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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
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