return, came the young Earl of Moray, who, along with Robert the High Steward, son of Marjory Bruce, and next heir to the throne, took up the duties of guardians.  The arrival of Moray gave fresh life to the cause, but there is little interest in the records of the struggle.  The Scots won two small successes at the Borough-Muir of Edinburgh and at Kilblain.  But the victory in the skirmish at the Borough-Muir (August, 1335) was more unfortunate than defeat, for it deprived Scotland for some time of the services of the Earl of Moray.  He had captured Guy de Namur and conducted him to the borders, and was himself taken prisoner while on his journey northwards.  Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, who had been made guardian after the battle of Dupplin, and was captured in April, 1333, had now been ransomed, and he was again recognized as regent for David II.  So strong was the Scottish party that Balliol had to flee to England for assistance, and, in 1336, Edward III again appeared in Scotland.  It was not a very heroic effort for the future victor of Crecy; he marched northwards to Elgin, and, on his way home, burned the town of Aberdeen.

As in the first war the turning-point had proved to be the death of Edward I in the summer of 1307, so now, exactly thirty years later, came another decisive event.  In the autumn of 1337, Edward III first styled himself King of France, and the diversion of his energies from the Scots to their French allies rendered possible the final overthrow of Balliol and the Scottish traitors.  The circumstances are, however, parallel only to the extent that an intervention of fortune rendered possible the victory of Scottish freedom.  In 1337 there was no great leader:  the hour had come, but not the man.  For the next four years, castle after castle fell into Scottish hands; many of the tales are romantic enough, but they do not lead to a Bannockburn.  The only incident of any significance is the defence of the castle of Dunbar.  The lord of Dunbar was the Earl of March, whose record throughout the troubles had been far from consistent, but who was now a supporter of King David, largely through the influence of his wife, famous as “Black Agnes”, a daughter of the great Randolph, Earl of Moray.  From January to June, 1338, Black Agnes held Dunbar against English assaults by sea and land.  Many romantic incidents have been related of these long months of siege:  the stories of the Countess’s use of a dust-cloth to repair the damage done by the English siege-machines to the battlements, and of her prophecy, made when the Earl of Salisbury brought a “sow” or shed fitted to protect soldiers in the manner of the Roman testudo,

  “Beware, Montagow,
   For farrow shall thy sow”,

and fulfilled by dropping a huge stone on the machine and thus scattering its occupants, “the litter of English pigs”—­these, and her “love-shafts”, which, as Salisbury said, “pierce to the heart”, are among the most wonderful of historical fairy tales.  In the end the English had to raise the siege: