The horse, frightened by the bucket, jumped over the brook that
turned the mill, and threw the king off at the mill door. The miller and
his wife, who saw the accident, not knowing that the rider was the king,
put him in a nook in the mill and covered him with a cloth. When he came
round, he asked for a priest and told them he was the king. But he had
fallen into the hands of his enemies. The miller's wife clapped her
hands, and ran out crying for a priest for the king. A man called out,
"I am a priest; where is the king?" When he saw the king he told him he
might recover if he had a good leeching, but the king desired him to
give him the Sacrament. The supposed priest said, "That I shall do
quickly," and suiting the action to the word, he stabbed him several
times in the heart. The corpse he took away on his back, no one knew
whither, and the king's soldiers, now leaderless, fled to Stirling and
Linlithgow.
We thanked our friend for his company and bade him farewell, as we
reached Bannockburn village. We observed there, as in most villages near
Stirling, many houses in ruins or built with the ruins of others. We
thought what a blessing it was that the two nations were now united, and
that the days of these cruel wars were gone for ever! At a junction of
roads a finger-post pointed "To the Bannockburn Collieries," and we saw
several coal-pits in the distance with the ruins of an old building near
them, but we did not take the trouble to inspect them.
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