There on a pole, rocking in the breeze, above the city gate, looked down upon us a head, livid and scarred, with eyes set and tawny locks streaming in the wind.

'Twas a terrible ghastly sight! for, battered as it was, even I could recognise the once noble features of Alexander McDonnell, as I had seen him last, reeling under the cowardly blow of that foul Englishman.
The old chief uttered a cry scarcely less terrible to hear than the head was to see.

Then, suddenly commanding himself, he blazed round on the Deputy and hissed through his teeth: "My son hath many heads!" I never saw a man change colour as did Sir John Perrott when he met that look and heard those bitter words.

Men say he went home that afternoon with that look burned into his breast, and those words dinging in his ears.

Nor, go where he would, could he escape the one or the other.
They possessed him waking and sleeping, in council and in war, at home and abroad.