the strap first, any way. Now, Mr. Neal Ward, will you
speak or will you not?"

"I will not."

"Hell to your soul! but I'm glad to hear it. I owe you something, young
man, and I like to pay my debts. If you'd spoken without flogging I
might have had to bring you into Belfast with a whole skin. Now I'll
have you flogged, and you'll speak afterwards. Tam, give the sergeant
your belt. Sergeant, there's a tree outside. Tie the prisoner up and
flog him till he speaks, but don't kill him. Leave enough life in him to
last till we get him to Belfast, unless he speaks at once."

"Yes, sir, but if your orders are so particular I'd rather you'd be
present yourself to see how much he can stand."

"I'm not going to leave my bottle," said Captain Twinely, "to stand
sentry over croppy carrion. Flog him till you lay his liver bare,
sergeant, but don't cut it out of him."

The sergeant saluted, and marched Neal out of the house. His coat was
dragged off him, his shirt stripped from his back, his hands tied to the
tree which stood before Moylin's house. He set his teeth and waited.
The predominating feeling in his mind at first was not fear but furious
anger. He had shrunk in terror from the near prospect of seeing Finlay
die. He felt nothing now except a passionate desire for revenge.

The sergeant swung the trooper's belt round his head, making it whistle
through the air. Neal shivered and shrank, but the blow did not fall.
The sergeant was in no hurry.

"You hear that," he said, swinging the belt again. "Will you speak
before I lay it on you? You shall have time to consider. Nobody shall
say I hurried a prisoner. We'll sing you a psalm, my dearly beloved, a
sweet psalm to a most comfortable tune. At the end of the first verse
I'll give you another chance. If you don't speak then----. Now Tarn,
now lads all, tune up to the Ould Hunderd,

"'There was a Presbyterian cat
Who loved her neighbour's cream to sup;
She sanctified her theft with prayer
Before she went to drink it up.'"

The troopers, who appeared to have learned both tune and words since the
night when the sergeant sang them in Dunseveric meeting-house, shouted
lustily. Following their sergeant, they drawled the last line until it
seemed to Neal as if they would never reach the end of it.

"Now, Mr. Neal Ward," said the sergeant, "you've had a most comfortable
and cheering psalm for the hour of your affliction. Will you speak,
or----. Damn your