"Hooray," shouted the Smoutchy fighting tail; "fetch him along, lads!"
So with no gentle hands Hugh John was seized and hurried away. He was touched up with ironbound clogs in the rear, his arms were pinched underneath where the skin is tender, as well as nearly dragged from their sockets. A useless red cravat was thrust into his mouth by way of a gag—useless, for the prisoner would sooner have died than have uttered one solitary cry.
And all the time Hugh John was saying over and over to himself the confession of his faith:
"I'm glad I didn't tell—I'm glad I wasn't 'dasht-mean.' I'm a soldier. The Scots Greys saluted me; and these fellows shan't make me cry."
And they didn't. For the spirit of many generations of stalwart Smiths and fighting Pictons was in him, and perhaps also a spark from the ancestral anvil of the first Smith had put iron into his boyish blood. So all through the scene which followed—the slow mock trial, the small ingenious tortures, pulling back middle fingers, hanging up by thumbs to a beam with his toes just touching the ground, tying a string about his head and tightening it with a twisted stick—Hugh John never cried a tear, which was the bitterest drop in the cup of Nipper Donnan.
They removed the gag in order that they might question him.
"Say this is not your father's castle, and we'll let you down!" cried Nipper.
"It is my father's and nobody else's! And when it is mine, I shan't let one of you beasts come near it."
The Smoutchies tried another tack.