ner--thine arm? Aye, take it back, it availeth me
nothing--take it and cherish it. To part with a pardon for but two
silver pieces were a grave folly! So pray you forgive now my
ungentleness and speak my thy good, sweet tidings." But hereupon, the
Pardoner feeling his arm solicitously, held his peace and glowered
sullenly at Beltane, who had turned and was staring away into the
distance. So the Pardoner sulked awhile and spake not, until, seeing
Beltane's hand creep out towards him, he forthwith fell to volubility.

"'Tis told in Belsaye on right good authority that a certain vile
knave, a lewd, seditious rogue hight Beltane that was aforetime a
charcoal-burner and thereafter a burner of gibbets--as witness my lord
Duke's tall, great and goodly gallows--that was beside a prison breaker
and known traitor, hath been taken by the doughty Sir Pertolepe, lord
Warden of the Marches, and by him very properly roasted and burned to
death within his great Keep of Garthlaxton."

"Roasted, forsooth?" said Beltane, his gaze yet afar off; "and,
forsooth, burned to ashes; then forsooth is he surely dead?"

"Aye, that is he; and his ashes scattered on a dung-hill."

"A dung-hill--ha?"

"He was but a charcoal-burning knave, 'tis said--a rogue base-born and
a traitor. Now hereupon my lord, the good lord Sir Gui, my lord Duke's
lord Seneschal of Belsaye--"

"Forsooth," sighed Beltane, "here be lords a-plenty in Pentavalon!"

"Hereupon the noble Sir Gui set a close watch upon the townsfolk
whereby he apprehended divers suspected rogues, and putting them to the
torture, found thereby proofs of their vile sedition, insomuch that
though the women held their peace for the most part, certain men
enduring not, did confess knowledge of a subterraneous passage 'neath
the wall. Then did Sir Gui cause this passage to be stopped, and four
gibbets to be set up within the market-place, and thereon at sunset
every day did hang four men, whereto the towns folk were summoned by
sound of tucket and drum: until upon a certain evening some six days
since (myself standing by) came a white friar hight Friar Martin--well
known in Belsaye, and bursting through the throng he did loud-voiced
proclaim himself the traitor that had oped and shown the secret way
into the dungeons unto that charcoal-rogue for whose misdeeds so many
folk had suffered. So they took this rascal friar and scourged him and
set him in the water-dungeons where rats do frolic, and to-ni