“Mr. Sheriff! Mr. Sheriff!” sputtered Sabin, boiling with wrath, and pointing menacingly to the prisoner.
“Silence, there, blabbing miscreant!” thundered Patterson.
“Ah! No wonder ye want silence, when that name is mentioned,” returned Herriot, unflinchingly.
Struck dumb with astonishment at the unexpected audacity of the prisoner in thus throwing out, in open court, such bold and cutting intimations of their guilty conduct, the judges and officers seemed perfectly at a loss how to act, or give vent to their maddened feelings, for some moments. Soon, however, the most prompt and reckless among them found the use of their tongues.
“Shoot him down, Patterson!” exclaimed Brush, with an oath.
“Treason! I charge him with treason, and demand that he be ironed and gagged on the spot!” shouted Gale, bringing down his clinched fist heavily on the desk before him!
“Yes, high treason; let us re-arrest him, and see if we can hang him on that, should he escape on the other charge,” chimed in Stearns.
“I have my doubts,” began Chandler, who was growing every moment more wavering and uneasy.
“No doubts about it,” interrupted Sabin, almost choking with rage. “I'll not sit here and see the king's authority insulted, and his court treated with such contempt and treasonable defiance; and I order him instantly in irons—chains—yes, chains, Mr. Sheriff!”
“You can chain the body, but shall not fetter the tongue,” responded Herriot, in no way dismayed by the threats of his enraged persecutors, or their preparations to confine and torture his person; “for I will speak, and you shall hear, ye tyrants! Listen then, ye red-handed assassins! The blood of your murdered victim has cried up to God for vengeance. The cry has been heard! the unseen hand has already traced your doom on the wall! and this day, ay, within this hour,” he continued, glancing through the window to a dark mass of men, who might now be partially discerned drawn up behind the point of woods at the north—“ay, within this very hour, that doom shall be fulfilled! Hark!” he added, in startling tones, after a momentary pause—“hark! do ye hear those signal guns, echoing from post to post, round your beleaguered Babylon? Do you hear those shouts? The avengers of blood are even now at your doors. Hear, and tremble!”