The good King Robert Bruce, who was always watchful and vigilant, had received some information of the intention of this party to come upon him suddenly and by night.  Accordingly, he quartered his little troop of sixty men on the side of a deep and swift-running river, that had very steep and rocky banks.  There was but one ford by which this river could be crossed in that neighborhood, and that ford was deep and narrow, so that two men could scarcely get through abreast; the ground on which they were to land on the side where the king was, was steep, and the path which led upward from the water’s edge to the top of the bank, extremely narrow and difficult.

Bruce caused his men to lie down to take some sleep, at a place about half a mile distant from the river, while he himself, with two attendants, went down to watch the ford, through which the enemy must needs pass before they could come to the place where King Robert’s men were lying.  He stood for some time looking at the ford, and thinking how easily the enemy might be kept from passing there, provided it was bravely defended, when he heard at a distance the baying of a hound, which was always coming nearer and nearer.  This was the bloodhound which was tracing the king’s steps to the ford where he had crossed, and the two hundred Galloway men were along with the animal, and guided by it.  Bruce at first thought of going back to awaken his men; but then he reflected that it might be only some shepherd’s dog.  “My men,” said he, “are sorely tired; I will not disturb their sleep for the yelping of a cur, till I know something more of the matter.”

So he stood and listened; and by and by, as the cry of the hound came nearer, he began to hear a trampling of horses, and the voices of men, and the ringing and clattering of armor, and then he was sure the enemy were coming to the river side.  Then the king thought, “If I go back to give my men the alarm, these Galloway men will get through the ford without opposition; and that would be a pity, since it is a place so advantageous to make defence against them.”  So he looked again at the steep path, and the deep river, and he thought that they gave him so much advantage, that he himself could defend the passage with his own hand, until his men came to assist him.  His armor was so good and strong, that he had no fear of arrows, and therefore the combat was not so very unequal as it must have otherwise been.  He therefore sent his followers to waken his men, and remained alone by the bank of the river.

In the meanwhile, the noise and trampling of the horses increased; and the moon being bright, Bruce beheld the glancing arms of about two hundred men, who came down to the opposite bank of the river.  The men of Galloway, on their part, saw but one solitary figure guarding the ford, and the foremost of them plunged into the river without minding him.  But as they could only pass the ford one by one, the Bruce, who