imself to justice, and stood mute at the bar,
and, in order to secure his estates to his surviving child, he had the
resolution to die under the dreadful punishment of _peine forte_."

"What is that, lawyer?"

"Death by iron weights laid on the bare body until the life is crushed
out of it."

"Dreadful! And did he secure his estates to his child by suffering
such a death?"

"He did. He stood mute at the bar, and let judgment go against him
without trial. It is all in black and white. The Crown cannot
confiscate a man's estate until he is tried and condemned."

"What of an outlaw?" asked Ralph somewhat eagerly.

"A man's flight is equal to a plea of guilty."

"I had a comrade once," said Ralph with some tremor of voice; "he fled
from judgment and was outlawed, and his poor children were turned into
the road. Could he have kept his lands for his family by delivering
his body to that death you speak of?"

"He could. The law stands so to this day."

"Think you, in any sudden case, a man could do as much _now?_"

"He _could_," answered the lawyer; "but where's the man who _would?_
Only one who must die in any chance, and then none but a murderer, I
should say."

"I don't know--I don't know that," said Ralph, rising with
ill-concealed agitation, and stalking out of the room, without the
curtest leave-taking.

VI. On Tuesday, Ralph was walking through Kendal on his northward journey.
The day was young. Ralph meant to take a meal at the old coaching
house, the Woodman, in Kirkland, by the river Kent, and then push on
till nightfall.

The horn of the incoming coach fell on his ear, and the coach
itself--the Carlisle coach, laden with passengers from back to
front--swept into the courtyard of the inn at the moment he entered it
afoot.

There was a little commotion there. A group of the serving folk, the
maids in their caps, the ostlers bareheaded, and some occasional
stable people were gathered near the taproom door. The driver of the
coach got off his box and crushed into the middle of this company. His
passengers paused in their descent from the top to look over the heads
of those who were on the ground.

"Drunk, surely," said one of these to another; "that proclamation was
not unnecessary."

"Some poor straggler, sir; picked him up insensible and fetched him
along," said one of the ostlers.

Ralph walked past the group to the threshold of the inn.

"Loosen his neckcloth!--here, take my brandy," said