All around them was desolation; the
sword and the fire had been there, not in open declared warfare, but
under the darkness of midnight, and impelled by rapacity and
wantonness; hence from the base of the rock, even to the foot of the
Clackmannan Hills, all lay a smoking wilderness.
An hour's rest was sufficient to restore every exhausted power to the
limbs of the determined followers of Wallace; and, as the morning
dawned, the sentinels on the ramparts of the town were not only
surprised to see a host below, but that (by the most indefatigable
labor, and a silence like death) had not merely passed the ditch, but
having gained the counterscarp, had fixed their movable towers, and
were at that instant overlooking the highest bastions. The mangonels
and petraries, and other implements for battering walls, and the
ballista, with every efficient means of throwing missive weapons, were
ready to discharge their artillery upon the heads of the beseiged.
At a sight so unexpected, which seemed to have arisen out of the earth
like an exhalation (with such muteness and expedition had the Scottish
operations been carried on), the Southrons, struck with dread, fled a
moment from the walls; but immediately recovering their presence of
mind, they returned, and discharged a cloud of arrows upon their
assailants.
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