* * * * * "Denys!" "What is your will?" "I wish that was a great boy, and going along with us, to keep us cheery." "So do not I. But I wish it was going along with us as it is." "Now Heaven forfend! A fine fool you would make of yourself." * * * * * They broke their fast, settled their score, and said farewell. Then it was they found Marion had not exaggerated the "custom of the country." The three principal women took and kissed them right heartily, and they kissed the three principal women. The landlord took and kissed them, and they kissed the landlord; and the cry was "Come back, the sooner the better!" "Never pass 'The Three Fish;' should your purses be void, bring yourselves: 'le sieur crédit' is not dead for you." And they took the road again. They came to a little town, and Denys went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper was in the doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with a bow down to the ground. The customer was soon fitted, and followed to the street, and dismissed with graceful salutes from the doorstep. The friends agreed it was Elysium to deal with such a shoemaker as this. "Not but what my German shoes have lasted well enough," said Gerard the just. Outside the town was a pebbled walk. "This is to keep the burghers' feet dry, a-walking o' Sundays with their wives and daughters," said Denys. Those simple words of Denys, one stroke of a careless tongue, painted "home" in Gerard's heart. "Oh! how sweet," said he. "Mercy! what is this? A gibbet; and ugh, two skeletons thereon! Oh, Denys, what a sorry sight to woo by!" "Nay," said Denys, "a comfortable sight; for every rogue i' the air there is one the less a-foot." A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a huge wheel closely studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel. Gerard hid his face in his hands. "Oh to think those patches and bones are all that is left of a man! Of one who was what we are now." "Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than that?" "How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture too?" "None of my kith ever found the way to the gibbet, I know." "The better their luck. Prithee how died the saints?" "Hard. But not in Burgundy." "Ye massacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime; because you read not story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that bloody day we sigh for to this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father Martin says." "The blaspheming old hound!"