"Eris-skene!—by this knife I did it."
"Eriskene, my brave man, thy name shall be," said the King; but natheless these valiant deeds, the Scots were still borne back in disorder.
Malcolm was swept away with the crowd of fugitives, who were all wedged in a narrow valley, till he found himself near an old chapel at Mortlach, which was dedicated to Saint Molach, the bishop and confessor, a Scot who, in the seventh century, was the assistant of St. Boniface of Ross, and whose bones lay in that sequestered fane.
Here the king raised his gauntletted hands to heaven, and prayed that the holy saint would intercede with God and St. Andrew for Scotland and her people, vowing that, if they obtained a victory, he would increase the chapel by three lengths of his spear, and make the church of a bishoprick dedicated to Heaven and its service. Wheeling round at that moment, he found a third Danish captain close by him, and slew him by one thrust of his lance, and restored courage to the Scots.
"Victory! Victory!" cried Malcolm; "God and St. Andrew for Scotland!"
Like a torrent the Scots again rushed through the narrow vale, and again many a tartan plaid and many an eagle's wing was dyed in the reddest blood of Denmark. So furious was their new onset, that the Danes were swept along the valley like dry leaves before a stormy wind, and, over a field strewn with gashed corpses and bleeding men, were driven in headlong flight towards the sea. The slaughter was terrible!
Not a man of them saw the sun sink behind the great ridge of Benrinnes; and when daylight faded in the west, the king found himself breathless, weary, and alone in a silent and sequestered place, where a brawling stream, flowing from a deep copse-wooded glen, mingled its waters with those of the Fiddich, which roll from the mountains down to the Lowlands of Banftshire.
The gloomy pines were shaking their wiry cones in the soft evening wind; a deep blue, darkening into a dusky purple, tinted the distant hills; the evening star was glimmering amid the blush that lingered in the west; and the king sat down by a tree to think and to pray.
After the fury, the excitement, and slaughter of the past day, his neart felt oppressed by its own thoughts, and a glow of rapture struggled with his sorrow, for Heaven had that day accorded victory to his people; and kneeling on the grass, there, in solitude and unseen, he raised his aged eyes and hands in thanksgiving and in prayer to God and the patron saint of Mortlach.
While he was praying thus, there came a child with a pitcher to draw water at the stream—a little golden-haired girl of eight years, whose face was beautiful as that of an angel, and whose bare feet, as they brushed the heather-bells, seemed white as new-fallen snow. She did not perceive the king as she stooped over the water in a cool and shady spot, and sang while her vessel filled.