The words reached the ear of Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, who stood neared to the door.

In a voice of thunder he replied, "That ye gave, ye shall receive.

Where was mercy when our fathers and our brothers fell beneath your murderous axes!" Aymer de Valence came up at this moment with a wooden pillar, which he and his strongest men in the company had torn from under the gallery that surrounded the room, and with all their strength dashing it against the great door, they at last drove it from its bolts.

But now a wall of men opposed them.

Desperate at the sight, and with a burning furnace in their rear, it was not the might of man that could prevent their escape, and with the determination of despair, rushing forward, the foremost rank of Scots fell.