The two earls fell back before the vehement action which accompanied this burst from the soul of Bruce; and Wallace caught a glimpse of his youthful form, which stood pre-eminent in patriotic virtue between the Southron lords: his fine countenance glowed, and his brave spirit seemed to emanate in light from every part of his body. "My prince and brother!" exclaimed Wallace to himself, ready to rush forward, and throw himself at his feet, or into his arms.

Gloucester, as little as Northumberland, comprehending Bruce’s ambiguous declaration, replied, "Let not your heart, my brave friend, burn too hotly against the King, for this arrest. He will be the more urgent, to obliterate, by kindness, this injustice, when he understands the aims of the Cummins. I have myself felt his misplaced wrath; and who now is more favoured by Edward, than Ralph de Monthermer? My case will be yours. Good night Bruce. May propitious dreams, repeat the augury of your true friends!" Percy shook hands with the young earl, and the two English Lords left the room.

Wallace could now take a more leisurely survey of Bruce. He no longer wore the gay embroidered hacqueton; his tunic was black velvet, and all the rest of his garments accorded with the same mourning hue. Soon after the lords had quitted him, the buoyant elasticity of his figure, which before seemed ready to rise from the earth, so was his soul elevated by his sublime resolves, gave way to melancholy retrospections; and he threw himself into a chair, with his hands clasped upon his knee, and his eyes fixed in musing gaze upon the floor. It was now that Wallace touched the strings of his harp. The "Death of Cuthullin" wailed from the sounding notes; but Bruce heard as though he heard them not: they soothed his mood, without his perceiving what it was that calmed, yet deepened, the saddening thoughts which possessed him. His posture remained the same; and sigh after sigh gave the only response to the strains of the bard.

Wallace grew impatient for the chimes of that vesper-bell, which, by assuring Bruce’s attendants that he was gone to rest, would secure from interruption the conference he meditated. Two servants entered. Bruce, scarcely looking up, bade them withdraw; he should not need their attendance; he did not know when he should go to bed; and he desired to be no further disturbed. The men obeyed; and Wallace, changing the melancholy strain of his harp, struck the chords to the proud triumph he had played in the hall. Not one note of either ballad, had he yet sung to Bruce; but when he came to the passage in the latter, appropriated to these lines,— 

"Arise, glory of Albin, from thy cloud,
And shine upon thy own!"

he could not forbear giving the words, voice. Bruce started from his seat. He looked towards the minstrel—he walked the room in great disorder. The pealing sounds of the harp, and his own mental confusion, prevented his distinguishing that it was not the voice of his senachie. The words alone he heard; and they seemed a call, which his heart panted to obey. The hand of Wallace paused upon the instrument. He looked around, to see that observation was indeed at a distance. Not that he dreaded harm to himself; for his magnanimous mind, courageous from infancy, by a natural instinct had never known personal fear: but anxious not to precipitate Bruce into useless danger, he first satisfied himself that all was safe; and then—as the young Earl sat in a paroxysm of racking reflections (for they brought self-blame, or rather a blame on his father, which pierced him to the heart,)—Wallace slowly advanced from the recess. The agitated Bruce, accidentally raising his head, beheld a man in a minstrel’s garb, much too tall to be his senachie, approaching him with a caution which he thought portended treachery. He sprang on his feet, and caught his sword from the table; but, in that moment, Wallace threw off his cowl. Bruce stood gazing on him, stiffened with astonishment. Wallace, in a low voice, exclaimed, "My prince! do you not know me ?" Bruce, without speaking, threw his arms about his neck. He was silent, as he hung on him, but his tears flowed: he had much to say, but excess of emotion rendered it unutterable. As Wallace returned the fond embrace of friendship, he gently said, "How is it, that I not only see you a close prisoner, but in these weeds?" Bruce at last forced himself to articulate:—"I have known misery, in all its forms, since we parted; but I have not power to name even my grief of griefs, while trembling at the peril to which you have exposed yourself, by seeking me! The vanquisher of Edward, the man who snatched Scotland from his grasp, were he known to be within these walls, would be a prize for which the boiling revenge of the tyrant would give half his kingdom! Think, then, my friend, how I shudder at this daring. I am surrounded by spies; and should you be discovered, Robert Bruce will then have the curses of his country, added to the judgments which already have fallen on his head." As he spoke, they sat down together, and he continued: —"Before I answer your questions, tell me what immediate cause could bring you to seek the alien Bruce in prison, and by what stratagem you came in this disguise into my apartment? Tell me the last, that I may judge, by the means, of your present safety!"

