Douglas had caused his picked men to approach the castle by walking on their hands and knees, with long black cloaks thrown over their bodies, and their ladders and weapons concealed under their cloaks. The men thus presented very nearly the appearance of a herd of cattle in the deep shadows, and completely deceived the sentinel, who was probably thinking more of the music and dancing below, than of the watchful enemy who had been haunting the gloomy woods of Jedburgh.
The Black Douglas fought with King Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. One lovely June day, in the far-gone year of 1329, King Robert lay dying. He called Douglas to his bedside, and told him that it had been one of the dearest wishes of his heart to go to the Holy Land, and recover Jerusalem from the Infidels; but since he could not go, he wished him to embalm his heart after his death, and carry it to the Holy City, and deposit it in the Holy Sepulchre.
Douglas had the heart of Bruce embalmed and enclosed in a silver case, and wore it on a silver chain about his neck. He set out for Jerusalem, but resolved first to visit Spain and engage in the war waged against the Moorish king of Granada. He fell in Andalusia, in battle. Just before his death he threw the silver casket into the thickest of the fight, exclaiming, “Heart of Bruce, I follow thee or die!”
His dead body was found beside the casket, and the heart of Bruce was brought back to Scotland and deposited in the ivy-clad Abbey of Melrose.
Douglas was a real hero, and few things more engaging than his exploits were ever told under the holly and mistletoe, or in the warm Christmas light of the old Scottish Yule-logs.—Sir Walter Scott.
BRUCE AND THE SPIDER
King Bruce of Scotland flung himself down in a lonely mood to think;
’Tis true he was monarch, and wore a crown, but his heart was beginning to sink,
For he had been trying to do a great deed to make his people glad,