This sigh, faint at first, suddenly changed into a most fearful sound-- something between a moan and the noise a man makes when the breath is suddenly driven from his body. The sound was so full of horror that they felt their blood literally curdle within them. It was all the more terrifying because they could not tell who or what it was that produced it. In spite of themselves they moved a few steps nearer, and then a sight met their eyes which turned them sick. What they had taken for a wooden framework was indeed a framework, but one for a terrible use. It consisted of four pieces of timber merely, two long and two short. These were fastened together in the form of a rectangle, thus producing an article somewhat resembling a bed-frame, only rather narrower; and the wood-work was much more massive. Two iron rings were fixed in the centre of each of the short pieces, and to each of these were attached stout straps of raw hide. And there, stretched upon this framework, and supported in position solely by his hands and ankles, around which were fastened the raw hide strips attached to the rings, lay the figure of a man! The body was perfectly naked; and as the boys looked, unable to turn their eyes away through sheer horror at the sight, which held them as though fascinated, the groups of cowled men separated and, seizing the lads, pushed them forward until they stood close to the framework and had a full view of the whole dreadful scene. A voice behind them uttered the words: "Look! Take warning!" But it is very doubtful whether either Harry or Roger heard the words; their brains seemed paralysed by the sight that met their eyes. The figure was that of a man, evidently in the prime of life; the legs were stretched so far apart by the framework that it was extraordinary that flesh and blood could endure the strain and still hang together. The arms were also stretched out above the man's head to such an extent that they seemed to be literally parting from the poor body at the shoulders. The muscles had started up, and seemed to be bursting through the skin, and the flesh was stretched so tightly over the bones that it seemed a skeleton rather than a human living body upon which they gazed. But it was not this sight of a living, breathing, sentient human body strained and stretched to the point of being torn asunder that excited the lads' commiseration and horror, and caused them inwardly to register a solemn and awful vow of vengeance upon the human fiends around them should the opportunity ever arise. No, terrible as was that sight, there were others--horrors that only the most debased and cruel imagination could possibly invent, and to which no pen could possibly do justice, even were any good purpose to be achieved by the attempted recital of them--that caused the lads' souls to revolt at once and for ever against a people that could perpetrate such diabolical cruelties.