Wallace briefly related the events which had sent him from Scotland, his rencontre with Piers Gaveston, and his arrangement with the senachie. To the first part of the narrative, Bruce listened with indignation. "I knew," exclaimed he, "from the boastings of Athol and Buchan, that they had left in Scotland some dregs of their own refractory spirits; but I could not have guessed, that envy had so obliterated gratitude in the hearts of my countrymen. The wolves have now driven the shepherd from the fold:" cried he, "and the flock will soon be devoured! Fatal was the hour for Scotland, and your friend, when you yielded to the voice of faction; and relinquished the power which would have finally given peace to the nation !"

Wallace recapitulated his reasons for, having refrained from forcing the obedience of the young Lord Badenoch and his adherents; for, abdicating a dignity, he could no longer maintain without shedding the blood of the misguided men who opposed him. Bruce acknowledged the wisdom of this conduct; but could not restrain his animadversions on the characters of the Cummins. He told Wallace, that he had met the two sons of the late lord Badenoch in Guienne; that James, who now pretended such resentment of his father’s death, had ever been a rebellious son. John, who yet remained in France, appeared of a less violent temper; "but:" added the prince, "I have been taught by one, who will never counsel me more, that all the Cummins, male and female, would be ready at any time to sacrifice earth and heaven to their ambition. It is to Buchan, and Athol, that I owe my prolonged confinement; and to them I may date the premature death of my father." 

The start of Wallace, declared his shock at this information. "How!" exclaimed he: "The Earl of Carrick dead? Fell, fell assassins of their country !" The swelling emotions of his soul, would not allow him to proceed, and Bruce resumed :—"It is for him, I wear these sable garments,—poor emblems of the mournings of my soul; mournings, not so much for his loss, (and that is grievous, as ever son bore,) but because he lived not, to let the world know, what he really was; he lived not, to bring into light, his long-obscured honour !—There, there, Wallace, is the bitterness of this cup to me!"

"But can you not sweeten it, my dear prince:" cried Wallace, "by retrieving all that he was cut off from redeeming? To open the way to you, I come."—" And I will enter, where you point;" returned Bruce; "but heavy is my woe, that, knowing the same spirit was in my father’s bosom, he should be torn from the opportunity to make it manifest: O Wallace! that he should be made to lie down in a dishonoured grave! Had he lived, my friend, he would have brightened that name, which rumour has sullied; and I should have doubly gloried, in wearing the name which he had rendered so worthy of being coupled with the kingly title. Noble was he in soul; but he fell amidst a race of men whose art was equal to their venality, and he became their dupe. Betrayed by friendship, he sunk into the snare; for he had no dishonour in his own breast, to warn him of what might be the villany of others. He believed the cajoling speeches of Edward; who, on the first offence of Baliol, had promised to place my father on the throne. Month after month passed away, and the engagement was unperformed. The disturbances on the Continent, seemed, to his confiding nature, a sufficient excuse for these various delays; and he waited in quiet expectation, till your name, my friend, rose glorious in Scotland. My father and myself were then in Guienne.

Edward persuaded him, that you affected the crown; and he returned with that deceiver, to draw his sword against his people, and their ambitious idol; for so he believed you to be; and grievous has been the expiation of that fatal hour !—Your conference with him on the banks of the Carron, opened his eyes; he saw what his credulity had made Scotland suffer; what a wreck he had made of his own fame; and, from that moment, he resolved to follow another course. But the habit of trusting the affection of Edward, inclined him rather to remonstrate on his rights, than immediately to take up arms against him; yet, resolved not to strike a second blow on his people; when you assailed the Southron camp, he withdrew his few remaining followers who had survived the hard-fought day of Falkirk, into a remote defile. On quitting you, I came up with him in Mid-Lothian; and never having missed me from the camp, he concluded that I had appeared thus late, from having kept in the rear of the division."

Bruce now proceeded to narrate to Wallace, the particulars of his father’s meeting with the King at Durham. Instead of that monarch receiving the Earl of Carrick with his wonted familiar welcome, he turned coldly from him when he approached; and suffered him to take his usual seat at the royal table, without deigning him the slightest notice. Young Bruce was absent from the banquet; having determined never to mingle again in social communion with the man whom he now regarded as the usurper of his father’s rights. The absence of the filial eye, which had once looked the insolent Buchan into his inherent insignificance, now emboldened the audacity of this enemy of the house of Carrick; and, supported by Athol on the one side, and Soulis on the other, the base voluptuary seized a pause in the conversation, (that he might draw the attention of all present, to the disgrace of the chief,) and said, with affected carelessness,.—"My Lord of Carrick, to-day you dine with clean hands: the last time I saw you at meat, they were garnished with your own blood!" The Earl turned on him a look, which asked him to explain. Lord Buchan laughed, and continued ;—"When we last met at table, was it not in his Majesty’s tent, after the victory at Falkirk? You were then red from the slaughter of those bastardised people, to whom, I understand, you now give the fondling appellation of sons! Having recognised the relationship, it was not probable we should again see your hands in their former brave livery; and their present pallid hue convinces, more than myself, of the truth of our information."

