"Sweet Helen," returned he, tenderly grasping her trembling hand, "you lost him, but he gained by the exchange. And should the peace of Scotland be purchased by the lives of your friends—if Bruce survives, you must still think your prayers blessed. Were I to fall, my sister, my sorrows would be over; and from the region of universal blessedness I should enjoy the sight of Scotland's happiness."
"Were we all to enter those regions at one time," faintly replied Helen, "there would be comfort in such thoughts; but as it is—" Here she paused; tears stopped her utterance. "A few years is a short separation," returned Wallace, "when we are hereafter to be united to all eternity. This is my consolation, when I think of Marion—when memory dwells with the friends lost in these dreadful conflicts; and whatever may be the fate of those who now survive, call to remembrance my words, dear Helen, and the God who was my instructor will send you comfort."
"Then farewell, my friend, my brother!" cried she, forcibly tearing herself away, and throwing herself into the arms of Edwin; "leave me now; and the angel of the just will bring you in glory, here or hereafter, to your sister Helen." Wallace fervently kissed the hand she again extended to him; and, with an emotion which he had thought he would never feel again for mortal woman, left the apartment.
Chapter LXVIII.
Roslyn.
The day after the departure of Helen, Bruce became impatient to take the field; and, to indulge this laudable eagerness, Wallace set forth with him to meet the returning steps of Ruthven and his gathered legions.
Having passed along the borders of Invermay, the friends descended toward the precipitous banks of the Earn, at the foot of the Grampians. In these green labyrinths they wound their way, till Bruce, who had never before been in such mountain wilds, expressed a fear that Wallace had mistaken the track; for this seemed far from any human footstep.
Wallace replied, with a smile. "The path is familiar to me as the garden of Huntingtower."
The day, which had been cloudy, suddenly turned to wind and rain, which certainly spread an air of desolation over the scene, very dreary to an eye accustomed to the fertile plains and azure skies of the south. The whole of the road was rough, dangerous, and dreadful. The steep and black rocks, towering above their heads, seemed to threaten the precipitation of their impending masses into the path below. But Wallace had told Bruce they were in the right track, and he gaily breasted both the storm and the perils of the road. They ascended a mountain, whose enormous piles of granite, torn by many a winter tempest, projected their barren summits from a surface of moorland, on which lay a deep incrustation of snow. The blast now blew a tempest, and the rain and sleet beat so hard, that Bruce, laughing, declared he believed the witches of his country were in league with Edward, and, hid in shrouds of mist, were all assembled here to drive their lawful prince into the roaring cataracts beneath.
Thus enveloped in a sea of vapors, with torrents of water pouring down the sides of their armor, did the friends descend the western brow of this part of the Grampians until they approached Loch Earn. They had hardly arrived there before the rain ceased, and the clouds, rolling away from the sides of the mountains, discovered the vast and precipitous Ben Vorlich. Its base was covered with huge masses of cliffs, scattered in fragments, like the wreck of some rocky world, and spread abroad in wide and horrid desolation. The mountain itself, the highest in this chain of the Grampians, was in every part marked by deep and black ravines, made by the rushing waters in the time of floods; but where its blue head mingled with the clouds, a stream of brightness issued that seemed to promise the dispersion of its vapors; and consequently a more secure path for Wallace, to lead his friend over its perilous heights.**