The Scottish Chiefs

The Scottish Chiefs

Jane Porter

The Scottish Chiefs by Miss Jane Porter

Scotland.

Bright was the summer of 1296. The war which had desolated Scotland

was then at an end. Ambition seemed satiated; and the vanquished,

after having passed under the yoke of their enemy, concluded they might

wear their chains in peace. Such were the hopes of those Scottish

noblemen who, early in the preceding spring, had signed the bond of

submission to a ruthless conqueror, purchasing life at the price of all

that makes life estimable-liberty and honor.

Prior to this act of vassalage, Edward I., King of England, had entered

Scotland at the head of an immense army. He seized Berwick by

stratagem; laid the country in ashes; and, on the field of Dunbar,

forced the Scottish king and his nobles to acknowledge him their liege

lord.

But while the courts of Edward, or of his representatives, were crowded

by the humbled Scots, the spirit of one brave man remained unsubdued.

Disgusted alike at the facility with which the sovereign of a warlike

nation could resign his people and his crown into the hands of a

treacherous invader, and at the pusillanimity of the nobles who had

ratified the sacrifice, William Wallace retired to the glen of

Ellerslie. Withdrawn from the world, he hoped to avoid the sight of

oppressions he could not redress, and the endurance of injuries beyond

his power to avenge.

Thus checked at the opening of life in the career of glory that was his

passion-secluded in the bloom of manhood from the social haunts of

men--he repressed the eager aspirations of his mind, and strove to

acquire that resignation to inevitable evils which alone could

reconcile him to forego the promises of his youth, and enable him to

view with patience a humiliation of Scotland, which blighted her honor,

menaced her existence, and consigned her sons to degradation or

obscurity. The latter was the choice of Wallace. Too noble to bend

his spirit to the usurper, too honest to affect submission, he resigned

himself to the only way left of maintaining the independence of a true

Scot; and giving up the world at once, all the ambitions of youth

became extinguished in his breast, since nothing was preserved in his

country to sanctify their fires. Scotland seemed proud of her chains.

Not to share in such debasement, appeared all that was now in his

power; and within the shades of Ellerslie he found a retreat and a

home, whose sweets beguiling him of every care, made him sometimes

forget the wrongs of his country in the tranquil enjoyments of wedded

love.

During the happy mouths of the preceding autumn, while Scotland was yet

free, and the path of honorable distinction still open before her young

nobility, Wallace married Marion Braidfoot, the beautiful heiress of

Lammington. Nearly of the same age, and brought up from childhood

together, reciprocal affection had grown with their growth; and

sympathy of tastes and virtues, and mutual tenderness, made them so

entirely one, that when at the age of twenty-two the enraptured lover

was allowed to pledge that faith publicly at the altar, which he had so

often vowed in secret to his Marion, he clasped her to his heart, and

softly whispered: "Dearer than life! part of my being! blessed is this

union, that mingles thy soul with mine, now, and forever!"

Edward's invasion of Scotland broke in upon their innocent joys.

Wallace threw aside the wedding garment for the cuirass and the sword.

But he was not permitted long to use either--Scotland submitted to her

enemies; and he had no alternative but to bow to her oppressors, or to

become an exile from man, amid the deep glens of his country.

The tower of Ellerslie was henceforth the lonely abode of himself and

his bride. The neighboring nobles avoided him, because the principles

he declared were a tacit reproach on their proceedings; and in the

course of a short time, as he forbore to seek them, they even forgot

Lanark.

The darkness was almost impenetrable. Musing on what had passed with

Monteith, and on the likelihood of any hero appearing, who, by freeing

his country, could ever claim the privilege of investigating the

mystery which was now his care. Wallace rode on till, crossing the

bridge of Lanark, he saw the rising moon silver the tops of the distant

hills; and then his meditations embraced a gentler subject. This was

the time he had promised Marion he should be returned, and he had yet

five long miles to go, before he could reach the glen of Ellerslie; he

thought of her being alone--of watching, with an anxious heart, the

minutes of his delay. Scotland and its wrongs he now forgot, in the

idea of her whose happiness was dearer to him than life. He could not

achieve the deliverance of the one, but it was his bliss to preserve

the peace of the other; and putting spurs to his horse, under the now

bright beams of the moon he hastened through the town.

Abruptly turning an angle leading to the Mouse River, a cry of murder

arrested his ear. He checked his horse and listened. The clashing of

arms told him the sound had issued from an alley to the left. He

alighted in an instant, and drawing his sword, threw away the scabbard

(prophetic omen!), then, leaving his horse with one of his servants

hastened, with the other three, to the spot whence the noise proceeded.

On arriving he discovered two men in tartans, with their backs to the

opposite wall, furiously assaulted by a throng of Edward's soldiers.

At this sight, the Scots who accompanied Wallace were so enraged that,

blowing their bugles to encourage the assailed, they joined hand to

hand with their gallant leader, and attacking the banditti, each man

cut his opponent to the ground.

Such unexpected assistance reanimated the drooping strength of one of

the two, with whom the cry had issued. He sprung from the wall with

the vigor of a tiger, but at the moment received a wound in his back,

which would have thrown him at the feet of his enemies, had not Wallace

caught him in his left arm, and with his right, cleared the way, while

he cried to his men who were fighting near him-"To the Glen!" As he

spoke, he threw the now insensible stranger into their arms. The other

man, whose voice had first attracted Wallace, at the instant sunk,

covered with blood, on the pavement.

Two of the servants, obeying their master, carried their senseless

burden toward the horses; but the third, being hemmed in by the furious

soldiers, could not move. Wallace made a passage to his rescue, and

effected it; but one base wretch, while the now wounded Scot was

retreating, made a stroke which would have severed his head from his

body, had not the trusty claymore of Wallace struck down the pending

weapon of the coward, and received his rushing body upon its point. He

fell with bitter imprecations, calling aloud for vengeance.

A dreadful cry was now raised by the whole band of assassins:

"Murder!-treason!-Arthur Heselrigge is slain!" The uproar became

general. The windows of the adjoining houses were thrown open; people

armed and unarmed issued from their doors and pressed forward to

inquire the cause of the alarm. Wallace was nearly overpowered; a

hundred swords flashed in the torchlight; but at the moment he expected

they would be sheathed in his heart, the earth gave way under his feet,

and he sunk into utter darkness.

He fell upon a quantity of gathered broom; and concluding that the

weight of the thronging multitude had burst his way through the arch of

a cellar, he sprung to his feet; and though he heard the curses of

several wretches, who had fallen with him and fared worse, he made but