their boats and row across the Channel. After the messenger was gone, Bruce walked up and down the beach, his eyes in the direction of Turnberry nook, watching eagerly for the expected signal. All night he watched, and all next morning; and just as it was growing late in the day, he thought he saw the flickering of the bonfire. As it grew dark, all doubt was at an end; there was the bonfire blazing ruddily in the horizon; so with joyful hearts they began to busy themselves in getting ready the boats. Just as Bruce was stepping on board, a woman of the island, "than whom none in all the land had so much wit of things to come," came and prophesied to him that ere long he would be king, and overcome all his enemies; but before that time he should have much to endure; in token of her own confidence in her prophecy she gave him her two sons to be his followers. With the words of this wise woman in their ears, the brave band, increased now to three hundred men, shot out their galleys into the water, and steered through the darkness for the light on Turnberry nook.

After hard rowing, they drew near the Carrick shore, discerning through the gloom the dark figure of a man walking to and fro on the beach. It was Cuthbert come to tell them that there was no hope of effecting a rising in Carrick; that the bonfire on Turnberry nook had not been kindled by him; but that, seeing it blazing, he had come to warn them away. What were they to do? Remain in Scotland, now that they were in it, or re-embark and seek refuge for a year or two longer in the island of Rathlin? Thus they stood inquiring of each other with sinking hearts in the gray of the early morning, where the tide was rushing up among the sands. Out spoke Edward Bruce, the king's brother, a wild impetuous young man-"I tell you no peril, be it ever so great, shall drive me back to the sea again; by God's help I am here, and here will I take my venture for better or worse. This resolution recommended itself to the prudence of the rest; and now that they were in their native land once more, they made up their minds never to leave it again, but to wander through the country until they should all be cut off, or there should be a general rising against the English. They determined to make a beginning immediately; and hearing that there was a party of soldiers belonging to Percy, the English governor of the district, in the town of Turnberry, they attacked and routed it. Little, however, could be done in the Carrick district, where the inhabitants, though friendly to Bruce, were afraid openly to take his part. One lady, however, a relation of his own, came with a reinforcement of forty men.

Now for the first time Bruce learned what had taken place in Scotland during his absence. The news was melancholy enough. Shortly after the defeat of Bruce at Methven, Edward, then in the north of England, had issued, through the Earl of

Pembroke, a proclamation to the effect "that all the people of Scotland should search for and pursue every person who had been in arms against the English government, and who had not surrendered themselves to mercy; and should also apprehend, dead or alive, all who had been guilty of other crimes." In consequence of this proclamation, and the efforts made to enforce it, many of Bruce's most eminent adherents, some of them the copatriots of Wallace, fell into the hands of the English, and suffered death. Besides Sir Simon Frazer, to whose fate we have already referred, Sir Christopher Seton, Thomas Boys, Sir Simon Frazer's esquire, and one of Wallace's friends, Sir Herbert de Morham, Sir Walter Logan, and several others, were sent to London, and there hanged and quartered. The fate of Lamberton, bishop of St Andrews, Wishart, bishop of Glasgow, and the abbot of Scone, would probably have been the same, had they not been ecclesiastics. As it was, they were imprisoned, and Edward made every effort to induce the pope to depose them; in which, however, his holiness did not gratify him. After all these culprits had been disposed of, there still remained the ladies and those of Bruce's adherents, who were shut up in the castle of Kildrummie. The Earls of Lancaster and Hereford marched north to besiege the castle; but before they reached it, the queen, her daughter, the Countess of Buchan, who had put the crown on Bruce's head, and the rest of the ladies, fled to Rosshire with an escort, and took refuge in the sanctuary of St Duthoc, near Tain. Here, in violation of the religious usage of the times, they were seized; and being sent prisoners into England, they lived there in dignified captivity, until the victory of Bannockburn released them seven or eight years afterwards. The punishment of the Countess of Buchan was more marked than that of the other lady captives, inasmuch as the crime of crowning Bruce was peculiarly heinous. Her husband, the Earl of Buchan, one of the Comyn family, was urgent that she should be put to death; but Edward would not consent to so desirable a measure, and ordered her to be confined in a circular prison, constructed in the form of a cage, in the castle of Berwick, where she might be seen by the passers-by. The general impression handed down by tradition is, that the poor lady was hung out in a cage on the castle wall; and it is at least certain that she was immured in an ignominious manner within the fortress of Berwick. Nigel Bruce, the Earl of Atholl, and the rest who remained in Kildrummie after the ladies were gone, defended the castle bravely for a time; but at last their magazine of provisions being set on fire by a traitor of the name of Osborne, they were obliged to surrender. Nigel Bruce, the youngest of the king's brothers, and of great comeliness, was carried to Berwick, and there beheaded; the Earl of Atholl was sent to London-and hanged.

