“Show him aforehand what it’ll be like!” voices bawled, and Pim o’ Cuddy was seen struggling in a dozen arms. He shrieked for mercy, but they cried, “Show him th’ bad place where clerks goes to that’s turned wrong!” and they bore him to the mouth of the furnace. He writhed and screamed. Presently they let him go, and then they turned to the youth Charley, who was in a drunken sleep. They set glowing brands into his clothing, and screamed with delight at his uneasy movements as, with the brands burning through his clothes, he still slept. The carcases began to frizzle and char, and the furnace doors were flung open. Men made runs towards it with a long hook, and retreated again before the fierce heat, with scraps of smoking flesh at the end of the hook. Finally, they got the hook firmly fixed; the carcase lodged in the door and then came out suddenly, hissing, frying, and black with the sand on which it had fallen. “Arthur mun cut it! Where’s Arthur?” they cried. He had thrown himself on the hillside. He was watching them gloomily, his head on his hand. Eastwood’s sinister intelligence, brought in this his crowning hour, chimed only too well with a score of half-forgotten trifles and indications. Back o’ th’ Mooin itself still remained impregnable, but the two men in York could be reckoned as dead as the roasted carcases. Dead, too, on the word of a man, whose evidence, had it been for instead of against them, would not for a moment have been admitted. He made one more effort to throw off the horrible fear that lay on his heart like lead; he felt himself weak as water; he knew that the testimony of a lunatic had been admitted. Again the mummers were approaching him; he made a gesture that they were to proceed with their feast. Loud murmurings rose, and he lifted himself heavily up. “Give me a drink,” he said, and a tin bowl was filled for him. “This is a pretty mockery,” he said to Eastwood. “It ought to be a prayer, oughtn’t it? They put themselves on their knees to pray. I must do it with a bowl of liquor to my lips. Jim and Will--Jim Northrop and Will Haigh!... Bah! Let’s get it over.” He drained the bowl and flung it far from him. The hubbub broke out again. “Arthur!” they yelled. “King Arthur! Three for him, lads----” The drunken shout pealed over the hills, and Monjoy stood with his arm outstretched. It died away, and he began to speak in short, deliberate sentences, turning his body that every man might hear.