"I canna richtly tell mysel, sir. I dinna ken. I canna help it. Maybe it is to see you in this plight--to see Scotland's chief without a single attendant, and glad o' the shelter o' sae lowly a roof as mine." "Pho, pho, my kind hostess, and what is in that?" replied Bruce, in a cheering tone. "We must all rough it out as we best can in these times, king and cobbler, baron and beggar. Better days are coming, and we will then think of our present hardships only to laugh at them. As to attendants," he added, with a look of peculiar intelligence, "I am not, perhaps, so destitute of them as I may seem; although they are not, it may be, within calling at this moment. Half-an-hour's walk into the Torwood, however, and half-a-dozen blasts of this little horn would bring around me a band of as stalworth, nay, as brave hearts as Scotland can boast." "God be thankit for that!" said Bruce's enthusiastic hostess. "Then there is hope yet." "There is, there is. A day of reckoning is coming. But now, my good dame," he added, glancing at a little window, through which the dull, faint light of the breaking day had just begun to gleam, "I must take my departure. I must be at the mustering place an hour after daybreak." Saying this the redoubted warrior drew out a leathern purse, from whence he took several pieces of gold coin, which he vainly endeavoured to press on the acceptance of his hostess. "Well, well, my good dame," he said, on finding his urgency only gave offence; "we'll settle all this on some future day. Depend upon it, _I_ will not forget the score which stands against me here. In the meantime, farewell; and fare ye well too, my little maiden," he said, taking his hostess's daughter by the hand; "you and I will meet again." Having said this, and having once more bid mother and daughter adieu, Bruce left the house, and soon after disappeared in the depths of the Torwood. Margaret Grahame stood at the door, and, with the corner of her apron at her eye, looked after the stately figure of the patriot chief, as long as it remained in sight. When it had disappeared, she returned into the house, and began, as she busied herself in brushing up, or, as she would herself have called it, "redding" up her little cottage, after the hospitalities of which it had been the scene, in _crooning_ a popular Scottish ditty of the day, of which the two first verses ran thus, "Guid speed the wark o' bow and brand That's raised for Scotland's weal, And blessins on the heart and hand O' the ever true and leal." "Come frae the east, come frae the wast, Come frae the south and north; For Bruce's horn has blawn a blast That's heard frae Clyde to Forth." "Guid speed the wark," &c.