“Hand me your sword-belt,” cried the sergeant to a comrade.
With the belt he thrashed Peter until he himself grew tired, but neither word nor cry did he extract, and, again flinging him on the floor, he kicked him severely.
“Here’s a rope, sergeant,” said one of the men at this point, “and there’s a convenient rafter. A lad that won’t speak is not fit to live.”
“Nay, hanging is too good for the brute,” said Glendinning, drawing a pistol from his belt. “Tie a cloth over his eyes.”
Peter turned visibly paler while his eyes were being bandaged, and the troopers thought that they had at last overcome his obstinacy, but they little knew the heroic character they had to deal with.
“Now,” said the sergeant, resting the cold muzzle of his weapon against the boy’s forehead, “at the word three your brains are on the floor if you don’t tell me where your people are hid—one—two—”
“Stop, sergeant, let him have a taste of the thumbscrews before you finish him off,” suggested one of the men.
“So be it—fetch them.”
The horrible instrument of torture was brought. It was constantly used to extract confession from the poor Covenanters during the long years of persecution of that black period of Scottish history. Peter’s thumbs were placed in it and the screw was turned. The monsters increased the pressure by slow degrees, repeating the question at each turn of the screw. At first Peter bore the pain unmoved, but at last it became so excruciating that his cheeks and lips seemed to turn grey, and an appalling shriek burst from him at last.
Talk of devils! The history of the human race has proved that when men have deliberately given themselves over to high-handed contempt of their Maker there is not a devil among all the legions in hell who could be worse: he might be cleverer, he could not be more cruel. The only effect of the shriek upon Glendinning was to cause him to order another turn of the screw.