water, when she saw the horse coming, dropped her bucket down on the road and ran for safety.  The horse, frightened by the bucket, jumped over the brook that turned the mill, and threw the king off at the mill door.  The miller and his wife, who saw the accident, not knowing that the rider was the king, put him in a nook in the mill and covered him with a cloth.  When he came round, he asked for a priest and told them he was the king.  But he had fallen into the hands of his enemies.  The miller’s wife clapped her hands, and ran out crying for a priest for the king.  A man called out, “I am a priest; where is the king?” When he saw the king he told him he might recover if he had a good leeching, but the king desired him to give him the Sacrament.  The supposed priest said, “That I shall do quickly,” and suiting the action to the word, he stabbed him several times in the heart.  The corpse he took away on his back, no one knew whither, and the king’s soldiers, now leaderless, fled to Stirling and Linlithgow.

We thanked our friend for his company and bade him farewell, as we reached Bannockburn village.  We observed there, as in most villages near Stirling, many houses in ruins or built with the ruins of others.  We thought what a blessing it was that the two nations were now united, and that the days of these cruel wars were gone for ever!  At a junction of roads a finger-post pointed “To the Bannockburn Collieries,” and we saw several coal-pits in the distance with the ruins of an old building near them, but we did not take the trouble to inspect them.

The shades of night were coming on when, after walking a few miles, we saw an old man standing at the garden gate of a very small cottage by the wayside, who told us he was an old sailor and that Liverpool had been his port, from which he had taken his first voyage in 1814.  He could remember Birkenhead and that side of the River Mersey when there was only one house, and that a farm from which he used to fetch buttermilk, and when there was only one dock in Liverpool—­the Prince’s.  We thought what a contrast the old man would find if he were to visit that neighbourhood now!  He told us of a place near by named Norwood, where were the remains of an old castle of Prince Charlie’s time, with some arches and underground passages, but it was now too dark to see them.  We proceeded towards Camelon, with the great ironworks of Carron illuminating the sky to our left, and finally arrived at Falkirk.  Here, in reply to our question, a sergeant of police recommended us to stay the night at the “Swan Inn,” kept by a widow, a native of Inverness, where we were made very comfortable.  After our supper of bread and milk, we began to take off our boots to prepare for bed, but we were requested to keep them on as our bedroom was outside!  We followed our leader along the yard at the back of the inn and up a flight of stone steps, at the top of which we were ushered into a comfortable bedroom containing three beds, any or all of which, we were informed, were at our service.  Having made our selection and fastened the door, we were soon asleep, notwithstanding the dreadful stories we had heard that day, and the great battlefields we had visited—­haunted, no doubt, by the ghosts of legions of our English ancestors who had fallen therein!