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.