CHAPTER XXXI.
Berwick and the Tweed.
In the course of an hour Murray returned from having seen the departing Southrons beyond the barriers of the township.

But he did not come alone; he was accompanied by Lord Auchinleck, the son of one of the betrayed barons who had fallen in the palace of Ayr.

This young chieftain, at the head of his vassals, hastened to support the man whose dauntless hand had thus satisfied his revenge; and when he met Murray at the north gate of the town, and recognized in his flying banners a friend of Scotland, he was happy to make himself known to an officer of Wallace, and to be conducted to that chief.
While Lord Andrew and his new colleague were making the range of the suburbs, the glad progress of the victor Scots had turned the whole aspect of that gloomy city.

Doors and windows, so recently closed in deep mourning, for the sanguinary deeds done in the palace, now opened teeming with smiling inhabitants.

The general joy penetrated to the most remote recesses.