"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 that 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?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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