Thanks to the temerity of Wallace, however, they were soon discovered. According to Harry, he returned to St. Johnston in the disguise of a priest, in prosecution of an amour commenced on his first visit. He was recognised and watched; and the woman is said to have disclosed the date of the next appointment. He was accordingly waylaid; but, on her confession, he threw aside his own disguise and arrayed himself in her dress, and, dissembling his countenance and his voice, passed safely out at the gate. As he increased his pace, two of the guards, thinking him 'a stalwart quean,' hastened after him. In a few minutes they lay dead on the South Inch, and Wallace was hurrying to Elcho Park. This story of Harry's is unusually clumsy, or the eyes of the guards must have been peculiarly vacant.
The two men being found slain on the South Inch, Sir Gerard Heron set out in pursuit of Wallace with 600 men. He took with him also a sleuth-hound of the best Border breed. Heron with half his force surrounded the wood where Wallace was posted, and Butler made the attack with the rest, 300 against 40. In the first ruthless onset, the Scots killed forty, but lost fifteen. Finding their ground untenable, they cut their way through the enemy to the banks of the Tay, intending to cross; but the water was deep, and one-half of them could not swim. They had no alternative, therefore, but to face Butler's men again; and after a severe struggle, in which Steven and Kerly, as well as Wallace, performed doughty deeds, they again cut through the English, killing sixty and losing nine. Already Wallace had lost more than half his men, twenty-four out of forty, and sixteen was a mere handful against hundreds. As Butler was re-forming his men, Wallace took the opportunity to dash through between him and Heron, and made for Gask Wood.
The approach of night was in his favour. But the way was uphill and rough, and when they were yet east of Dupplin, a considerable distance from the anticipated shelter, Fawdon broke down, and would not be persuaded to hurry on. Having exhausted argument and entreaty, Wallace in anger struck off his head. Harry justifies the act. It might stop the sleuth-hound. Fawdon was suspected of treachery; he was 'right stark' and had gone but a short distance. If he was false, he would join the enemy; if he was true, the enemy would kill him. 'Might he do aught but lose him as it was?' On the alleged facts, probably there is little more to be said. The succeeding narrative shows plainly enough that Wallace felt himself in a most painful dilemma.
While Wallace hastened forward, Steven and Kerly stayed behind in a bushy hollow till Heron came up, and then cautiously mixed with the English as they were speculating on Fawdon's fate. The hound had stopped, and as Heron was inspecting Fawdon, Kerly suddenly struck him dead. Kerly and Steven at once dashed off towards the Earn. Butler despatched an escort with Heron's body to St. Johnston, and pushed on to Dalreoch. Meantime Wallace had occupied Gask Hall—Baroness Nairne's 'Bonny Gascon Ha''—
'an unco tow'r, sae stern an auld'—
with his remnant of fourteen, and was painfully anxious about Steven and Kerly, and vexed about the death of Fawdon. In the circumstances of his mental excitement and bodily fatigue, the story of the apparition of Fawdon, which Harry works up so elaborately, finds a very natural basis. Whether or not Wallace sent out his men in relays to discover the meaning of the strange horn-blowing, and so forth, and then sallied out alone under the urgency of the apparition, he appears to have now lost all touch with his men.
Passing along Earn side all alone, Wallace fell in with Sir John Butler, who was patrolling the fords. Butler, suspecting his explanation of his business, drew upon him; whereupon Wallace killed him, seized his horse, and rode away, pursued hotly by the English. In the running fight he killed some twenty of them; but at Blackford his horse broke down, and he was obliged to take to the heather on foot. Struggling to the Forth, he swam the cold river and hastened to the Torwood, where he got shelter in a widow's hut. Sending out messengers to repass the way he came and get news of his men, he retired to a deep thicket to rest, watched by two of the widow's sons, while a third went to apprise the priest of Dunipace of his arrival.
The priest came. Wallace was still suffering severely from fatigue as well as excitement.
'What I have had in war before this day—
Prison and pain—to this night was but play....
I moan far more the losing of my men
Than for myself, had I ten times such pain.'
The priest, however ardent for freedom in the abstract, could not but recognise the hopelessness of Wallace's position. His men were lost; more would not rise with him in their place; it was useless for him to throw away his life. Let him seek honourable terms with Edward. The old man may have been overpowered by Wallace's disastrous condition; he may have been testing his nephew's mettle.