bearing down upon him--his enemies and his son.
"Then," says the chronicler, "he remembered the words which the witch
had spoken to him many days before, that he should be suddenly destroyed
and put down by the nearest of his kin." For this he had allowed the
murder of young Mar and driven Alexander of Albany into exile; but who
can wonder if in his stricken soul he now perceived or imagined that no
man can cheat the Fates? His own son, his boy! Some nobler poignancy of
anguish than the mere sick despair and panic of the coward must surely
have been in his mind as he realised this last and crowning horror. The
profound moral discouragement of a man caught in the toils, and for whom
no escape was possible; the sickening sense of betrayal; the wide
country before him, in which there might still be found some peaceful
refuge far from these distractions and contradictions of men; the whirl
of the dreadful yet beautiful sight, companies marching and ever
marching, spears and helmets shining, banners waving, and all against
him--a man who had never any pleasure in the pomp and circumstance of
war. Who can wonder as these hurrying thoughts overwhelmed his mind, and
the fleet courser pawed the turf, and the wild sweet air blew free in
his face, inviting him to escape, to flee, to find somewhere comfort and
peace--that such a man should have yielded to the mad impulse, and in an
access of despair, longing for the wings of a dove that he might flee
away and be at rest, have turned from the rising tumult and fled?

Of all the ironies of Fate there could be none more bitter than that
which drove the hapless fugitive, in growing consciousness of shame,
like a straw before the wind, across the famous field of Bannockburn.
What an association to be connected with that victorious name! He had
aimed at Stirling, but wild with despair and panic and misery missed the
way. As the grey courser entered the village of Bannockburn at full
flight a woman drawing water let fall her "pig" or earthen pot in
affright, and startled the horse; and the King "being evill sitten"
(having a bad seat) fell from his saddle before the door of the mill.
The sight of this strange cavalier in his splendid armour, covered with
foam and dust, borne to the earth like a log by the weight of his
armour, appalled the simple people, who dragged him inside the mill and
covered him where he lay with some rough horsecloth, not knowing what to
do. When he had come to him