As a signal of having succeeded, they were to smother the flame on the top of the tower, and thence descend toward the garrison to meet Wallace before the prison of the Earl of Mar.
While the men of Lanark, with their eyes fixed on the burning beacon, in deadly stillness watched the appointed signal for the attack, Wallace, by the aid of his dagger, which he struck into the firm soil that occupied the cracks in the rock, drew himself up almost parallel with the top of the great wall, which clasped the bases of the two hills.

He listened; not a voice was to be heard in the garrison of all the legions he had so lately seen glittering on its battlements.

It was an awful pause.
Now was the moment when Scotland was to make her first essay for freedom! Should it fail, ten thousand bolts of iron would be added to her chains! Should it succeed, liberty and happiness were the almost certain consequences.
He looked up, and fixing his eyes on the beacon-flame, thought he saw the figures of men pass before it--the next moment all was darkness.

He sprung on the walls, and feeling by the touch of hands about his feet that his brave followers had already mounted their ladders, he grasped his sword firmly, and leaped down on the ground within.

In that moment he struck against the sentinel, who was just passing, and by the violence of the shock struck him to the earth; but the man, as he fell, catching Wallace round the waist, dragged him after him, and with a vociferous cry, shouted "Treason!" Several sentinels ran with leveled pikes to the spot, the adjacent turrets emptied themselves of their armed inhabitants, and all assaulted Wallace, just as he had extricated himself from the grasp of the prostrate soldier.
"Who are you ?" demanded they.
"Your enemy;" and the speaker fell at his feet with one stroke of his sword.
"Alarm!-treason!" resounded from the rest as they aimed their random strokes at the conquering chief.