ut, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums.

Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the

midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth

there is a gagtied so, with a tight string, making him look almost

as if he laughed.” He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two

thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. “On the top of

the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the

air. He is hanged there forty feet highand is left hanging,

poisoning the water.”

They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his

face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he

recalled the spectacle.

“It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children

draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow!

Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as

the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the

shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the

prisonseemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the

sky rests upon it!”

The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the

other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on

him.

“That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to

do), and I walked on, that night and hal