favorite of the Scottish
peasantry. Harry, who, it may be observed, professes to translate from a
Latin account written by Wallace's intimate friend and chaplain, John
Blair, makes him to have been carefully educated by his uncle, a wealthy
churchman who resided at Dunipace, in Stirlingshire, and to have been
afterward sent to the grammar-school of Dundee. Here his first memorable
act is said to have been performed; his slaughter of the son of Selby,
the English governor of the castle of Dundee, in chastisement of an
insult offered him by the unwary young man; Wallace with his dagger
struck him dead on the spot. This must have happened, if at all, in the
year 1291, after Edward I. of England had obtained possession of all the
places of strength throughout Scotland on his recognition as Lord
Paramount by the various competitors for the crown, which had become
vacant by the death of the infant Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, in
September, 1290.

This bold deed committed by Wallace, who in making his escape is
asserted to have laid several of young Selby's attendants as low as
their master, was immediately followed by his outlawry. He now took to
the woods, and gifted as he was with eloquence, sagacity, and other high
mental powers and accomplishments (to this the testimony of Fordun is as
express and explicit as that of his poetical biographer), not less than
with strength and height of frame and all other personal advantages, he
soon found himself at the head of a band of attached as well as
determined followers, who under his guidance often harassed the English
soldiery, both on their marches and at their stations, plundering and
slaying, as it might chance, with equally little remorse. Particular
spots in nearly every part of Scotland are still famous for some deed of
Wallace and his fellow-outlaws, performed at this period of his life;
but for these we must refer to the Blind Minstrel. The woods in the
neighborhood of Ayr would seem to have been his chief haunt; and some of
his most remarkable feats of valor were exhibited in that town, in the
face and in defiance of the foreign garrison by which it was occupied.
Both his father and his elder brother are said to have fallen in
_rencontres_ with the English during this interval. It was now also that
he fell in love with the orphan daughter of Sir Hew de Bradfute, the
heiress of Lamington, having, it is said, first seen her at a church in
the neighborhood of Lanark. Th