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 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