The stopping of these two chieftains impeded the steps of Wallace, who was pressing forward, without eye or ear for anything but the object of his search.
Kirkpatrick at that moment appeared on the threshold, and without a word, putting forth his hand, seized the arm of his commander, and pulled him into the cottage.

Before Wallace could ask the reason of this, he saw a woman run forward with a light in her hand; the beams of which falling on the face of the knight of Ellerslie, with a shriek of joy she rushed toward him, and threw herself upon his neck.
He instantly recognized Elspa, his nurse; the faithful attendant on his grandfather's declining years! the happy matron who had decked the bridal bed of his Marion! and with an anguish of recollections that almost unmanned him, he returned her affectionate embrace.
"Here he lies!" cried the old woman, drawing him toward the rushy bier; and before he had time to demand, "Who ?" she pulled down the shroud and disclosed the body of Sir Ronald Crawford.

Wallace gazed on it, with a look of such dreadful import that Edwin, whose anxious eyes then sought his countenance, trembled with a nameless horror.

"Oh," thought he, "to what is this noble soul reserved! Is he alone doomed to extirpate the enemies of Scotland, that every ill falls direct upon his head!" "Sorry, sorry bier, for the good Lord Ronald!" cried the old woman; "a poor wake to mourn the loss of him who was the benefactor of all the country round! But had I not brought him here, the salt sea must have been his grave." Here sobs prevented her utterance; but after a short pause, with many vehement lamentations over the virtues of the dead, and imprecations on his murderers, she related that as soon as the woful tidings were brought to Monktown kirk (and brought too by the Southron, who was to take it in possession!) she and the clan's-folk who would not swear fidelity to the new lord, were driven from the house.

She hastened to the bloody theater of massacre; and there beheld the bodies of the murdered chiefs drawn on sledges to the seashore.