Now, in the space between these desolate crags stood some score of peels, or rather half hovels, half encampments--and this primitive city in the wilderness was the capital of the Faa king's people. "Now for vengeance!" exclaimed Clennel; and his desire of revenge was excited the more from perceiving several of the choicest of his cattle, which had disappeared, grazing before the doors or holes of the gipsy village. "Bring whins and heather," he continued--"pile them around it, and burn the den of thieves to the ground." His order was speedily obeyed, and when he commanded the trumpet to be sounded, that the inmates might defend themselves if they dared, only two or three men and women of extreme age, and some half-dozen children, crawled upon their hands and knees from the huts--for it was impossible to stand upright in them. The aged men and women howled when they beheld the work of destruction that was in preparation, and the children screamed when they heard them howl. But the laird of Clennel had been injured, and he turned a deaf ear to their misery. A light was struck, and a dozen torches applied at once. The whins crackled, the heather blazed, and the flames overtopped the hovels which they surrounded, and which within an hour became a heap of smouldering ashes. Clennel and his dependants returned home, driving the cattle which had been stolen from him before them, and rejoicing in what they had done. On the following day, Willie Faa and a part of his tribe returned to the place of rendezvous--their city and home in the mountains--and they found it a heap of smoking ruins, and the old men and the old women of the tribe--their fathers and their mothers--sitting wailing upon the ruins, and warming over them their shivering limbs, while the children wept around them for food. "Whose work is this?" inquired Willie, while anxiety and anger flashed in his eyes. "The Laird o' Clennel!--the Laird o' Clennel!" answered every voice at the same instant. "By this I swear!" exclaimed the king of the Faas, drawing his dagger from beneath his coat, "from this night henceforth he is laird nor man nae langer." And he turned hastily from the ruins, as if to put his threat in execution. "Stay, ye madcap!" cried Elspeth, following him, "would ye fling away revenge for half a minute's satisfaction?" "No, wife," cried he, "nae mair than I would sacrifice living a free and a fu' life for half an hour's hangin'." "Stop, then," returned she, "and let our vengeance fa' upon him, so that it may wring his life away, drap by drap, until his heart be dry; and grief, shame, and sorrow burn him up, as he has here burned house and home o' Elspeth Faa and her kindred." "What mean ye, woman?" said Willie, hastily; "if I thought ye would come between me and my revenge, I would drive this bit steel through you wi' as goodwill as I shall drive it through him."