“Oh, in your fair hands,” replied her client, “which I beg you to consider respectfully kissed once more by your faithful servant to command.” Jeanne, blushing rosily, stepped back a pace, moistening her palms as she grasped her axe, when a puffing and blowing behind caused her to turn her head, and she perceived the Mayor hastily ascending the scaffold. “Hold on a minute, Jeanne, my girl,” he gasped. “Don’t be in a hurry. There’s been some little mistake.” Jeanne drew herself up with dignity. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Mayor,” she replied in freezing accents. “There’s been no little mistake on my part that I’m aware of.” “No, no, no,” said the Mayor, apologetically; “but on somebody else’s there has. You see it happened in this way: this here young fellow was going round the town last night; and he’d been dining, I should say, and he was carrying on rather free. I will only say so much in your presence, that he was carrying on decidedly free. So the town-guard happened to come across him, and he was very high and very haughty, he was, and wouldn’t give his name nor yet his address--as a gentleman should, you know, when he’s been dining and carrying on free. So our fellows just ran him in--and it took the pick of them all their time to do it, too. Well, then, the other chap who was in prison--the gentleman who obliged you yesterday, you know--what does he do but slip out and run away in the middle of all the row and confusion; and very inconsiderate and ungentlemanly it was of him to take advantage of us in that mean way, just when we wanted a little sympathy and forbearance. Well, the Sheriff comes this morning to fetch out his man for execution, and he knows there’s only one man to execute, and he sees there’s only one man in prison, and it all seems as simple as A B C--he never was much of a mathematician, you know--so he fetches our friend here along, quite gaily. And--and that’s how it came about, you see; _hinc illæ lachrymæ_, as the Roman poet has it. So now I shall just give this young fellow a good talking to, and discharge him with a caution; and we shan’t require you any more to-day, Jeanne, my girl.”