elt," cried the sergeant to a comrade.

With the belt he thrashed Peter until he himself grew tired, but neither
word nor cry did he extract, and, again flinging him on the floor, he
kicked him severely.

"Here's a rope, sergeant," said one of the men at this point, "and
there's a convenient rafter. A lad that won't speak is not fit to
live."

"Nay, hanging is too good for the brute," said Glendinning, drawing a
pistol from his belt. "Tie a cloth over his eyes."

Peter turned visibly paler while his eyes were being bandaged, and the
troopers thought that they had at last overcome his obstinacy, but they
little knew the heroic character they had to deal with.

"Now," said the sergeant, resting the cold muzzle of his weapon against
the boy's forehead, "at the word three your brains are on the floor if
you don't tell me where your people are hid--one--two--"

"Stop, sergeant, let him have a taste of the thumbscrews before you
finish him off," suggested one of the men.

"So be it--fetch them."

The horrible instrument of torture was brought. It was constantly used
to extract confession from the poor Covenanters during the long years of
persecution of that black period of Scottish history. Peter's thumbs
were placed in it and the screw was turned. The monsters increased the
pressure by slow degrees, repeating the question at each turn of the
screw. At first Peter bore the pain unmoved, but at last it became so
excruciating that his cheeks and lips seemed to turn grey, and an
appalling shriek burst from him at last.

Talk of devils! The history of the human race has proved that when men
have deliberately given themselves over to high-handed contempt of their
Maker there is not a devil among all the legions in hell who could be
worse: he might be cleverer, he could not be more cruel. The only
effect of the shriek upon Glendinning was to cause him to order another
turn of the screw.

Happily, at the moment the shriek was uttered Andrew Black arrived, and,
finding the troop-horses picketed outside, with no one apparently to
guard them, he looked in at the window and saw what was going on.

With a fierce roar of mingled horror, surprise, and rage, he sprang into
the room, and his huge fist fell on the brow of Glendinning like the
hammer of Thor. His left shot full into the face of the man who had
worked the screws, and both troopers fell prone upon the floor with a
crash that shook the building. The act was