"And me;" cried Edward, rising on the couch, to which his wounds confined him, "that I have discovered a traitor!—You fled, Lord Carrick, at the first attack which the Scots made on my camp; and you drew thousands after you. I know you too well, to believe that cowardice impelled the motion. It was treachery, accursed treachery, to your friend and king; and you shall feel the weight of his resentment !"—"To this hour, King Edward," replied the Earl, starting from his chair, "I have been more faithful to you, than to my country, or my God! I heard, saw, and believed, only what you determined; and I became your slave; your vile, oppressed slave !—The victim of your artifice !—How often have you pledged yourself, that you fought in Scotland, only for my advantage! I gave my faith, and my power to you; and how often have you promised, after the next successful battle, to restore me to the crown of my ancestors! I still believed you; and I still engaged all, who yet acknowledged the influence of Bruce, to support your name in Scotland. Was not such, the reiterated promise, by which you allured me to the field of Falkirk ?—And when I had covered myself, as the Lord Buchan too truly says, with the blood of my children; when I asked my friend, for the crown I had served for, what was his answer? ‘Have I nought to do, but to win kingdoms, to make gifts of?’ Thus, then, did a king, a friend, break his often repeated word! What wonder, then, that I should feel the indignation of a prince, and a friend; and leave the false, alas! the perjured !—to defenders, whom he seemed more highly to approve? But of treachery, what have I shown? Rather confidence, King Edward! and the confidence that was awakened in the fields of Palestine, brought me hither to-day to remonstrate with you on my rights; when, by throwing myself into the arms of my people, I might have demanded them at the head of a victorious army."

Edward, who had been prepared by the Cummins, to discredit all that Carrick might say in his defence, turned with a look of contempt towards him, and said, "You have been persuaded, to act like a madman: and, as maniacs, both yourself, and your son, shall be guarded; till I have leisure to consider any rational evidence you may in future offer in your vindication."—"And is this the manner, King Edward, that you treat your friend? once your preserver !"—"The vassal," replied Edward, "who presumes upon the condescension of his prince, and acts as if he were really his equal, ought to meet the punishment due to such arrogance. You saved my life on the walls of Acre; but you owed that duty to the son of your liege lord. In the fervour of youth, I inconsiderately rewarded you with my friendship; and the return, is treason." As he concluded, he turned from Lord Carrick; and the marshals immediately seizing the Earl, took him to the keep of the castle. [These speeches are historically true; as is also Edward’s after-treatment of the Earl of Carrick.-(1809.)]

His son, who had been sought in the Carrick quarters, and laid under an arrest, met his father in the guardchamber. Carrick could not speak; but motioning to be conducted to the place appointed for his prison, the men, with equal silence, led him through a range of apartments which occupied the middle story, and stopping in the furthest, left him there with his son. Bruce was not surprised at his own arrest; but at that of his father, he stood in speechless astonishment until the guards withdrew; then, seeing Lord Carrick, with a changing countenance throw himself on the bed (for it was in his sleeping room they had left him), he exclaimed, "What is the meaning of this, my father? Has any charge against me, brought suspicion on you ?"—"No, Robert, no;" replied the Earl: "it is I who have brought you into this prison, and into disgrace; disgrace with all the world, for having tacitly surrendered my inheritance to the invader of my country. Honest men abhor, villains treat me with contumely: and he for whom I incurred all this, because I would not, when my eyes were opened to my sin, again imbrue my hands in the blood of my country, Edward thrusts me from him! You are implicated in my crime; and, for not joining the Southrons, to repel the Scots from the royal camp, we are both prisoners!"

"Then;" replied Bruce, "he shall feel, that you have a son who has virtue to be what he suspects; and, from this hour, I proclaim eternal enmity to the betrayer of my father; to the ingrate, who embraced you, to destroy!"

