champions a Highland imagination could conceive. At last, three men,
named M'Androsser, rushed forward, resolved to free their chief from
this formidable enemy. There was a lake on one side, and a precipice on
the other, and the king had hardly space to manage his horse, when all
three sprang on him at once. One snatched his bridle, one caught him by
the stirrup and leg, and a third leaped from a rising ground and seated
himself behind him on his horse. The first lost his arm by one sweep of
the king's sword; the second was overthrown and trampled on; and the
last, by a desperate struggle, was dashed down, and his skull cleft by
the king's sword; but his dying grasp was so tight upon the plaid that
Bruce was forced to unclasp the brooch that secured it, and leave both
in the dead man's hold. It was long preserved by the Macdougals of Lorn,
as a trophy of the narrow escape of their enemy.

Nor must we leave Robert the Bruce without mentioning that other Golden
Deed, more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting
his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English
host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be
given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well
may his old Scotch rhyming chronicler remark:--


'This was a full great courtesy
That swilk a king and so mighty,
Gert his men dwell on this manner,
But for a poor lavender.'


We have seen how the sturdy Roman fought for his city, the fierce
Northman died to guard his comrades' rush to their ships after the lost