Now old Edward begins to move. He is too weak and ill to throw his long limbs across a horse, so they carry him on a litter in front of his army. At Carlisle the prospect of the strife he loves so well gives him a slight renewal of strength. He mounts his horse for the last time, and leads the march in the old way. But it is the final flicker of life’s flame, and at Burgh-on-Sands, within sight of the tossing Solway, he yields him to the power that conquers even kings. To his bedside he calls his vain, pleasure-loving son, and bids him swear a solemn oath never to cease from strife until the Scots are thoroughly subdued. “Boil the flesh off my bones,” he is said to have cried, “and keep them safe, and as oft as the Scots assemble their forces, let my bones lead the van.” So he dies, fierce and implacable to the last, and the breath is hardly out of his body ere his degenerate son sighs for his jugglers and minstrels and the careless pleasures of the court he has left behind. He advances half-heartedly to Ayr; but the Bruce has retreated before him, knowing well the temper of his foe. At the first decent opportunity Edward hies him southward, and Bruce resumes his work of ridding the land of the English. One by one the castles are captured by storm or stratagem; day by day the English power grows weaker and weaker, and the Bruce grows stronger and stronger. At last the flag of England, once to be seen everywhere, flies only over the castle of Stirling. Its stout-hearted defender is almost starved into submission. He will surrender on midsummer day, unless he is relieved before it dawns by an English army. The new Edward must leave his elegant trifling and bestir himself, unless Scotland is to be hopelessly lost. Hitherto his reign has been singularly inglorious, and his barons have made him, as he says, no longer master in his own house. But he will show them that the spirit of his sire still lives in him. He will invade Scotland, and the Bruce shall feel the weight of his heavy hand. Stirling shall be relieved; he will take up the wager of battle that Scotland has thrown down. Forthwith he assembles the most powerful army that has ever yet menaced Scotland. Mindful of the archers’ victory at Falkirk, he scours the country for bowmen, and every man of them boasts that he “carries the lives of four-and-twenty Scotsmen at his belt.” Forty thousand mounted men are with him, and a prouder and more confident array never took the field. Bruce has chosen his ground well. His front and right are defended by the Bannock burn, which winds through two morasses, and at one place has steep, wooded banks. On the left, where the ground is open, he has honeycombed the field with pits that look firm and level to the eye, but are terrible snares for cavalry. Only one way of approach is open, and that is strewn with caltrops to lame the horses.