"Vengeance!"
"Preston changes colour," said Bothwell, with a sardonic smile; "there will be such a raid in my sheriffdom, as Lothian hath not seen since Sir Ralf Evers, the Englishman, knocked with his gauntlet on the Bristo-gate, at Edinburgh."
"And thereafter had his brains knocked out at Ancrumford," said Kilmaurs, who slew him there; "but, hush, the storm grows apace."
At Fawside's last remark, Preston's wrinkled cheek grew deathly pale.
"Bairn, begone," said he loftily, "lest I send thee to thy mother in a colt's-halter. Go—I scorn the accusation, as I scorn your anger. If I took your father's life in feud, 'twas fairly done in open fray, and not under tryst; and that life I saved twice at Flodden, from the Lord Surrey's band of pikemen. Go—go, I say, and God bless thee;—the wish may be all the better, that it cometh from the lips of a man whose years are wellnigh three score and ten."
"The murderer of my father and my brother! Draw, lest I smite ye where ye stand!"
"Never! your blood is owre red on my hands already."
"Hah, 'tis a coward I am confronting."
"Shame on thee, Fawside, to say so," exclaimed the Earl of Bothwell, who began to watch this strange scene with new and more generous interest.
Preston became fearfully pale, and trembled with emotion, while his staunch henchmen, Mungo Tennant and Symon Brodie, uttered a shout of anger, and drew their swords.