“You’re a precious scoundrel, aren’t you?” continued the trooper.
“Ay,” responded Peter.
“I told you the lad was an idiot,” said a comrade. The remark was not lost upon the boy, whose expression immediately became still more idiotic if possible.
“Tell me,” said Glendinning, grasping Peter savagely by one ear, “where is your master?”
“I dinna ken, sir.”
“Is there nobody in the house but you?”
“Naebody but me,” said Peter, “an’ you,” he added, looking vacantly round on the soldiers.
“Now, look ’ee here, lad, I’m not to be trifled with,” said the sergeant. “Where are the rest of your household hidden? Answer; quick.”
Peter looked into the sergeant’s face with a vacant stare, but was silent. Glendinning, whose recent misfortune had rendered him unusually cruel, at once knocked the boy down and kicked him; then lifting him by the collar and thrusting him violently into the chair, repeated the question, but received no answer.
Changing his tactics he tried to cajole him and offered him money, but with similar want of success.