In the meantime, the woodman approached the prostrate body of the messenger, murmuring to himself, "Ah, caitiff, I know thee, though thou hast forgotten me. Thou pitiful servant of treachery and ingratitude, thou hireling serviceable knave, I would not have hurt thee, even for thy master's sake, hadst thou not assailed me first--Methinks he is dead," he continued, stirring the body with his foot. "I hit thee harder than I thought; but it is well as it is. Thy death could not come from a fitter hand than mine, were it not the hangman's--I will see what thou hast about thee, however; for there may be news of value indeed, if for once in thy life thou hast found a tongue to speak truth with. But I will not believe it. The news was too sure, the tale too sad to be false." He stood a moment or two by the corpse, gazing upon it in silence, but without the slightest sign of sorrow or remorse. Those were bloody and barbarous times, it is true, when men slew each other in cold blood after battles were over, when brother spared not brother, and the companions of infancy and boyhood dyed their daggers in each other's gore. Human life, as in all barbarous states of society, was held as nought; and men hesitated as little to spill the blood of a fellow creature as to spill their own. But yet it must surely always be a terrible thing to take a life, to extinguish that light which we can never reillume, to fix the fatal barrier which renders every foolish and every dark act, every sin and every crime, irretrievable, to leave no chance of penitence, no hope of repentance, and to send the erring and burdened spirit into the presence of its God without one dark record against it uncancelled. Heavy must be the offence indeed, and deep the injury, which leaves no sorrow in the heart of the slayer. None seemed to be felt by the woodman. He stood and gazed, as I have said, for a moment; but it was--as he had gazed over the prospect below--without a change of countenance; and then he stooped down and with calm and patient investigation searched every part of the dead man's apparel. He found, amongst other things, a purse well supplied with gold, at least so its weight seemed to indicate; but that he put back again at once. He found some papers too, and those he kept; but, not satisfied with that, after some trouble he caught the horse, examined the saddle, unloosed the girths, and between the saddle cloth and the leather found a secret pocket from which he took more papers. These too he kept, and put them in his wallet. Everything else, such as trinkets, of which there were one or two, a pouncet-box, some large curiously-shaped keys and other trifles, he carefully replaced where he had found them. Then, taking up the dead man's hand, he raised it and let it fall, as if to make sure that life was extinct; and then once more he addressed the corpse, saying--