The mourner banquets on memory; making that which seems the poison of life, its ailment. During the hours of regret we recall the images of departed joys; and in weeping over each tender remembrance, tears so softly shed embalm the wounds of grief. To be denied the privilege of pouring forth our love and our lamentations over the grave of one who in life was our happiness, is to shut up the soul of the survivor in a solitary tomb, where the bereaved heart pines in secret till it breaks with the fullness of uncommunicated sorrow; but listen to the mourner, give his feelings way, and, like the river rolling from the hills into the valley, they will flow with a gradually gentler stream, till they become lost in time's wide ocean. So Murray judged when the poor old harper, finding himself alone with him, again gave loose to his often-recapitulated griefs. He wept like an infant; and recounting the afflictions of his master, while bewailing the disasters at Bothwell, implored Murray to go without delay to support the now almost friendless Wallace. Murray was consoling him with the assurance that he would set off for the mountains that very evening, when the prior returned to conduct Halbert to a cell appointed for his novitiate. The good priest had placed one of his most pious fathers there, to administer both temporal and spiritual cordials to the aged sufferer. The sorrowing domestic of Wallace being thus disposed of, the prior and Murray remained together, consulting on the safest means of passing to the Cartlane hills. A lay brother whom the prior had sent in pursuit of Helen's fifty warriors, to apprise them of the English being in the craigs, at this juncture entered the library. He informed the father that, secure in his religious garb, he had penetrated many of the Cartlane defiles, but could neither see nor hear anything of the party. Every glen or height was occupied by the English: and from a woman, of whom he begged a draught of milk, he had learned how closely the mountains were invested. The English commander, in his zeal to prevent provisions being conveyed to Wallace and his famishing garrison, had stopped a procession of monks bearing a dead body to the sepulchral cave of St. Columba. He would not allow them to ascend the heights until he had examined whether the bier really bore a corpse, or was a vehicle to carry food to the beleaguered Scots. In the midst of this information, the prior and his friends were startled by a shout, and soon after a tumult of voices, in which might be distinguished the cry of "A gallows for the traitor!" "Our brave Englishman has fallen into their hands," cried Murray, hastening toward the door. "What would you do?" interrupted the prior, holding him. "Your single arm could not save the soldier. The cross has more power; I will seek these violent men. Meanwhile stay here, as you value the lives of all in the convent."