ed before their
eyes. One woman screamed. Then a dead stillness fell on the place,
and the cottage was empty.

On the following Saturday Parson Morth walked down to the inn, just
ten minutes after stalling his mare. He strode into the tap-room in
his muddy boots, took two men by the neck, knocked their skulls
together, and then demanded to hear the truth.

"Very well," he said, on hearing the tale; "to-morrow I march every
man Jack of you up to the valley, if it's by the scruff of your
necks, and in the presence of both of those ladies--of _both_, mark
you--you shall kneel down and ask them to come to church. I don't
care if I empty the building. Your fathers (who were men, not curs)
built the south transept for those same poor souls, and cut a slice
in the chancel arch through which they might see the Host lifted.
That's where _you_ sit, Jim Trestrail, churchwarden; and by the Lord
Harry, they shall have your pew."

He marched them up the very next morning. He knocked, but no one
answered. After waiting a while, he put his shoulder against the
door, and forced it in.

There was no one in the kitchen. In the inner room one sister sat in
the arm-chair. It was Mademoiselle Henriette, cold and stiff.
Her dead hands were stained with earth.

At the back of the cottage they came on a freshly-formed mound, and
stuck on the top of it a piece of slate, such as children erect over
a thrush's grave.

On it was scratched--

Ci-Git
Lucille,
Jadis si Belle;
Dont dix-neuf Jeunes Hommes, Planteurs de
Saint Domingue.
ont demande la Main.
Mais La Petite ne Voulait Pas.
R.I.P.

This is the story of Loose-heels, otherwise Lucille's.

STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, HIGHWAYMAN.

The jury re-entered the court after half an hour's consultation.

It all comes back to me as vividly as though I stood in the dock at
this very moment. The dense fog that hung over the well of the
court; the barristers' wigs that bobbed up through it, and were
drowned again in that seething cauldron; the rays of the guttering
candles (for the murder-trial had lasted far into the evening) that
loomed through it and wore a sickly halo; the red robes and red face
of my lord judge opposite that stared through it and outshone the
candles; the black crowd around, seen