--Isabel, Mary, and
Christina. Behind rode four men-at-arms. From the description which
he had heard of him Archie had no doubt that the elder of the two
knights was Robert Bruce himself, and when they approached within
thirty yards he gave a shout, and, with his band, with levelled
spears, drew up across the road. At the same moment the other party
closed in behind the horsemen; and the eight archers, with bent
bows and arrows drawn to the head, rose among the trees. The party
reined in their horses suddenly.

"Hah! what have we here?" Bruce exclaimed. "An ambush--and on
all sides too!" he added as he looked round. "What means this?
Are you robbers who thus dare attack the Bruce within a mile of
Turnberry? Why, they are but lads," he added scornfully. "Rein
back, girls; we and the men-at-arms will soon clear a way for you
through these varlets. Nay, I can do it single handed myself."

"Halt! Sir Robert Bruce," Archie exclaimed in a loud clear voice.
"If you move I must perforce give the word, and it may well be that
some of the ladies with you may be struck with the arrows; nor,
young though my followers may be, would you find them so easy a
conquest as you imagine. They have stood up before the English ere
now; and you and your men-at-arms will find it hard work to get
through their pikes; and we outnumber you threefold. We are no
robbers. I myself am Sir Archibald Forbes."

"You!" exclaimed Robert Bruce, lowering his sword, which he
had drawn at the first alarm and held uplifted in readiness for a
charge; "you Sir Archibald Forbes! I have heard the name often as
that of one of Wallace's companions, who, with Sir John Grahame,
fought with him bravely at the captures of Lanark, Ayr, and other
places, but surely you cannot be he!"

"I am Sir Archibald Forbes, I pledge you my word," Archie said
quietly; "and, Sir Robert Bruce, methinks that if I, who am, as
you see, but yet a lad--not yet having reached my seventeenth
year--can have done good service for Scotland, how great the
shame that you, a valiant knight and a great noble, should be in
the ranks of her oppressors, and not of her champions! My name will
tell you that I have come hither for no purpose of robbery. I have
come on a mission from Wallace--not sent thereon by him, but
acting myself in consequences of words which dropped from him. He
said how sad it was that you, who might be King of a Scotland free
and independent, by the choice of her people, s