Such had been the miserable fate of the adherents Bruce had left in Scotland. Edward, ill and dying at Carlisle, and unable

to reach the land the subjugation of which had been the most anxious thought of his life, felt it a pleasure to wreak his vengeance on so many of those who had thwarted him before he left the world. Stretched in pain on his bed, he said to those around him that knowing that the Earl of Atholl was hanged made the pain almost lightsome. His dying acts were all directed towards Scotland. He assigned estates in it to his favourite nobles, impressed on his son's mind the duty of punctually fulfilling the great design he was to bequeath to him, and, summoning a parliament at Carlisle, he and all his nobles heard the dread sentence of the church's excommunication pronounced against Bruce and his adherents by Peter D'Espaigne, cardinal legate from the pope. Leaving the dying monarch at Carlisle, we return to the operations of the heroic Bruce.

The condition of Bruce after his disheartening defeat in Ayrshire was most afflicting, and was aggravated by the intelligence of the capture of his brothers Thomas and Alexander, and their execution at Carlisle. Still, he was not utterly deserted or deprived of friends; his brother Edward proceeded into Galloway, while Douglas went into Lanarkshire, to raise men in these quarters. Until assistance should be raised, he wandered about the wild hills of Carrick, constantly shifting from spot to spot, in order to escape the vigilant pursuit of his enemies. On one occasion, separated from the few men who had kept him company, he reached, about midnight, a poor hut, under whose thatched roof he might rest till morning. Throwing himself down on a heap of straw, he lay upon his back with his hands placed under his head, unable to sleep, but gazing vacantly upwards at the rafters of the hut, disfigured with cobwebs. From thoughts long and dreary about the hopelessness of the enterprise in which he was engaged, and the misfortunes he had already encountered, he was roused to feel a degree of interest in the efforts of a poor and industrious spider over his head. The object of the animal was to swing itself by its thread from one rafter to another; but in this attempt it repeatedly failed, each time vibrating back to the point where it had made the effort. Twelve times did the little creature try to reach the desired spot, and as many times was it unsuccessful. Not disheartened with its failure, it made the attempt once more, and lo! the rafter was gained. "The thirteenth time," said Bruce, springing to his feet; "I accept it as a lesson not to despond under difficulties, and shall once more venture my life in the struggle for the independence of my beloved country."

Rallying his drooping spirits, Bruce hastened to assemble such as were disposed to risk all for the sake of the cause he had at heart. With a courageous little army he met the English under Pembroke at Loudon-hill (May 10, 1307), and gained the first of that series of victories which ultimately made Scotland a free kingdom. Pembroke's defeat roused the dying Edward at Car

lisle, and, although unable to endure the fatigue of a journey, he mounted his war-horse, and made the attempt to reach Scotland, for the purpose of crushing the rebellion in person. Vain effort. Having reached, with extreme difficulty, Burgh-on-Sands, from which the blue hills of Scotland could be seen, he there sunk and died. It was his dying request that his bones should be carried at the head of the army into Scotland; but this injunction was not complied with. His son, Edward II., caused the body to be buried at Westminster, with this inscription on his tomb, "Edward I., the Hammer of the Scotch."

