"Now, then, is our time to strike!" cried Wallace; and ordering detachments of his men to take possession of the avenues to the town, he set forth with others, to reach the front of the castle gates, by a less frequented path than the main street. The darkness being so great that no object could be distinctly seen, they had not gone far, before Macdougal, who had undertaken to be their guide, discovered by the projection of a hill on the right, that he had lost the road. "Our swords will find one!" exclaimed Kirkpatrick. Unwilling to miss any advantage, in a situation where so much was at stake, Wallace gladly hailed a twinkling light, which gleamed from what he supposed the window of a distant cottage. Kirkpatrick, with Macdougal, offered to go forward, and explore what it might be. In a few minutes they arrived at a thatched building; from which, to their surprise, issued the wailing strains of the coronach. Kirkpatrick paused. Its melancholy notes were sung by female voices. Hence, there being no danger in applying to such harmless inhabitants, to learn the way to the citadel, he proceeded to the door; when, intending to knock, the weight of his mailed arm burst open its slender latch, and discovered two poor women, in an inner apartment, wringing their hands over a shrouded corpse. While the chief entered his friends came up. Murray and Graham, struck with sounds never breathed over the vulgar dead, lingered at the porch wondering what noble Scot could be the subject of lamentation in so lowly an abode. The stopping of these two chieftains impeded the steps of Wallace, who was pressing forward, without eye or ear for anything but the object of his search. Kirkpatrick at that moment appeared on the threshold, and without a word, putting forth his hand, seized the arm of his commander, and pulled him into the cottage. Before Wallace could ask the reason of this, he saw a woman run forward with a light in her hand; the beams of which falling on the face of the knight of Ellerslie, with a shriek of joy she rushed toward him, and threw herself upon his neck. He instantly recognized Elspa, his nurse; the faithful attendant on his grandfather's declining years! the happy matron who had decked the bridal bed of his Marion! and with an anguish of recollections that almost unmanned him, he returned her affectionate embrace. "Here he lies!" cried the old woman, drawing him toward the rushy bier; and before he had time to demand, "Who?" she pulled down the shroud and disclosed the body of Sir Ronald Crawford. Wallace gazed on it, with a look of such dreadful import that Edwin, whose anxious eyes then sought his countenance, trembled with a nameless horror. "Oh," thought he, "to what is this noble soul reserved! Is he alone doomed to extirpate the enemies of Scotland, that every ill falls direct upon his head!"