Unwilling to miss any advantage, in a situation where so much was at
stake, Wallace gladly hailed a twinkling light, which gleamed from what
he supposed the window of a distant cottage. Kirkpatrick, with
Macdougal, offered to go forward, and explore what it might be. In a
few minutes they arrived at a thatched building; from which, to their
surprise, issued the wailing strains of the coronach. Kirkpatrick
paused. Its melancholy notes were sung by female voices. Hence, there
being no danger in applying to such harmless inhabitants, to learn the
way to the citadel, he proceeded to the door; when, intending to knock,
the weight of his mailed arm burst open its slender latch, and
discovered two poor women, in an inner apartment, wringing their hands
over a shrouded corpse. While the chief entered his friends came up.
Murray and Graham, struck with sounds never breathed over the vulgar
dead, lingered at the porch wondering what noble Scot could be the
subject of lamentation in so lowly an abode. The stopping of these two
chieftains impeded the steps of Wallace, who was pressing forward,
without eye or ear for anything but the object of his search.
Kirkpatrick at that moment appeared on the threshold, and without a
word, putting forth his hand, seized the arm of his commander, and
pulled him into the cottage. Before Wallace could ask the reason of
this, he saw a woman run forward with a light in her hand; the beams of
which falling on the face of the knight of Ellerslie, with a shriek of
joy she rushed toward him, and threw herself upon his neck.

He instantly recognized Elspa, his nurse; the faithful attendant on his
grandfather's declining years! the happy matron who had decked the
bridal bed of his Marion! and with an anguish of recollections that
almost unmanned him, he returned her affectionate embrace.