Edward II., to whom the duty of subjugating Scotland had been bequeathed, was of inferior abilities to his father, and failed to inspire his followers with confidence or his enemies with fear. He proceeded into Scotland in obedience to his father's injunction, but being disheartened with some reverses, he led his army back to England. Picking up courage, Bruce ventured now on bold measures, and with a considerably augmented force swept through the country as far as Inverness, rooting out garrisons of English, destroying castles, and skirmishing with parties sent out to keep him in check. While thus engaged, Edward Bruce, his brother, expelled the English from Galloway; and Douglas was roving about the hills of Tweeddale, doing good service. Here, at a house on Lyne water, Douglas had the good fortune to take prisoner Thomas Randolph, Bruce's nephew, who had latterly attached himself to the cause of the English usurper. Apparently ashamed of this recreancy, Randolph afterwards became one of his uncle's warmest adherents. Many other influential persons, who had hitherto kept aloof, now joined Bruce's standard. Argyleshire, the country of the Lords of Lorn, still holding out, he invaded it, took the castle of Dunstaffnage, and drove Lorn and his son refugees into England. The whole of Scotland might now be said to have been in Bruce's hands, except that several of the great towns were still in the possession of English garrisons, and that Edward II. was every now and then threatening an invasion. An invasion in the then weak state of Bruce's government might have proved fatal; but this danger was warded off, partly by Edward's own fickle and unsteady temper, partly by the disgust of his nobles at his unkingly conduct, and partly also by the earnest endeavours made during the years 1308 and 1309 by Philip, king of France, to bring about a peace between Scotland and England. A truce between the two countries was indeed agreed to; but it was broken almost as soon as made. In 1310 Edward II. conducted an invading army into Scotland; but, as on a former occasion, he retired again into England.

The years 1311, 1312, and 1313 were spent by Bruce in consolidating the power he had acquired; expelling garrisons, and acquiring the allegiance of some of the principal towns. The citizens of Aberdeen had already expelled the English garrison

from that town. Forfar and several other important stations had been wrested out of the English keeping; and during the three years to which we are at present directing our attention, many other towns or castles were won either by Bruce in person or by his adherents. The principal of these were the town of Perth, and the castles of Linlithgow, Buittle, Dumfries, Dalswinton, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, Rutherglen, and Dundee. The seizures of the castles of Linlithgow and Edinburgh deserve particular mention, from their romantic character. The castle of Linlithgow was taken by the stratagem of a poor peasant named William Binnock, who was in the way of conveying hay and other provender into the castle. Having agreed to deliver a load of hay at a particular day, Binnock placed eight men in his cart, covered them well over with hay, and then walked by the side of the cart, a stout man going before driving. When the cart was within the posts of the gate, so that it could not be shut, Binnock gave the preconcerted signal by crying out, "Call all! call all!" and gave the porter a blow which split his skull; while the man driving cut the rope by which the oxen were yoked to the cart, so as to leave it fixed in the gateway. The men then leaped out, and the castle was taken.

pre

Edinburgh Castle, which occupies the top of a lofty and huge rock, precipitous on all sides but one, could not be taken without encountering very serious risks of destruction. Randolph engaged to gain possession of it by stratagem and personal activity. Guided by a person named Frank, who had once been in the garrison in the castle, and had become acquainted with the nature of the cipice, Randolph, and a party of thirty men, proceeded one dark night to scale the black and jagged sides of the rock. Up they climbed, slowly and painfully, with scathed knees and bleeding fingers, by a zig-zag path, where a single false step would have caused them to be dashed to atoms, or the scraping of their arms against the rock would have discovered them to the watch above. The darkness of the night, however, favoured them, and at last they all reached a shelving part of the rock half way up, where they could rest for a little. While crouching together here, they heard the sentries pacing above and challenging each other. Proceeding upward, they at length reached the wall, to which they applied a ladder they had contrived to bring along with them. Frank climbed up first, then Sir Andrew Gray, then Randolph himself. Seeing these three on the top of the wall, the others climbed up after them. The noise alarmed the sentries, who raised the cry of "Treason! Treason!" Some of them fled; some of them were so terrified that they leaped over the wall; the rest of the garrison mustered and fought, but were soon overpowered, leaving Randolph master of the castle.

These and similar exploits not only secured Bruce's possession of the country, but increased the number of his partisans, by causing many powerful Scotch gentlemen, who had hitherto