Where then was her
Wallace? Alas! it was only a shadow she had seen! the hill was still
lonely, and he whom she sought was yet far away! Overcome with
watching, expectation, and disappointment, unable to say whence arose
her fears, she sat down again to look; but her eyes were blinded with
tears, and in a voice interrupted by sighs she exclaimed, "Not yet, not
yet! Ah, my Wallace, what evil hath betided thee?"
Trembling with a nameless terror, she knew not what to dread. She
believed that all hostile recounters had ceased, when Scotland no
longer contended with Edward. The nobles, without remonstrance, had
surrendered their castles into the hands of the usurper; and the
peasantry, following the example of their lords, had allowed their
homes to be ravaged without lifting an arm in their defense.
Opposition being over, nothing could then threaten her husband from the
enemy; and was not the person who had taken him from Ellerslie a friend?
Before Wallace's departure he had spoken to Marion alone; he told her
that the stranger was Sir John Monteith, the youngest son of the brave
Walter Lord Monteith,** who had been treacherously put to death by the
English in the early part of the foregoing year.
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