After rowing eight hours the party reached Port Patrick, where Archie was delivered by the soldiers to the governor with a message from their commander saying that the prisoner, Sir Archibald Forbes, was a captive of great importance, and was, by the orders of Sir Ingram de Umfraville who had captured him, to be sent on to Carlisle to the king when a ship should be going thither.  A fortnight passed before a vessel sailed.  Archie was placed in irons and so securely guarded in his dungeon that escape was altogether impossible.  So harsh was his confinement that he longed for the time when a vessel would sail for Carlisle, even though he was sure that the same fate which had attended so many of Scotland’s best and bravest knights awaited him there.

The winds were contrary, and the vessel was ten days upon the voyage.  Upon reaching Carlisle Archie was handed to the governor of the castle, and the next morning was conducted to the presence of the king himself.  The aged monarch, in the last extremity of sickness, lay upon a couch.  Several of his nobles stood around him.

“So,” he said as the prisoner was brought before him, “this is Archibald Forbes, the one companion of the traitor Wallace who has hitherto escaped my vengeance.  So, young sir, you have ventured to brave my anger and to think yourself capable of coping with the Lion of England.”

“I have done my utmost, sir king,” Archie said firmly, “such as it was, for the freedom of my country.  No traitor am I, nor was my leader Wallace.  Nor he, nor I, ever took vow of allegiance to you, maintaining ever that the kings of England had neither claim nor right over Scotland.  He has been murdered, foully and dishonourably, as you will doubtless murder me, and as you have killed many nobler knights and gentlemen; but others will take our places, and so the fight will go on until Scotland is free.”

“Scotland will never be free,” the king said with angry vehemence.  “Rather than that, she shall cease to exist, and I will slay till there is not one of Scottish blood, man, woman, or child, to bear the name.  Let him be taken to Berwick,” he said; “there let him be exposed for a week in a cage outside the castle, that the people may see what sort of a man this is who matches himself against the might of England.  Then let him be hung, drawn, and quartered, his head sent to London, and his limbs distributed between four Scotch cities.”

“I go, sir king,” Archie said, as the attendants advanced to seize him, “and at the end of the week I will meet you before the throne of God, for you, methinks, will have gone thither before me, and there will I tax you with all your crimes, with the slaughter of tens of thousands of Scottish men, women, and children, with cities destroyed and countries wasted, and with the murder in cold blood of a score of noble knights whose sole offence was that they fought for their native country.”

With these words Archie turned and walked proudly from the king’s presence.  An involuntary murmur of admiration at his fearless bearing escaped from the knights and nobles assembled round the couch of the dying monarch.