"Demand a fearful reprisal!" said Florence, with a vehemence increased by his mother's presence and example; "and fearful it shall be!"
"Vengeance," replied the priest firmly, but meekly, "is ever the offspring of the weakest and least tutored mind."
"Father John!" exclaimed the pale widow.
"I say so with all deference, my son, and with all respect for our good lady your mother. In her thirst for vengeance, like the last stake of a gamester, she will risk you, her only son—risk you by invading the province of God; for to Him alone belongeth vengeance. Remember the holy words, Dame Alison: 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.'"
"So priests must preach," said Florence; "but, under favour, father, laymen find forgiveness hard to practise."
"So hard," hissed Lady Alison through her sharp and firm-set teeth, "that for each drop of Preston's blood I would give a rood of land—yea, for every drop a yellow rig of corn! 'Twas but three weeks ago, come the feast of Bartholomew, he followed a thief with a sleuth-hound of Gueldreland within the bounds of our barony."
"He dared?" said Florence, sharing all his mother's anger.
"He or some of his people; and without asking our license, took and hanged him on a thorn-tree at the Bucklea. Did not his swine root holes in the corn on our grange, destroying ten rigs of grain and more, and he scornfully refused our demands to make the damage good? Yet he burned the byres of our kinsman Roger for taking a deer in his wood at Bankton, though any man may hunt in any forest—even a royal one—so far as he may fling his bugle-horn before him; yet he broke Roger's bow and arrows, took away his arquebuse, and hanged all his dogs. And wherefore? Because he was a Fawside and a kinsman of thine. And now they would have slain thee, my son—thee, in whom my joy, my hope, my future all are centred!" she added, embracing Florence, the expression of whose handsome face had completely changed to gloom and anger under her influence. "But while fish swim in yonder Firth, and mussels grow on its rocks, our hatred shall live!"
The vicar, a priest of benign and venerable aspect, smiled sadly, and shook his white head with an air of deprecation.
"I fear me, madam," said he, "that the fish and the mussels are races that bid fair to outlive alike the Fawsides of that Ilk and the Hamiltons of Preston, their folly, feuds, and wickedness."