curse, when they mean to bless. Such prayers are blasphemy. For, can
we expect a blessing on our arms, when all our invocations are for
vengeance rather than victory?"

"Blood for blood is only justice!" returned Murray; "and how can you,
noble Wallace, as a Scot, and as a man, imply any mercy to the villains
who stab us to the heart?"

"I plead not for them," replied Wallace, "but for the poor wretches who
follow their leaders, by force, to the field of Scotland; I would not
inflict on them the cruelties we now resent. It is not to aggrieve,
but to redress, that we carry arms. If we make not this distinction,
we turn courage into a crime; and plant disgrace, instead of honor,
upon the warrior's brow."

"I do not understand commiserating the wolves who have so long made
havoc in our country," cried Kirkpatrick; "methinks such maidenly mercy
is rather or of place."

Wallace turned to him with a smile: "I will answer you, my valiant
friend, by adopting your own figure. It is that these Southron wolves
may not confound us with themselves, that I wish to show in our conduct
rather the generous ardor of the faithful guardian of the fold, than
the rapacious fierceness which equals them with the beasts of the
desert. As we are men and Scots, let the burden of our prayers be, the
preservation of our country, not the slaughter of our enemies! The one
is an ambition, with which angels may sympathize; the other, a horrible
desire, which speaks the nature of fiends."

"In some cases this may be," replied Sir Roger, a little reconciled to