e they could rise from the table and
grasp their weapons, he had stabbed every one of them to the heart.

The innkeeper's wife, who had just come from the kitchen, and was
serving the men rather unwillingly, for she had no love for the English,
stood still and stared in amazement.

"God save us!" she said at last, as Wallace stopped and wiped his sword.
"But are ye a man, or do you come from the Evil One himself?"

"I am William Wallace," said the stranger, "and I wish that all English
soldiers who are in Scotland were even as these men are."

"Amen to that," said the old woman heartily, and then she dropped down
on her knees before the embarrassed knight. "Hech, sirs," she said
fervently, "to think that my eyes are looking on the Gude Wallace!"

"The Hungry Wallace, ye mean," said the knight with a laugh. "If ye love
me, woman, get up from thy knees, and set on meat and drink, for I have
scarce tasted food these three days, and my strength is well-nigh gone."

"That will I, right speedily," she cried, and, jumping up, she ran to
her husband and told him who the stranger was.

With great goodwill they began to prepare a meal, but hardly had it been
dished up, and placed upon the table, before another band of soldiers
marched up and surrounded the house. The beggar man had gone into Perth,
and told people about the mysterious knight who had bought his old cloak
in order that he might go and see the English soldiers, and when the
rest of the soldiers in the town got to hear of it, they had suspected
at once who he really was, and had come to the help of their companions.

Their suspicions proved true when they caught sight of Wallace through
one of the windows.

"Come out, come out, thou false knight," they cried exultingly, "and
think not that thou canst escape out of our hands. The tod[1] is taken
in his hole this time, and right speedily shall he die."

[Footnote 1: Fox.]

With that they entered the house, and rushed upstairs, thinking that it
would be an easy matter to capture the Scottish leader, for they knew
that he had no follower with him. But the weak things of this world are
able sometimes to confound the mighty, and they had not reckoned that
the two old people to whom the inn belonged were prepared to shed the
last drop of their blood, rather than that Wallace should come to harm
in their house.

So the old man had taken down his broad claymore from the wall, and the
old woman had seized a lanc