his party to come upon
him suddenly and by night. Accordingly, he quartered his little troop of
sixty men on the side of a deep and swift-running river, that had very
steep and rocky banks. There was but one ford by which this river could
be crossed in that neighborhood, and that ford was deep and narrow, so
that two men could scarcely get through abreast; the ground on which
they were to land on the side where the king was, was steep, and the
path which led upward from the water's edge to the top of the bank,
extremely narrow and difficult.

Bruce caused his men to lie down to take some sleep, at a place about
half a mile distant from the river, while he himself, with two
attendants, went down to watch the ford, through which the enemy must
needs pass before they could come to the place where King Robert's men
were lying. He stood for some time looking at the ford, and thinking how
easily the enemy might be kept from passing there, provided it was
bravely defended, when he heard at a distance the baying of a hound,
which was always coming nearer and nearer. This was the bloodhound which
was tracing the king's steps to the ford where he had crossed, and the
two hundred Galloway men were along with the animal, and guided by it.
Bruce at first thought of going back to awaken his men; but then he
reflected that it might be only some shepherd's dog. "My men," said he,
"are sorely tired; I will not disturb their sleep for the yelping of a
cur, till I know something more of the matter."

So he stood and listened; and by and by, as the cry of the hound came
nearer, he began to hear a trampling of horses, and the voices of men,
and the ringing and clattering of armor, and then he was sure the enemy
were coming to the river side. Then the king thought, "If I go back to
give my men the alarm, these Galloway men will get through the ford
without opposition; and that would be a pity, since it is a place so
advantageous to make defence against them." So he looked again at the
steep path, and the deep river, and he thought that they gave him so
much advantage, that he himself could defend the passage with his own
hand, until his men came to assist him. His armor was so good and
strong, that he had no fear of arrows, and therefore the combat was not
so very unequal as it must have otherwise been. He therefore sent his
followers to waken his men, and remained alone by the bank of the river.

In the meanwhile, the noise and trampling