"Thou shalt have it, severed from my head by this accurse steel," answered Wallace, taking off his bonnet, and letting his amber locks fall in tresses on his shoulders. Halbert burst into a fresh flood of tears, for he remembered how often it had been the delight of Marion to comb these bright tresses and to twist them round he ivory fingers. Wallace looked up as the old man's sobs became audible, and read his thoughts: "It will never be again, Halbert," cried he, and with a firm grasp of the sword he cut off a large handful of his hair. "Marion, thy blood hath marked it!" exclaimed he; "and every hair on my head shall be dyed of the same hue, before this sword is sheathed upon thy murderers. Here, Halbert," continued he, knotting it together, "take this to the Earl of Mar; it is all, most likely, he will ever see again of William Wallace. Should I fall, tell him to look on that, and in my wrongs read the future miseries of Scotland, and remember that God armoreth the patriot's hand. Let him set on that conviction and Scotland may yet be free." Halbert placed the lock in his bosom, but again repeated his entreaties, that his master would accompany him to Bothwell Castle. He urged the consolation he would meet from the good earl's friendship. "If he indeed regard me," returned Wallace, "for my sake let him cherish you. My consolations must come from a higher hand; I go where it directs. If I live, you shall see me again; but twilight approaches--we must away. The sun must not rise again upon Heselrigge." Halbert now followed the rapid steps of Wallace, who, assisting the feeble limbs of his faithful servant, drew him up the precipitous side of the Lynn,** and then leaping from rock to rock, awaited with impatience the slower advances of the poor old harper, as he crept round a circuit of overhanging cliffs, to join him on the summit of the craigs. **The cavern which sheltered Sir William Wallace, near Corie Lynn, is yet revered by the people. Together they struck into the most inaccessible defiles of the mountains, and proceeded, till on discerning smoke whitening with its ascending curls the black sides of the impending rocks, Wallace saw himself near the objects of his search. He sprung on a high cliff projecting over this mountain-valley, and blowing his bugle with a few notes of the well-known pibroch of Lanarkshire, was answered by the reverberations of a thousand echoes.