to stir up the archers to a pursuit, from whence they
already assured themselves they should be considerable gainers, the
thing speaking for itself, since honest people are not used to fall into
such panics; but only guilt creates apprehensions in men at the sight of
the ministers of justice. Immediately, therefore, the officers pursued
them in the road they had taken, and the old man being less able to
travel than the rest, in about two hours time they came up with him at
the side of a rivulet, where, for very weariness he had stopped as not
being able to cross it.

No sooner did they come up to him but he surrendered, and fear having
brought a sudden repentance, he, without any equivocation, began to
confess all the crimes of his life. He said that it was true they all of
them deserved death, and he was content to suffer; he said, moreover,
that in the course of his life he had murdered upwards of three-score
with his own hands. He also carried the officers to an island in the
river, which was the usual place of the execution of those innocents who
fell into the hands of their gang, and acknowledged that of all the
offences he had committed, nothing gave him so much pain as the having
murdered a hopeful young gentleman (for the sake of a trifle of money
which he had about him) by putting a stone about his neck and sinking
him in the water.

Of the other three, two were apprehended, but the third made his escape
and was running hastily with the news to Jacques Perrier and their other
companions, but he was soon after seized, and carried to prison with the
rest, none escaping from the hands of Justice but Masson and the cruel
Perrier, the author of all this mischief. The three who were in prison
endured the torture with the greatest constancy, absolutely denying that
they knew anything of the murders and robberies which had been
committed, yet when they were confronted by the old man, their courage
deserted them, they acknowledged the fact, and judgment was pronounced
upon them that they should be broke alive upon the wheel, before the
house of the unfortunate architect whom they had murdered.

When they were brought there, with a strong guard, to suffer that
punishment to which the Law had so justly doomed them, they appeared to
be very penitent and sorrowful for their crimes, and one of them in
particular did, with greatest vehemency, beseech the pardon of Almighty
God, of the king his sovereign, and of his people w