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?"

"Patience, man!" said the Faa, with a smile of sardonic triumph--"my
story is but half finished. It was the blood o' your son ye shed
yesterday at Worcester--it was your son who disarmed ye, and gave ye
into my power; and, best o' a'!--now, hear me! hear me! lose not a
word!--it is the hand o' your son that this night, at sunset, shall send
you to eternity! Now, tell me, Clennel, am I no revenged? Do ye no rue
it?"

"Wretch! wretch!" cried the miserable parent, "in mercy strike me dead.
If I have raised my sword against my son, let that suffice ye!--but
spare, oh, spare my child from being an involuntary parricide!"

"Hush, fool!" said the Faa; "I have waited for this consummation o' my
revenge for twenty years, and think ye that I will be deprived o' it now
by a few whining words? Remember, sunset!" he added, and left the tent.

Evening came, and the disk of the sun began to disappear behind the
western hills. Men and women, the old and the young, amongst the Faas,
came out from their encampment to behold the death of their enemy.
Clennel was brought forth between two, his hands fastened to his sides,
and a bandage round his mouth, to prevent him making himself known to
his executioner. A rope was also brought round his body, and he was tied
to the trunk of an old ash tree. The women of the tribe began a sort of
yell or coronach; and their king, stepping forward, and smiling savagely
in the face of his victim, cried aloud--

"Harry Faa! stand forth and perform the duty your tribe have imposed on
you."

A young man, reluctantly, and with a slow and trembling step, issued
from one of the tents. He carried a musket in his hand, and placed
himself in front of the prisoner, at about twenty yards from him.

"Make ready!" cried Willie Faa, in a voice like thunder. And the youth,
though his hands shook, levelled the musket at his victim.

But, at that moment, one who, to appearance, seemed a maniac, sprang
from a clump of whins behind the ash tree where the prisoner was bound,
and, throwing herself before him, she cried--"Hold!--would you murder
your own father? Harry Clennel!--would you murder your father? Mind ye
not when ye was stolen frae your mother's side, as ye