The appointed number of men was left with
Murray; and Wallace, joining his other chieftains, bade his friend and
honest servant adieu.
He now awakened to a sense of the present scene, and speeded his
legions over his and dale, till they entered on the once luxuriant
banks of the Annan-this territory of some of the noblest in Scotland,
till Bruce, their chief, deserted them. It lay in more terrific ruin
than even the tracts he had left. There reigned the silence of the
tomb; there existed the expiring agonies of men left to perish. Recent
marks of devastation smoked from the blood-stained earth; and in the
midst of a barren waste, a few houseless wretches rushed forward at the
sight of the regent, threw themselves before his horse, and begged a
morsel of food for their famishing selves and dying infants. "look,"
cried an almost frantic mother, holding toward him the living skeleton
of a child; "my husband was slain by the Southrons, who hold Lochmaben
Castle; my subsistence was carried away, and myself turned forth, to
give birth to this child on the rocks. We have fed till this hour on
the wild berries; but I die, and my child expires before me!" A second
group, with shrieks of despair, cried aloud, "Here are our young ones
exposed to equal miseries.
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