"Your name!—your name!" said he, addressing me.
"Ha! we are captured, then!" replied I; "my name is of small consequence—I am your victim."
"Speak!" he cried vehemently—"you wrong me. You are our captives, but I wish to know your name. You are an Englishman—are you from Cumberland?—Were you not at the school of old Dominie Lindores?"
"I am—I was!" I gasped in agony.
"And do you," he continued, "do you remember the boy, who, before he was eighteen, and while he was a boarder at the school, ran to Gretna with an heiress from a neighbouring seminary."
"I do!—I do remember it!" I cried.
"And what," he exclaimed—"what was his name?"
"Belford!" said I.
"Belford!" he cried—"it was indeed Belford. I am not deceived! You are, indeed, my countryman. You are younger than I, but I remember you; I am the Belford of whom you have spoken. For auld lang syne, and for the sake of bonny Cumberland, no harm shall happen unto you, nor to any of your comrades. I have but one thing to say to you—be obedient."
Pained and wounded as I was, I remembered him. I recollected him as having been a boy, some six years older than myself, at the same school, and in a senior class. But when I would have questioned him, he placed his fingers upon his lips, and said—"Speak no more to me at present. Do as I have said—be obedient."