"But we will teach thee, braggart," said Sir George of Rosehaugh sternly, "that from this chamber there is no appeal, either to courts of peace or councils of war. There can be no appeal——"
"Save to his majesty," added the Chancellor, who, to please James VII., had recently embraced the Catholic faith.
"And of what value is the appeal, noble Earl, after one's bones have been ground to powder by your accursed irons?'
"We do not sit here to bandy words in this wise," replied the Chancellor; "Macer, lead the prisoner to the ante-room, while his sentence is deliberated on."
After a delay of some minutes, which to Walter seemed like so many ages, so great was his anxiety, he was again summoned before the haughty conclave. The first whose malignant glance he again encountered was Clermistonlee, whose voice he had often heard in loud declamation against him, and he felt a storm of wrath and hatred gathering in his breast against that vindictive peer. The monotonous voice of the clerk reading his sentence with a careless off-hand air now fell on his ear.
"Walter Fenton, private gentleman in the regiment of Dunbarton, commonly called the Royal Scots Musqueteers of Foot, for default and negligence of duty——"
"Anent whilk it is needless to expone," interposed Mersington.
"—And for your contumacy in presence of the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty's Privy Council, you are to be confined in the lowest dungeon of the common prison-house of Edinburgh, for the space of six calendar months from the date hereof, to have your tongue bored by the Doomster at the Tron-beam, to teach it the respect which is due to superiors; and thereafter to be sent as a felon, with ane collar of steel rivetted round your neck, to the coal heughs of the right worshipful the Laird of Craigha' for such a period as the Lords of the said Privy Council shall deem fitting—subscribitur Perth."
"Such mercy may ye all meet in the day of award!" muttered Walter.
"Withdraw!" said Lord Clermistonlee, with a bitter smile of undisguised ferocity and malice. "Begone, and remember to thank Sir Thomas of Binns and the Laird of Claverhouse, that your tongue is not bored this instant, and thereafter given to feed the crows."