Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/152

 the exile of Rachrin who won at last the great Battle of Bannockburn.

Robert Bruce, when lying one morning on his wretched bed, deliberating whether he had not better resign his enterprise of making good his right to the Scottish crown, and happening to look up to the roof of the cabin in which he lay, saw a spider hanging at the end of a long thread of its own spinning, and trying to swing itself from one beam in the roof to another for the purpose of fixing the line on which it meant to stretch its web. The spider made the attempt repeatedly and failed each time. Bruce counted that it had tried and failed six times; and bethought him that he had fought six battles against the English. He then resolved that if the spider should make another effort and succeed, he would try his fortune in Scotland a seventh time. The spider made another exertion and succeeded in fastening its thread to the beam which it had so often in vain attempted to reach. Bruce seeing the success of the spider resolved to try his fortune again, and as he had never before won a battle he never after lost one. Sir Walter Scott says:—

"'I have often met with people of the name of Bruce, so completely persuaded of the truth of this story, that they"