While all the citadel was indecision, tumult, and
alarm, Lennox hastened to Wallace's camp with the news.
Lord Ruthven and the Perthshire chiefs were already there. They had
arrived early in the morning, but with unpromising tidings of Bruce.
The state of his wound had induced a constant delirium. But still
Wallace clung to the hope that his country was not doomed to
perish--that its prince's recovery was only protracted. In the midst
of this anxiety, Lennox entered; and relating what he had just heard,
turned the whole current of the auditor's ideas. Wallace started from
his seat. His hand mechanically caught up his sword, which lay upon
the table. Lennox gazed at him with animated veneration. "There is
not a man in the citadel," cried he, "who does not appear at his wits'
end, and incapable of facing this often-beaten foe. Will you, Wallace,
again condescend to save a country that has treated you so
ungratefully?"
"I would die in its trenches!" cried the chief, with a generous
forgiveness of all his injuries suffusing his magnanimous heart.
Lord Loch-awe soon after appeared, and corroborating the testimony of
Lennox added, that on the regent's sending word to the troops on the
south of Stirling, that in consequence of the treason of Sir William
Wallace the supreme command was taken from him, and they must
immediately march out under the orders of Sir Simon Fraser, to face a
new incursion of the enemy, they began to murmur among themselves,
saying that since Wallace was found to be a traitor, they knew not whom
to trust; but certainly it should not be a beaten general.
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