With fiendish delight in giving pain he tied the cords so tightly that they cut into the victim’s wrists, then he fastened the ends at the farther side of the pillar, and taking a rope tied it with the same vicious tightness a little above his knees; lastly, to make movement impossible he girdled both the prisoner and the pillar with a leathern bridle. So far Gabriel had borne all in silence, for his mind was still taken up with the thought of his friend, and of the brutal way in which the Major was being left to die. But he was naturally sensitive to all sarcasm and ridicule, and the gibes and jeers of the half-tipsy Lord Harry, and the more biting cruelties of the tongue to which Norton subjected him, were sharper than swords. Norton, disappointed at his failure to rouse him, turned presently with a laugh to his companion: “They say, you know, Harry, that these Puritans will neither swear nor game nor drink. But here you see one who is giving us rare sport, and who would pledge all that he has for a drink--even of water--after the march, and who longs to swear. No, no, my fine fellow, there you stand till to-morrow--we’ll have no sentiment over dying traitors. Your friend will soon be safe in hell.” This allusion to the Major at last broke down Gabriel’s control. “’Tis you that are already there!” he exclaimed, the blood boiling in his veins. “Only one led by the devil could thus treat a dying man.” “Preach away, my friend, preach away!” said Norton, with a sneer. “Your fellow prisoners are asleep, and you can’t harm anyone. Come! ’tis not every day you can discourse in a church!” Just then, in an evil moment, Lord Harry noticed that Norton, in dragging his victim from the chancel, had pulled off the top button of his shirt, which had fallen open, giving to view two or three links of a gold chain and the corner of a shagreen case. He stumbled forward. “Hullo!” he exclaimed, snatching at the chain and dragging up the miniature attached to it. “Ha, ha! Here’s sport! See what the Puritan dog has got hanging from his collar?” Gabriel, half maddened by feeling the sot’s fingers on Hilary’s picture, writhed in a frantic effort to free himself. To be forced to stand there helplessly, unable to stir hand or foot, was a torture he had never before felt. “Oh, fie, Ecclesiastes! we named you well,” said Norton, with his scoffing laugh. “You deal, like Solomon, in numbers. Shame on you! the portrait of a fair lady of Hereford on your person all the time you were philandering with pretty Helena!” “You lie in your throat,” said Gabriel, vehemently. “I did but rescue her from your fiendish trap.” “What!” cried Lord Harry, thickly. “Do you give the Colonel the lie direct, you Puritan dog? Take that!” And he dealt Gabriel a blow on the head which for a minute half stunned him. Norton drew his friend back. “Hold your peace, Harry,” he said. “You spoil sport. I understand how to bait this traitor.”