of a mischance) for having presumed to move without their officers,
they stood dismayed and irresolute, while those very officers, who had
been all at the banquet, were falling in heaps under the swords of the
exterminating Scots.

Meanwhile, the men who guarded the prisoners in the keep, having their
commanders with them, made a stout resistance there; and one of the
officers, seeing a possible advantage, stole out, and, gathering a
company of the scattered garrison, suddenly taking Graham in flank,
made no inconsiderable havoc amongst that part of his division. Edwin
blew the signal for assistance. Wallace heard the blast; and seeing
the day was won at the palace, he left the finishing of the affair to
Kirkpatrick and Murray; and, drawing off a small party to reinforce
Graham, he took the Southron officer by surprise. The enemy's ranks
fell around him like corn beneath the sickle; and, grasping a huge
battering ram which his men had found, he burst open the door of the
keep. Graham and Edwin rushed in; and Wallace, sounding his own bugle
with the notes of victory, his reserves (whom he had placed at the ends
of the streets) entered in every direction, and received the flying
soldiers of De Valence upon their pikes.

Dreadful was now the carnage; for the Southrons, forgetting all
discipline, fought every man for his life; which the furious Scots
driving them into the far-spreading flames, what escaped the sword
would have perished in the fire, had not the relenting heart of Wallace
pleaded for bleeding humanity, and he ordered the trumpet to sound a
parley. He was obeyed; and, standing on an adjacent mound, in an awful
voice he proclaimed that "whoever had not been accomplices in the
horrible massacre of the Scottish chiefs, if they would ground their
arms, and take an oath never to serve again against Scotland, their