But you will take care of it for his sake, till more peaceful times allow him to reclaim his own!" "Fatal box!" cried the soldier, regarding it with an abhorrent eye, "that was the leading cause which brought Heselrigge to Ellerslie." "How ?" inquired the earl.

Grimsby then briefly related, that immediately after the return to Lanark of the detachment sent to Ellerslie, under the English garrison in Douglas, and told the governor that Sir William Wallace had that evening taken a quantity of treasure from the castle.

His report was, that the English soldiers who stood near the Scottish knight when he mounted at the castle gate, saw a long iron coffer under his arm, but not suspecting its having belonged to Douglas, they thought not of it, till they overheard Sir John Monteith, as he passed through one of the galleries, muttering something about gold and a box.

To intercept the robber amongst his native glens, the soldiers deemed impracticable, and therefore their captain came immediately to lay the information before the Governor of Lanark.

As the scabbard found in the affray with young Arthur had betrayed the victor to have been Sir William Wallace, this intimation of his having been also the instrument of wrestling from the grasp of Heselrigge perhaps the most valuable spoil in Douglas exasperated him to the most vindictive excess.