[Illustration:  Gravestone at Rullion green.

The stone, three feet by two, stands at the head of this battlefield.  Beautiful firs pensively wave their soft branches over the grave.  Here lies the dust of the 50 Covenanters who fell on the sloping field in front of the stone.  On that day it was covered with sleet.  The fallen lay all night, some stiffened in death, and others benumbed with the Sharp November winds.  The next morning, the good women of Edinburgh came, with shrouds for the dead, and blankets for the living, all having been stripped by the foe.]

At Lanark they remained a day, renewing their Covenant and issuing a Public Declaration, stating that the object of their appeal to arms was the redress of their grievances.  The next day they manoeuvred, coming in contact with detachments of the enemy.  The weather was unfavorable; rain, snow, sleet, and wind united in drenching, chilling, and depressing the unsheltered and underfed men, and turning the roads, over which they marched, into deep mire.  When the morning of the 28th arrived, the day of the battle, Colonel Wallace had only 900 men at his command.

The Covenanters were moving around the foot of the Pentland hills, a few miles from Edinburgh, when General Dalziel, with 3000 of the king’s troops, emerged from a pass behind them, and offered battle.  Wallace accepted the challenge.  He formed his men for action on the hillside, having the advantage of the higher ground.  The gentle slope extended down to the spot where Dalziel’s war-horse was pawing the ground.  The sun was sinking behind the hills.  The day was cold and the country was covered with sleet.

Dalziel ordered an attack by his cavalry.  The horsemen formed, each with blade in hand, and moved rapidly up the rising ground.  Colonel Wallace immediately placed his mounted men in readiness to receive them.  The space between the armies was about half a mile.  The Covenanters grimly watched their approach.  The waiting moments were burdened with awe, but the Covenanters knew how to turn awful moments into power.  They carried the Psalms in their hearts.  Some one began to sing.  The Psalm was pensive and the tune solemn.  All hearts were responsive; from 900 voices a wave of sacred music rolled up the mountain-side against the heavens.  The very sentiment seemed to be the stirring of hearts, that were consciously entering into a forlorn battle: 

    “O God, why hast Thou cast us off? 
      Is it for evermore? 
    Against Thy pasture-sheep why doth
      Thine anger smoke so sore?”

They sang three stanzas.  While the echoes were dying away, the brave Colonel ordered a charge.  Adown the field his horsemen dashed.  They struck the enemy with terrific force, broke their ranks, and hurled them back upon their own base.

Dalziel ordered another charge.  The troops plunge forward to retrieve their lost honor.  Over the blood-stained snow they gallop; nearer and nearer they approach the stern line awaiting them on the hillside.  Wallace gives the word, and the Covenanters again strike the gleaming column with clash of swords, once more rolling it back upon itself in confusion.