"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but soldiers--men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found their bones picked as clean by the crows, as these I doubt have been by thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field of battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face; now then, what is this, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face. "Alas! I know not." "Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is not one?" And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor. The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers are sinners," said he, "we give short measure and baptize the wine; we are fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here; I swear by God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron saint----ah!" Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no man however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless heart. The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch staring fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed, but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lips now opened, and opened, but could utter no sound. "Ah!" said Denys, solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" and he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan he took the skull and held it, almost fainting. Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick, and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end holding the cold skull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon the heap was scattered, and, alas! not one nor two, but many skulls were brought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.