ABSTRACT
The entrance of the old woman about an hour after sun-rise, awakened Wallace; but Baliol continued to sleep. On the chief opening his eyes, Bruce with a smile stretched out his hand to him. Wallace rose, and whispering the widow to abide by her guest till they should return (for they intended to see him safe to his home,) he said they would refresh themselves with a walk. The good dame curtseyed acquiescence; and the friends cautiously passing the sleepers in the outer apartments, emerged to the cheerful breeze. A wood opened its umbrageous arms at a little distance, and thither, over the dew-bespangled grass, they bent their way. The birds sung from tree to tree; and Wallace, seating himself under an overhanging larch which canopied a narrow winding of the river Seine, listened with mingled pain and satisfaction to the communications which Bruce had to impart relative to what had passed since his departure from Durham. He related, that the instant Wallace had followed the Earl of Gloucester from the apartment in the castle, it was entered by Sir Piers Gaveston. He demanded the minstrel. Bruce replied, he knew not where he was. Gaveston, anxious by his zeal to convince the king that he was no accomplice with the suspected person, again addressed Bruce in a tone which he meant should intimidate him; and, a second time put the question, 'Where is the minstrel?' - 'i know not,' replied Bruce. 'And will you dare to tell me, earl,' asked he, 'that within this quarter of an hour he has not been in this tower? nay, in this very room? - The guards in your anti-chamber have told me that he was: - and can Lord Carrick stoop to utter a falsehood to screen a wandering beggar?'
