Our young leader hoped we might thus find an opportunity to apprise Wallace we were friends, and ready to swell the ranks of his little armament.
"'On our entrance into the passes of the craigs,' continued Kenneth, 'the English captain there mentioned the fate of Bothwell, and the captivity of Lord Mar; and with very little courtesy to sons of the church, ordered the bier to be opened, to see whether it did really contain a corpse, or provisions for our besieged countrymen.

We had certainly expected this investigation; else we might as well have wrapped the trunk of a tree in the shroud we carried as a human being.
We knew that the superstitious hatred of the Southrons would not allow them to touch a Scottish corpse, and therefore we feared no detection from the eye's examination alone.

This ceremony once over, we expected to have passed on without further notice; and in that case the youth would have left his pall, and performed the remainder of his journey in a similar disguise with the rest; but the strict watch of an English guard confined him wholly to the bier.

In hopes of at last evading this vigilance, on pretense of a vow of the deceased that his bearers should perform a pilgrimage throughout the craigs, we traversed them in every direction; and, I make no doubt, would have finally wearied out our guard, and gained our point, had not the circumstance transpired of Wallace's escape.
"'How he had effected it, his enemies could not guess.

Not a man of the besiegers was missing from his post; and not an avenue appeared by which they could trace his flight: but gone he was, and with him his whole train.