CHAPTER XXXIV.
Stirling Castle.
The prisoners who had been taken with Montgomery were lodged behind the town, and the wounded carried into the Abbey of Cambus-Kenneth; but when Edwin came to move that earl himself, he found him too faint with loss of blood to sit a horse to Snawdoun.

He therefore ordered a litter; and so conveyed his brave prisoner to that palace of the kings of Scotland in Stirling.
The priests in Wallace's army not only exercised the Levitical but the good Samaritan's functions, and they soon obeyed the young knight's summons to dress the wounds of Montgomery.
Messengers, meanwhile, arrived from Wallace, acquainting his chieftains in Stirling with the surrender of De Warenne's army.

Hence no surprise was created in the breast of the wounded earl when he saw his commander enter the palace as the prisoner of the illustrious Scot.
Montgomery held out his hand to the lord warden in silence, and with a flushed cheek.
"Blush not, my noble friend!" cried De Warenne; "these wounds speak more eloquently than a thousand tongues, the gallantry with which you maintained the sword that fate compelled you to surrender.

But I, without a scratch, how can I meet the unconquered Edward?
And yet it was not for myself I feared: my brave and confiding soldiers were in all my thoughts; for I saw it was not to meet an army I led them, but against a whirlwind, a storm of war, with which no strength that I commanded could contend." While the English generals thus conversed, Edwin's impatient heart yearned to be again at the side of Wallace; and gladly resigning the charge of his noble prisoner to Sir Alexander Ramsay, as soon as he observed a cessation in the conversation of the two earls, he drew near Montgomery to take his leave.
"Farewell, till we meet again!" said the young earl, pressing his hand; "you have been a young brother rather than an enemy, to me." "Because," returned Edwin, "I follow the example of my general, who would willingly be the friend of all mankind." Warenne looked at him with surprise: "And who are you, who, in that stripling form, utters gallant sentiments which might grace the maturest years ?" With a sweet dignity, Edwin replied, "I am Edwin Ruthven, the adopted brother of Sir William Wallace." "And the son of him," asked De Warenne, "who, with Sir William Wallace, was the first to mount Dumbarton walls ?" At these words the cheeks of Edwin were suffused with a more animated bloom.

At the moment when his courage was distinguished on the heights of Dumbarton, by the vowed friendship of Wallace, he had found himself beloved by the bravest and most amiable of beings; and in his light he felt both warmth and brightness; but this question of De Warenne, conveyed to him that he had found fame himself; that he was there publicly acknowledged to be an object not unworthy of being called the brother of Sir William Wallace!-and, casting down his eyes, beaming with exultation, from the fixed gaze of De Warenne, he answered, "I am that happy Ruthven, who had the honor to mount Dumbarton Rock by the side of my general; and from his hand there received the stroke of knighthood." De Warenne rose, much agitated: "If such be the boys of Scotland need we wonder, when the spirit of resistance is roused in the nation, that our strength should wither before its men ?" "At least," said Montgomery, whose admiration of what passed seemed to reanimate his languid faculties, "it deprives defeat of its sting, when we are conscious we yielded to power that was irresistible.