iend to whom he could
confide his wicked purposes.

He grew careless of life, and wished for death; but the near approach
of Malcolm's army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage,
and he determined to die (as he expressed it) "with armour on his
back." Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him
with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits,
that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be
vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought
could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable
strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly waited the
approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him,
pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had
seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he
looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move!
"Liar and slave," cried Macbeth; "if thou speakest false, thou shalt
hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale
be true, I care not if thou dost as much by me:" for Macbeth now
began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches
of the spirits. He was not to fear, till Birnam wood should come to
Dunsinane: and now a wood did move! "However," said he, "if this which
he avouches be true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence,
nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life
at an end." With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the
besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.

The strange appearance, which had given the messenger an idea of a
wood moving, is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through
the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skilful general, instructed his
soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by
way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of
the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had
frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to
pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood
them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.

And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though
feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in
reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and
Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valour,