The Earl of Buchan, meanwhile, had made no delay in gaining the necessary aids to his plan.  Ere two hours passed, he was on his road to Berwick, backed with a stout body of his own retainers, and bearing a commission to the Earl of Berwick to provide him with as many more as he desired.  He went first to the hostelry near the outskirts of the town, where he remembered Gloucester had borne the supposed page.  There he obtained much desirable information, an exact description of the dress, features, and appearance of both the page and his companion; of the former, indeed, he recollected all-sufficient, even had the description been less exact.  The old minstrel had attracted the attention of many within the hostel, and consequently enabled Buchan to obtain information from various sources, all of which agreed so well that he felt sure of success.

Backed by the warrant of Edward, he went to the civil authorities of the town, obtained four or five technically drawn-up descriptions of the prisoners, and intrusted them to the different officers, who, with bands of fifty men, he commanded to search every nook and corner of the country round Berwick, in various directions.  He himself discovering they had passed through the Scotch gate and appeared directing their course in a westerly direction, took with him one hundred men, and followed that track, buoyed up by the hope not only of gaining possession of his daughter, but perhaps of falling in with the retreat even of the detested Bruce, against whom he had solemnly recorded a vow never to let the sword rest in the scabbard till he had revenged the murder of his kinsman, the Red Comyn.  Some words caught by a curious listener, passing between the page and minstrel, and eagerly reported to him, convinced him it was Robert Bruce they sought, and urged him to continue the search with threefold vigor.

Slowly and sadly meanwhile had the hours of their weary pilgrimage passed for the poor wanderers, and little did they imagine, as they threaded the most intricate paths of the borders of Scotland, that they were objects of persecution and pursuit.  Though the bodily strength of Agnes had well-nigh waned, though the burning cheek and wandering, too brightly flashing eye denoted how fearfully did fever rage internally, she would not pause save when absolutely compelled.  She could neither sleep nor eat:  her only cry was, “To the king—­bring me but to King Robert while I may yet speak!” her only consciousness, that she had a mission to perform, that she was intrusted with a message from the dead; all else was a void, dark, shapeless, in which thought framed no image; mind, not a wish.  Insensibility it was not, alas! no, that void was woe, all woe, which folded up heart and brain as with a cloak of fire, scorching up thought, memory, hope—­all that could recall the past, vivify the present, or vision forth the future.  She breathed indeed and spoke, and clung to that aged man with all the clinging helplessness of her sex, but scarce could she be said to live; all that was real of life had twined round her husband’s soul, and with it fled.