hordes of traitors may be trained and armed in these remote districts, without the smallest suspicion being attached to them till it is well-nigh too late, and the mischief is done.  Well, to drive out these black villains, to free his kingdom, not alone from the yoke of an English Edward, but a Scottish Comyn, good King Robert was resolved—­and even as he resolved he did.  Inverness, the citadel of treason and disloyalty, fell before him; her defences, and walls, and turrets, and towers, all dismantled and levelled, so as to prevent all further harborage of treason; her garrison marched out, the ringleaders sent into secure quarters, and all who hastened to offer homage and swear fidelity, received with a courtesy and majesty which I dare to say did more for the cause of our true king than a Comyn could ever do against it.  Other castles followed the fate of Inverness, till at length the north, even as the south, acknowledged the Bruce, not alone as their king, but as their deliverer and savior.

“It was while rejoicing over these glorious successes, the lords and knights about the person of their sovereign began to note with great alarm that his strength seemed waning, his brow often knit as with inward pain, his eye would grow dim, and his limbs fail him, without a moment’s warning; and that extreme depression would steal over his manly spirit even in the very moment of success.  They watched in alarm, but silently; and when they saw the renewed earnestness and activity with which, on hearing of the approach of Comyn of Buchan, Sir John de Mowbray, and that worst of traitors, his own nephew, Sir David of Brechin, he rallied his forces, advanced to meet them, and compelled them to retreat confusedly to Aberdeen, they hoped they had been deceived, and all was well.

“But the fell disease gained ground; at first he could not guide his charger’s reins, and then he could not mount at all; his voice failed, his sight passed; they were compelled to lay him in a litter, and bear him in the midst of them, and they felt as if the void left by their sovereign’s absence from their head was filled with the dim shadow of death.  Nobly and gallantly did Lord Edward endeavor to remedy this fatal evil; Lennox, Hay, even the two Frasers, who had so lately joined the king, seemed as if paralyzed by this new grief, and hung over the Bruce’s litter as if their strength waned with his.  Sternly, nay, at such a moment it seemed almost harshly, Lord Edward rebuked this weakness, and, conducting them to Slenath, formed some strong entrenchments, of which the Bruce’s pavilion was the centre, intending there to wait his brother’s recovery.  Ah, my masters, if ye were not with good King Robert then, ye have escaped the bitterest trial.  Ye know not what it was to behold him—­the savior of his country, the darling of his people, the noblest knight and bravest warrior who ever girded on a sword—­lie there, so pale, so faint, with scarce a voice or passing sigh to say he breathed.