"They shall find us ready to receive them," was the prompt reply of Wallace; and his actions were ever the companions of his words. Leaving the new-arrived Scots to rest on the banks of the Esk, he put himself at the head of five thousand men; and dispatching a thousand more, with Sir John Graham, to pass the Cheviots, and be in ambush to attack the Southrons when he should give the signal, he marched swiftly forward, and soon fell in with some advanced squadrons of the enemy, amongst the recesses of those hills. Little expecting such a rencounter, they were marching in defiles upon the lower ridgy craigs, to avoid the swamps which occupied the broader way. At sight of the Scots, Lord Percy, the Southron commander, ordered a party of his archers to discharge their arrows. The artillery of war being thus opened afresh, Wallace drew his bright sword, and waving it before him, just as the sun set, called aloud to his followers. His inspiring voice echoed from hill to hill; and the higher detachments of the Scots, pouring downward with the resistless impetuosity of their own mountain streams, precipitated their enemies into the valley; while Wallace, with his pikemen, charging the horses in those slippery paths, drove the terrified animals into the morasses, where some sunk at once, and others, plunging, threw their riders, to perish in the swamp. Desperate at the confusion which now ensued, as his archers fell headlong from the rocks, and his cavalry lay drowning before him, Lord Percy called up his infantry; they appeared, but though ten thousand strong, the determined Scots met their first ranks breast to breast; and leveling them with their companions, rushed on the rest with the force of a thunder-storm. It was at this period, that the signal was given from the horn of Wallace; and the division of Graham, meeting the retreating Southrons as they attempted to form behind the hill, completed their defeat. The slaughter became dreadful, the victory decisive. Sir Ralph Lattimer, the second in command, was killed in the first onset; and Lord Percy himself, after fighting as became his brave house, fled, covered with wounds, toward Alnwick. Chapter XLV. Lochmaben Castle. This being the seasons of harvest in the northern counties of England, Wallace carried his reapers, not to lay their sickle to the field, but, with their swords, to open themselves a way into the Southron granaries.