The sun rose on Wallace and his brave legions as they traversed the once romantic glades of Strathmore; but now the scene was changed. The villages were abandoned, and the land lay around in uncultivated wastes. Sheep, without a shepherd, fled wild from the approach of man; and wolves issued, howling, from the cloisters of depopulated monasteries. The army approached Dumblane; but it was without inhabitant; grass grew in the streets; and the birds which roosted in the desert dwellings flew scared from the windows as the trumpet of Wallace sounded through the town. Loud echoes repeated the summons from its hollow walls; but no other voice was heard, no human face appeared; for the ravening hand of Cressingham had been there! Wallace sighed as he looked around him. "Rather smile," cried Graham, "that Heaven hath given you the power to say to the tyrants who have done this, 'Here shall your proud waves be stayed!'" They proceeded over many a hill and plain, and found that the same withering touch of desolation had burned up and overwhelmed the country. Wallace saw that his troops were faint for want of food; cheering them, he promised that Ormsby should provide them a feast in Perth; and, with reawakened spirits, they took the River Tay at its fords, and were soon before the walls of that well-armed city. But it was governed by a coward, and Ormsby fled to Dundee at the first sight of the Scottish army. His flight might have warranted the garrison to surrender without a blow, but a braver man being his lieutenant, sharp was the conflict before Wallace could compel that officer to abandon the ramparts and to sue for the very terms he had at first rejected. After the fall of Perth, the young regent made a rapid progress through that part of the country; driving the southron garrisons out of Scone, and all the embattled towns; expelling them from the castles of Kincain, Elcho, Kinfauns, and Doune; and then proceeding to the marine fortresses (those avenues by which the ships of England had poured its legions on the eastern coast), he compelled Dundee, Cupar, Glamis, Montrose, and Aberdeen, all to acknowledge the power of his arms. He seized most of the English ships in those ports, and manning them with Scots, soon cleared the seas of the vessels which had escaped, taking some, and putting others to flight; and one of the latter was the fugitive Ormsby.