"Ha!" cried Kirkpatrick, with a triumphant yell, "art thou yet mine? Damned, damned villain!" cried he, springing upon his breast: "Behold the man you dishonored!-behold the hot cheek your dastard hand defiled! Thy blood shall obliterate the stain; and then Kirkpatrick may again front the proudest in Scotland!" "For mercy!" cried the horror-struck Cressingham, struggling with preternatural strength to extricate himself. "Hell would be my portion did I grant any to thee," cried Kirkpatrick; and with one stroke of the ax he severed the head from its body. "I am a man again!" shouted he, as he held its bleeding veins in his hand, and placed it on the point of his sword. "Thou ruthless priest of Moloch and of Mammon, thou shalt have thine own blood to drink, while I show my general how proudly I am avenged!" As he spoke, he dashed amongst the victorious ranks, and reached Wallace at the very moment he was freeing himself from his fallen horse, which a random arrow had shot under him. Murray, at the same instant, was bringing up the wounded Montgomery, who came to surrender his sword, and to beg quarter for his men. The earl turned deadly pale; for the first object that struck his sight was the fierce knight of Torthorald, walking under the stream of blood which continued to flow from the ghastly head of Cressingham, as he held it exultingly in the air. "If that be your chief," cried Montgomery, "I have mistaken him much--I cannot yield my sword to him." Murray understood him: "If cruelty be an evil spirit," returned he, "it has fled every breast in this army to shelter with Sir Roger Kirkpatrick; and its name is Legion! That is my chief!" added he, pointing to Wallace, with an evident consciousness of deriving honor from his command. The chief rose from the ground dyed in the same ensanguined hue which had excited the abhorrence of Montgomery, though it had been drawn from his own veins, and those of his horse. All, indeed, of blood about him seemed to be on his garment; none was in his eyes, none in his heart but what warmed it to mercy and to benevolence for all mankind. His eyes momentarily fell on the approaching figure of Kirkpatrick, who, waving the head in the air, blew from his bugle the triumphal notes of the Pryse, and then cried to his chief: "I have slain the wolf of Scotland! My brave clansmen are now casing my target with his skin,** which, when I strike its bossy sides, will cry aloud. So, perishes thy dishonor! So perish all the enemies of Scotland!" **It is recorded that the memory of Cressingham was so odious to the Scots, they did indeed flay his dead body, and made saddles and girths and other things of his skin.-(1809.) "And with the extinction of that breath, Kirkpatrick," cried Wallace, looking serenely from the head to him, "let your fell revenge perish also. For your own honor commit no indignities on the body you have slain."