Sir John now went round the town with the guides and posted two or more men at the door of each house occupied by the English.  Soon the armed citizens flocked into the streets, and when sufficient were assembled the blowing of a horn gave the signal.  The doors of the houses were beaten in with axes, and, pouring in, the Scotch slew the soldiers before they had scarce awakened from sleep.  Very few of the English in the town escaped to tell of the terrible retaliation which had been taken for the massacre of Ayr.

One of the few who were saved was Captain Thomas Hawkins.  Archie, mindful of the part which he had taken, and to which, indeed, the discovery of the governor s intention was due, had hurried direct to the prison, and when this was, with the rest of the town, taken, discovered the English officer in chains in a dungeon, and protected him from all molestation.

The next morning he was brought before Wallace, who expressed to him his admiration of the honourable course which he had adopted, gave him a rich present out of the booty which had been captured, and placed him on a ship bound for England.

A week after the capture of Ayr one of Archie’s band came into his hut.  Tears were running down his cheeks, and his face was swollen with weeping.

“What is it, Jock?” Archie asked kindly.

“Ah!  Sir Archie! we have bad news from Glen Cairn.  One has come hither who says that a few days since the Kerrs, with a following of their own retainers, came down to the village.  Having heard that some of us had followed you to the wars, they took a list of all that were missing, and Sir John called our fathers up before him.  They all swore, truly enough, that they knew nought of our intentions, and that we had left without saying a word to them.  Sir John refused to believe them, and at first threatened to hang them all.  Then after a time he said they might draw lots, and that two should die.  My father and Allan Cunninghame drew the evil numbers, and Kerr hung them up to the old tree on the green and put fire to the rooftrees of all the others.  Ah! but there is weeping and wailing in Glen Cairn!”

Archie was for a while speechless with indignation.  He knew well that this wholesale vengeance had not been taken by the Kerrs because the sons of the cottagers of Glen Cairn had gone to join the army of Wallace, but because he deemed them to be still attached to their old lord; and it was to their fidelity to the Forbeses rather than to Scotland that they owed the ruin which had befallen them.

“My poor Jock!” he said, “I am grieved, indeed, at this misfortune.  I cannot restore your father’s life, but I can from the spoils of Ayr send a sufficient sum to Glen Cairn to rebuild the cottages which the Kerrs have destroyed.  But this will not be enough —­ we will have vengeance for the foul deed.  Order the band to assemble at dusk this evening, and tell Orr and Macpherson to come here to me at once.”