"With this handful," cried Wallace, "Heaven may find a David, who shall yet strike yon Goliath on the forehead!"
Lord Mar and Lord Lennox now came up; and Wallace, marshaling his train, found that he had nearly ten thousand men. He gave to each leader his plan of attack; and having placed Bruce with Graham in the van, before he took his station at its head, he retired to the ruins near Dunipacis, to visit the mourning solitude of Murray. He found the pious son sitting silent and motionless by the side of his dead parent. Without rousing the violence of grief by any reference to the sight before him, Wallace briefly communicated his project. Lord Andrew started to his feet. "I will share all the peril with you! I shall again grapple with the foe that has thus bereaved me! This dark mantle," cried he, turning toward the breathless corpse, and throwing his plaid over it, "will shroud thy hallowed remains till I return. I go where thou wouldst direct me. Oh, my father!" exclaimed he, in a burst of grief, "the trumpet shall sound, and thou wilt not hear! But I go to take vengeance for thy blood!" So saying, he sprung from the place, and accompanying Wallace to the plain, took his station in the silent but swiftly moving army.
Chapter LIV.
Carron Banks.
The troops of King Edward lay overpowered with wine. Elated with victory, they had drunk largely, the royal pavilion setting them the example; for though Edward was temperate, yet, to flatter his recovered friends, the inordinate Buchan and Soulis, he had allowed a greater excess that night than he was accustomed to sanction. The banquet over, every knight retired to his tent; every soldier to his pallet; and a deep sleep lay upon every man. The king himself, whose many thoughts had long kept him waking, now fell into a slumber.
Guards had been placed around the camp more from military ceremony than an idea of their necessity. The strength of Wallace they believed broken; and that they should have nothing to do next morning but to chase him into Stirling, and take him there. But the spirit of the regent was not so easily subdued. He ever thought it shameful to despair while it was possible to make a stand. And now, leading his determined followers through the lower grounds of Cumbernaul, he detached half his force under Mar, to take the Southron camp in the rear, while he should attack the front, and pierce his way to the royal pavilion.
With soundless caution, the battalion of Mar wound round the banks of the Forth to reach the point of its destination; and Wallace, proceeding with as noiseless a step, gained the hill which overlooked his sleeping enemies. His front ranks, shrouded by branches they had torn from the trees in Tor Wood, now stood still. Without this precaution, had any eye looked from the Southron line they must have been perceived; but now should a hundred gaze on them, their figures were so blended with the adjoining thickets, they might easily be mistaken for a part of them. As the moon sunk in the horizon they moved gently down the hill; and scarcely drawing breath, were within a few paces of the first outpost, when one of the sentinels starting from his reclining position, suddenly exclaimed, "What sound is that?"
"Only the wind amongst the trees," returned his comrade; "I see their branches waving. Let me sleep; for Wallace yet lives, and we may have hot work to-morrow." Wallace did live, and the man slept—to wake no more; for the next instant a Scottish brand was through every Southron heart on the outpost. That done, Wallace threw away his bough, leaped the narrow dike which lay in front of the camp; and with Bruce and Graham at the head of a chosen band of brave men, cautiously proceeded onward to reach the pavilion. At the moment he should blow his bugle, the divisions he had left with Lennox and Murray, and the Lord Mar, were to press forward to the same point.
Still all lay in profound repose, and guided by the lamps which burned around the royal quarters, the dauntless Scots reached the tent. Wallace had already laid his hand upon the curtain that was its entrance, when an armed man with a presented pike, demanded, "Who comes here?" the regent's answer laid the interrogator's head at his feet; but the voice had awakened the ever watchful king. Perceiving his own danger in the fall of the sentinel, he snatched his sword, and calling aloud on his sleeping train, sprung from his couch. He was immediately surrounded by half a score of knights, who started on their feet before Wallace could reach the spot. Short, however, would have been their protection; they fell before his arm and that of Graham, and left a vacant place, for Edward had disappeared. Foreseeing from the first prowess of these midnight invaders, the fate of his guards, he had made a timely escape, by cutting a passage for himself through the canvas of his tent. Wallace perceived that his prize had eluded his grasp, but hoping to at least drive him from the field, he blew the appointed signal to Mar and Lennox; caught one of the lamps from the monarch's table and setting fire to the adjoining drapery, rushed from its blazing volumes to meet his brave colleagues amongst the disordered lines. Graham and his followers with firebrands in their hands, threw conflagration into all parts of the camp, and with the fearful war-cries of their country, seemed to assail the terrified enemy from every direction. Men half-dressed and unarmed, rushed from their tents upon the pikes of their enemies; hundreds fell without striking a blow, and they who were stationed nearest the outposts, betook themselves to flight, scattering themselves in scared throngs over the amazed plains of Linlithgow.
The king in vain sought to rally his men—to remind them of their late victory. His English alone hearkened to his call; superstition had laid her petrifying hand on all the rest. The Irish saw a terrible judgment in this scene; believing it had fallen upon them for having taken arms against their sister people; the Welsh, as they descried the warlike Bishop of Dunkeld issuing from the mists of the river, and charging his foaming steed through their flying defiles, could not persuade themselves that Merlin had not arisen to chastise their obedience to the ravager of their country. Every superstition, every panic created by fear took possession of the half-intoxicated, stupid wretches; and falling in bloody and unresisting heaps all around, it was rather a slaughter than a battle. Opposition seemed everywhere abandoned, excepting on the spot still maintained by the King of England and his brave countrymen. The faithless Scots who had followed the Cummins to the field also stood there and fought with desperation. Wallace opposed the despair and valor of his adversaries with the steadiness of his men; and Graham having seized some of the war-engines, discharged a shower of blazing arrows upon the Southron phalanx.