"But," added Willie, "though he would have disgraced us wi' a gallows, as he has been a soldier, I propose that he hae the honour o' a soldier's death, and that Harry Faa be appointed to shoot him."
"All! all! all!" was the cry.
"He shall die with the setting sun," said Willie, and again they cried, "Agreed!"
Such was the form of trial which Clennel underwent, when he was again rudely dragged away, and placed in a tent round which four strong Faas kept guard. He had not been alone an hour, when his judge, the Faa king, entered, and addressed him—
"Now, Laird Clennel, say ye that I haena lived to see day about wi' ye? When ye turned me frae beneath your roof, when the drift was fierce and the wind howled in the moors, was it not tauld to ye that ye would rue it!—but ye mocked the admonition and the threat, and, after that, cruelly burned us out o' house and ha'. When I came hame, I saw my auld mother, that was within three years o' a hunder, couring ower the reeking ruins, without a wa' to shelter her, and crooning curses on the doer o' the black deed. There were my youngest bairns, too, crouching by their granny's side, starving wi' hunger as weel as wi' cauld, for ye had burned a', and haudin' their bits o' hands before the burnin' ruins o' the house that they were born in, to warm them! That night I vowed vengeance on you; and even on that night I would have executed it, but I was
prevented; and glad am I now that I was prevented, for my vengeance has been complete—or a' but complete. Wi' my ain hand I snatched your son and heir from his mother's side, and a terrible chase I had for it; but revenge lent me baith strength and speed. And when ye had anither bairn that was like to live, I forced a lassie, that some o' our folk had stolen when an infant, to bring it to us. Ye have got your daughter back again, but no before she has cost ye mony a sad heart and mony a saut tear; and that was some revenge. But the substance o' my satisfaction and revenge lies in what I hae to tell ye. Ye die this night as the sun gaes down; and, hearken to me now—the young soldier whom ye wounded on the streets o' Worcester, and who last night made you prisoner, was your son—your heir—your lost son! Ha! ha!—Clennel, am I revenged?"
"My son!" screamed the prisoner—"monster, what is it that ye say? Strike me dead, now I am in your power—but torment me not!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" again laughed the grey-haired savage—"man, ye are about to die, and ye know not ye are born. Ye have not heard half I have to tell. I heard that ye had joined the standard o' King Charles. I, a king in my ain right, care for neither your king nor parliament; but I resolved to wear, for a time, the cloth o' old Noll, and to make your son do the same, that I might hae an opportunity o' meeting you as an enemy, and seeing him strike you to the heart. That satisfaction I had not; but I had its equivalent. Yesterday, I saw you shed his blood on the streets o' Worcester, and in the evening he gave you a prisoner into my hands that desired you."
"Grey-haired monster!" exclaimed Clennel. "Have ye no feeling—no heart? Speak ye to torment me, or tell me truly, have I seen my son?"
"Patience, man!" said the Faa, with a smile of sardonic triumph—"my story is but half finished. It was the blood o' your son ye shed yesterday at Worcester—it was your