avert, dearest Helen," cried Wallace, "shall ever tarnish the fame of one whose purity can only be transcended by her who is now made perfect in heaven! Consent, noblest of women, to wear, for the few days I may yet linger here, a name which thy sister angel has sanctified to me. Give me a legal right to call you mine, and Edward himself will not then dare to divide what God has joined together!"

Helen paused--even her heart seemed to cease its pulsation in the awful moment. Did she hear aright? and was she indeed going to invade the rights of the wife she had so often vowed to regard as the sole object of Wallace's dearest wishes? Oh, no; it was not the lover that shone in his luminous eyes; it was not the mistress that glowed in her bosom. Words might be breathed; but no change would be wrought in the souls of them who were already separated from the earth. With these thoughts Helen turned toward Wallace; she attempted to answer, but the words died on the seraphic smile which beamed upon her lips, and she dropped her head upon his breast.

Gloucester, who saw no other means of insuring to his friend the comfort of her society, was rejoiced at this mutual resolution. He had longed to propose it; but considering the peculiarities of their situation, knew not how to do so without seeming to mock their sensibility and fate. It was now near midnight; and having read the consent of Helen in the tender emotion which denied her speech, without further delay he quitted the apartment to summon the confessor of the warden to unite their hands.

On his re-entrance, he found Helen sitting, dissolved in tears, with her hand clasped in his friend's. The sacred rite was soon performed which endowed her with all the claims upon Wallace which her devoted heart had so long contemplated with resigned hopelessness--to be his helpmate on earth, his partner in the tomb, his dear companion in heaven! With the last benediction she threw herself on her knees before him, and put his hand to her lips in eloquent silence. Gloucester, with a look of kind farewell, withdrew with the priest.

"Thou noble daughter of the noblest Scot!" said Wallace, raising her from the ground, "this bosom is thy place, and not my feet. Long it will not be given me to hold thee here; but even in the hours of years of our separation my spirit will hover near thee, to bear thine to our everlasting home."

The heart of Helen alternatively beat violently, and stopped, as if the vital current were suddenly impeded. Hope and fear agitated her by turns; but clinging to the flattering ideas which the arrival of the embassadors had excited, she timidly breathed a hope that, by the present interferences of King Philip, Edward might not be found inexorable.

"Disturb not the holy composure of your soul by such an expectation," returned Wallace; "I know my adversary too well to anticipate his relinquishing the object of his vengeance but at a price more infamous than the most ignoble death. Therefore, best beloved of all on earth! look for no deliverance for thy Wallace but what passes through the grave; and to me, dearest Helen, its gates are on golden hinges turning; for all is light and bliss which shines on me from within their courts!"

Helen's thoughts, in the idea of his being torn from her, could not wrest themselves from the dire images of his execution; she shuddered, and in faltering accents replied, "Ah! could we glide from sleep into so blessed a death, I would hail it even for thee! But the threatened horrors, should they fall on thy sacred head, will in that hour, I trust, also divorce my soul from this grievous world!"

"Not so, my Helen," returned he, "keep not thy dear eyes forever fixed on the gloomy appendages of death. The scaffold and the grave have naught to do with the immortal soul; it cannot be wounded by the one nor confined by the other. And is not the soul thy full and perfect Wallace? It is that which now speaks to thee--which will cherish thy beloved idea forever. Lament not, then, how soon this body, its mere apparel, is laid down in the dust. But rejoice still in my existence, which, through Him who 'led captivity captive,' will never know a pause? Comfort then thy heart, my soul's dear sister, and sojourn a little while on this earth to bear witness for thy Wallace to the friends he loves."

Helen, who felt the import of his words in her heart, gently bowed her head, and he proceeded:

"As the first who stemmed with me the torrent which, with God's help, we so often laid into a calm, I mention to you my faithful men of Lanark. Many of them bled and died in the contest; and to their orphans, with the children of those who yet survive, I consign all of the world's wealth that yet belongs to William Wallace; Ellerslie and its estates are theirs.** To Bruce, my sovereign and my friend--the loved companion of the hour in which I freed you, my Helen, from the arms of violence! to him I bequeath this heart, knit to him by bonds more dear than even loyalty. Bear it to him; and when he is summoned to his heavenly throne, then let his heart and mine fill up one urn. To Lord Ruthven, to Bothwell, to Lockhart, to Scrymgeour, and to Kirkpatrick I give my prayers and blessings."

**This bequest of Wallace is a fact.

Here Wallace paused. Helen had listened to him with a holy attention, which hardly allowed a sigh to breathe from her steadfast heart. She spoke, but the voice was scarcely audible.

"And what for him who loves you dearer than life--for Edwin? He cannot be forgotten!"

Wallace started at this; then she was ignorant of the death of that too-faithful friend! In a hurrying accent he replied, "Never forgotten! Oh, Helen. I asked for him life; and Heaven gave him long life, even forever and ever!"

Helen's eyes met his, with a look of inquiry:

"That would mean he is gone before you?"

The countenance of Wallace answered her.

"Happy Edwin!" cried she, and the tears rained over her cheeks as she bent her head on her arms. Wallace continued--

"He laid down his life to preserve mine in the hovel of Lumloch. The false Monteith could get no Scot to lay hands on their true defender; and even the foreign ruffians he brought to the task might have spared the noble boy, but an arrow from the traitor himself pierced his heart. Contention was then no more, and I resigned myself, to follow him."

"What a desert does the world become!" exclaimed Helen; then turning on Wallace with a saint-like smile, she added, "I would hardly now withhold you. You will bear him Helen's love, and tell him how soon I shall be with you. If your Father would not allow my heart to break, in his mercy he may take my soul in the prayers which I shall hourly breathe to him!"

"Thou hast been lent to me as my sweet consolation here, my Helen," replied he, "and the Almighty dispenser of that comfort will not long banish you from the object of your innocent wishes."

While they thus poured into each other's bosoms the ineffable balm of friendship's purest tenderness, the eyes of Wallace insensibly closed. "Your gentle influence," gently murmured he, "brings that sleep to my eyelids which has not visited them since I first entered these walls. Like my Marion, Helen, thy presence brings healing on its wings."

"Sleep, then," replied she, "and Marion's angel spirit will keep watch with mine."