"So is your mercy rewarded," muttered the grim Kirkpatrick.
"So am I true to my duty," returned Wallace, "though De Valence is a traitor to his."
The Countess of Mar looked for the first time upon Wallace's countenance. He was the enemy of her kinsmen of the house of Cummin; unknown to her husband, she had sought to betray him to one of these kinsmen; and now, as this beautiful woman beheld the man she had tried to injure, a sense of shame, accompanied by a strange fascination, entered her bosom.
"How does my soul seem to pour itself out to this man!" she said to herself. "Hardly have I seen this William Wallace, and yet my very being is lost in his!"
Love mingled with ambition in her uneasy mind. Her husband was old and wounded; his life would not be long. Wallace had the genius of a conqueror. Might he not be proclaimed king of Scotland? She threw herself assiduously into his company during the days that followed. At last, with tears in eyes, she confessed her love, thinking, in her folly, that she could move the heart of one who had consecrated himself to the service of Scotland and the memory of Marion.
"Your husband, Lady Mar," he said with gentleness, "is my friend; had I even a heart to give to women, not one sigh should arise in it to his dishonour. But I am deaf to women, and the voice of love sounds like the funeral knell of her who will never breathe it to me more."
He rose, and ere the countess could reply, a messenger entered with news from Ayr. Eighteen Scottish chiefs had been treacherously put to death, and others were imprisoned and awaiting execution. Wallace and his men marched straight to the castle of Ayr, surprised it while the English lords were feasting within, and set it afire. Those who escaped the flames either fell by Scottish steel, or yielded themselves prisoners.
Castle and fortalice opened their gates before Wallace as he marched from Ayr to Berwick; but at Berwick he encountered stout resistance from a noble foeman, the Earl of Gloucester, who with his garrison yielded only to starvation. Wallace, touched with their valour, permitted them to march out with all the honours of war, and with the chivalrous earl he formed a friendship that was never dimmed by the enmity of the nations to which they belonged.
Soon there came a summons to Stirling. By a dishonourable stratagem of De Valence's, Lord and Lady Mar and Helen had been seized and carried to Stirling Castle, where Lord Mar was in danger of immediate death. Helen was in the power of De Valence, who pressed his hateful suit upon her. Wallace and his men marched hastily, and captured the town; once more De Valence begged Wallace's mercy, and once more, unworthy as he was, obtained it. But the ruthless Cressingham, commanding the castle, placed Lord Mar on the battlements with a rope round his neck, and declared that unless the attack ceased the earl and his whole family would instantly die. Wallace's reply was to bring forward De Valence, pale and trembling. "The moment Lord Mar dies, De Valence shall instantly perish," he declared.
Cressingham agreed to an armistice, hoping to gain time until De Warenne, with the mighty English host then advancing from the border, had reached Stirling. Next morning this great army in its pride poured across the bridge of the Forth; but the Scottish warriors, rushing down from the hillsides, with Wallace at their head, swept all before them. It was rather a carnage than a battle. Those who escaped the steel of Wallace's men were thrust into the river, and land and water were burdened with English dead.