"If I stand!" exclaimed Clennel, "it shall not be when an old man and
a boy command me." And, following their example, he unsheathed his
sword.
"Boy!" exclaimed the youth; "whom call ye boy?--think ye, because ye
wounded me this morn, that fortune shall aye sit on your arm?--yield
or try."
They made several thrusts at each other, and the old man, as an
indifferent spectator, stood looking on. But the youth, by a
dexterous blow, shivered the sword in Clennel's hand, and left him at
his mercy.
"Now yield ye," he exclaimed; "the chance is mine now--in the morning
it was thine."
"Ye seem a fair foe," replied Clennel, "and loath am I to yield, but
that I am weaponless."
"Despatch him at once!" growled the old man. "If he spilled your
blood in the morning, there can be no harm in spilling his the
night--and especially after giein' him a fair chance."
"Father," returned the youth, "would ye have me to kill a man in cold
blood?"
"Let him submit to be bound then, hands and eyes, or I will," cried
the senior.
The younger obeyed, and Clennel, finding himself disarmed, submitted
to his fate; and his hands were bound, and his eyes tied up, so that
he knew not where they led him.
After wandering many miles, and having lain upon what appeared the
cold earth for a lodging, he was aroused from a comfortless and
troubled sleep, by a person tearing the bandage from his eyes, and
ordering him to prepare for his trial. He started to his feet. He
looked around, and beheld that he stood in the midst of a gipsy
encampment. He was not a man given to fear, but a sickness came over
his heart when he thought of his wife and daughter, and that, knowing
the character of the people in whose power he was, he should never
behold them again.
The males of the Faa tribe began to assemble in a sort of half circle
in the area of the encampment, and in the midst of them, towering
over the heads of all, he immediately distinguished the tall figure
of Willie Faa, in whom he also discovered the grey-haired
Parliamentary soldier of the previous night. But the youth with whom
he had twice contended and once wounded, and by whom he had been made
prisoner, he was unable to single out amongst them.
He was rudely dragged before them, and Willie Faa cried--"Ken ye the
culprit?"
"Clennel o' Northumberland!--our enemy!" exclaimed twenty voices.
"Yes," continued Willie, "Clennel, our enemy--the burner o' our
humble habitations--that left the auld, the sick, the infirm, and the
helpless, and the infants o' our kindred to perish in the flaming
ruins. Had we burned his house, the punishment would have been
death; and shall we do less to him than he would do to us?"
"No! no!" they exclaimed with one voice.
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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