The indignation of the youthful prince, wrought him to so vehement a declaration of resolute and immediate hostility, that Lord Carrick was obliged to give his transports way; but when he saw that his denunciations were exhausted, though not the determined purpose of his soul, (for he trod the room with a step, which seemed to shake its foundations, with the power of his mighty mind;) Carrick gazed on him with pride, yet grief; and, sighing heavily, called him to approach him. "Come to me, my Robert!" said he; "hear, and abide by the last injunctions of your father; for, from this bed, I may never rise more. A too late sense of the injuries, my sanction has doubled on the people I was born to protect; and the ingratitude of him, for whom I have offended my God, and wronged my country; have broken my heart. I shall die, Robert, but you will avenge me !"—"May God so prosper me !" cried Bruce, raising his arms to heaven. Carrick resumed :—"Attend to me, my dear and brave son, and do not mistake the nature of my last wish. Do not allow the, perhaps, too forcible word I have used, to hurry you into any personal revenge on Edward. Let him live, to feel and to regret the outrages he has committed on the peace and honour of his too faithful friend. Pierce him on the side of his ambition; there he is vulnerable; and there you will heal, while you wound. This would be my revenge, dear Robert; that you should one day have his life in your power; and in memory of what I now say, spare it. When I am gone, think not of private resentment. Let your aim be, the recovery of the kingdom which Edward rifled from your fathers. Join the virtuous and triumphant Wallace. Tell him, of my remorse, of my fate; and be guided wholly by his counsels. To ensure the success of this enterprise, my son ;—a success to which I look, as to the only means of redeeming the name I have lost; and of inspiring my separated spirit, with courage to meet the freeborn souls of my ancestors ;—urge not your own destruction, by any premature disclosure of your resolutions. For my sake, and for your country’s, suppress your resentment; threaten not the King of England; provoke not the unworthy Scottish lords, who have gained his ear:— but bury all in your own bosom, till you can join Wallace. Then, by his arm, and your own, seat yourself firmly in the throne of your fathers. That moment, will sufficiently avenge me on Edward !—and in that moment, Robert! or at least as soon as circumstances can allow, let the English ground which will then hold my body, give up its dead! Remove me to a Scottish grave: and, standing over my ashes, proclaim to them who might have been my people, that for every evil I suffered to fall on Scotland, I have since felt answering pangs; and that, dying, I beg their forgiveness; and bequeath them my best blessing,—my virtuous son, to reign in my stead!"

These injunctions, to assert his own honour, and that of his father, were readily sworn to by Bruce; but he could not so easily be made to quell the imperious indignation which was precipitating him to an immediate, and loud revenge. The dying Earl trembled before the overwhelming passion of his son’s wrath and grief. Treated with outrage and contumely, he saw his father stricken to the earth before him, and he could not bear to hear of any temporising with his murderers. But all this tempest of the soul, the wisdom-inspired arguments of the Earl at last becalmed, though could not subdue. He convinced his son’s reason, by showing him, that caution would ensure the blow; and that his aim could only be effected, by remaining silent, till he could publish his father’s honour, evidenced by his own heroism. "Do this," added Carrick, "and I shall live fair in the memories of men. But be violent, threaten Edward from these walls, menace the wretches who have trodden on the grey hairs of their prince, and your voice will be heard no more: this ground will drink your blood; and blindly-judging infamy, will for ever after point to our obscure graves!"

Such persuasives at last prevailed with Bruce; and, next day, writing the hasty lines which Wallace received at Falkirk, he intrusted them to his senachie; who conveyed them to Scotland, by means of the shepherd youth.

Shortly after the dispatch of this letter, the presage of Lord Carrick was verified; he was seized in the night with spasms, and died in the arms of his son.

When Bruce related these particulars, his grief and indignation became so violent, that Wallace was obliged to enforce the dying injunctions of the father he thus vehemently deplored, to moderate the delirium of his soul. "Ah!" exclaimed the young Earl, "I have indeed needed some friend to save me from myself; some one to reconcile me to the Robert Bruce, who has so long slept in the fatal delusions which poisoned his father, and laid him low! Oh! Wallace! at times I am mad. I know not whether this forbearance be not cowardice. I doubt whether my father meant what he spoke; that he did not yet seek to preserve the life of his son, at the expense of his honour: and I have been ready to precipitate myself on the steel of Edward, so that he should but meet the point of mine !"

Bruce then added, that in his more rational meditations, he had resolved to attempt an escape in the course of a few days. He understood that a deputation of English barons, seeking a ratification of their charter, were soon to arrive in Durham; the bustle attendant on their business, would, he hoped, draw attention from him, and afford him the opportunity he sought. "In that case," continued he, "I should have made directly to Stirling; and, had not providence conducted you to me, I might have unconsciously thrown myself into the midst of enemies. James Cummin is too ambitious, to have allowed my life to pass unattempted."