"Look on my son!" cried she, with energy; "the first word he speaks shall be Wallace; the second liberty.

And every drop of milk he draws from my bosom, shall be turned into blood to nerve a conquering arm, or to flow for his country!" At this speech all the women held up their children toward him.
"Here," cried they, "we devote them to Heaven, and to our country! Adopt them, noble Wallace, to be thy followers in arms, when, perhaps, their fathers are laid low!" Unable to speak, Wallace pressed their little faces separately to his lips, then returning them to their mothers, laid his hand on his heart, and answered in an agitated voice.

"They are mine!-my weal shall be theirs--my woe my own." As he spoke he hurried from the weeping group, and emerging amid the cliffs, hid himself from their tears and their blessing.
He threw himself on a shelving rock, whose fern-covered bosom projected over the winding waters of Loch Lubnaig, and having stilled his own anguished recollections, he turned his full eyes on the lake beneath; and while he contemplated its serene surface, he sighed, and thought how tranquil was nature, till the rebellious passions of man, wearying of innocent joys, disturbed all by restlessness and invasion on the peace and happiness of others.
The mists of evening hung on the gigantic tops of Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich; then sailing forward, by degrees obscured the whole of the mountains, leaving nothing for the eye to dwell on but the long silent expanse of the waters below.
"So," said he, "did I once believe myself forever shut in from the world, by an obscurity that promised me happiness as well as seclusion! But the hours of Ellerslie are gone! No tender wife will now twine her faithful arms around my neck.

Alas, the angel that sunk my country's wrongs to a dreamy forgetfulness in her arms, she was to be immolated that I might awake! My wife, my unborn babe, they must both bleed for Scotland!-and the sacrifice shall not be yielded in vain.
No, blessed God," cried he, stretching his clasped hands toward my countrymen to liberty and happiness! "Let me counsel with thy wisdom; let me conquer with thine arm! and when all is finished, give me, O gracious Father! a quiet grave, beside my wife and child." Tears, the first he had shed since the hour in which he last pressed his Marion to his heart, now flowed copiously from his eyes.

The women, the children, had aroused all his recollections but in so softened a train, that they melted his heart till he wept.