“Halt!” cried Sir Patrick Hepborne, in a voice like thunder, as he stepped before the Earl, and planted himself directly in the assailant’s way—“halt. Sir Alexander Stewart—halt, I say. Let reason come to thine aid, and let not ungovernable passion lead thee to lay impious hands on him to whom thou owest thine existence.”
“Nay, let him come on,” cried the Wolfe, his eyes glaring ferociously.
“Stand aside, Sir Patrick Hepborne,” cried Sir Alexander, “or, by all the fiends of perdition, thou shalt suffer for thine interference; stand back, I say, and leave us to——”
“Nay,” cried Hepborne, firmly, “I will not back; and by St. Baldrid I swear, that thou shalt do no injury to thy sire until thou shalt have stepped over my body.”
“Sayest thou so?” cried Sir Alexander, his eyes flashing like firebrands—“then have at thee, Sir Knight;” and, catching up a truncheon that lay near, he wielded it with both hands, and aimed a blow at Sir Patrick’s head, that would have speedily levelled a patent way for his fury over the prostrate body of the knight, had he not dodged alertly aside, so that it fell harmless to the ground; and then, with one tremendous blow of his fist, he laid the raging maniac senseless on the floor of the hall.
“Bind him,” cried the Wolfe, “bind him instantly, I say, and carry him to the dungeon under the northern tower; he is a prisoner until our pleasure shall pronounce him free.”
His orders were instantly and implicitly obeyed, and Sir Alexander was carried off, without sense or motion, under the charge of his jailors. Sir Patrick was shocked at the outrageous scene he had witnessed, in which he had been driven to interfere. Though satisfied of the justice of the Earl’s sentence against his son, yet he was concerned to think that he had been instrumental in effecting it, and he conceived he was bound to endeavour to mediate in his behalf.
“Nay, nay,” said the Wolfe hastily, “I thank thee heartily for the chastisement thou hast given the whelp. To loose him now, were to deprive him of all its salutary effects. By the [[238]]blessed Rood, he shall lie in his dungeon until he comes so far to his senses as to make a humble submission both to thee and to me.—What! am I to be bearded at every turning by my boys?—The red fiend catch me, but they and the callet that whelped them shall down to the deepest abyss of Lochyndorbe, ere I shall suffer myself to be so disgraced by her, and snarled at by her litter.”
Sir Patrick looked towards Sir Andrew Stewart for aid in his attempt to soften the Earl; but, cool and cautious, he had never stirred from his seat during the fray, and still sat there unmoved, turning a deaf ear to his father’s stormy threats, and averting his eye from Hepborne’s silent appeal.
“Come, come, the banquet, knaves,” cried the Wolfe. “Why stand ye all staring like gaze-hounds? The red fiend catch me, but I will hang up half-a-dozen of ye like a string of beads, an we have not our meal in the twinkling of an eye!”