of dust and heat brooded over the battle.

"Sic mirkness
In the air above them was"

as when the sons of Thetis and the Dawn fought under the walls of windy
Troy. Douglas beheld the distant cloud, and rode to Bruce, imploring
leave to hurry to Randolph's aid. "I will not break my ranks for him,"
said Bruce; yet Douglas had his will. But the English wavered, seeing
his line advance, and thereon Douglas halted his men, lest Randolph
should lose renown. Beholding this the spearmen of Randolph, in their
turn, charged and drove the weary English horse and their disheartened
riders.

Meanwhile Edward had halted his main force to consider whether they
should fight or rest. But Gloucester's party, knowing nothing of his
halt, had advanced into the wooded park; and Bruce rode down to the
right in his armor, and with a gold coronal on his basnet, but mounted
on a mere palfrey. To the front of the English van, under Gloucester and
Hereford, rode Sir Henry Bohun, a bow-shot beyond his company.
Recognizing the King, who was arraying his ranks, Bohun sped down upon
him, apparently hoping to take him.

"He thought that he should dwell lightly,
Win him, and have him at his will."

But Bruce, in this fatal movement, when history hung on his hand and
eye, uprose in his stirrups and clove Bohun's helmet, the axe breaking
in that stroke. It was a desperate but a winning blow: Bruce's spears
advanced, and the English van withdrew in half superstitious fear of the
omen. His lords blamed Bruce, but

"The King has answer made them none,
But turned upon the axe-shaft, wha
Was with the stroke broken in twa."

"_Initium malorum hoc_" ("This was the beginning of evil"), says the
English chronicler.

After this double success in the Quatre Bras of the Scottish Waterloo,
Bruce, according to Barbour, offered to his men their choice of
withdrawal or of standing it out. The great general might well be of
doubtful mind--was to-morrow to bring a second and a more fatal Falkirk?
The army of Scotland was protected, as Wallace's army at Falkirk had
been, by difficult ground. But the English archers might again rain
their blinding showers of shafts into the broad mark offered by the
clumps of spears, and again the English knights might break through the
shaken ranks. Bruce had but a few squadrons of horse--could they be
trusted to scatter the bowmen of the English forests, and to escape a
flank charge from the far heavie