rk. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and mouths
at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of speech. The cart,
with this shabby and tragic freight, and surrounded by its silent escort
and bright torches, continued for some distance to creak along the
high-road, and I to follow it in amazement, which was soon exchanged for
horror. At the corner of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the
torches ranged themselves along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a
grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime
piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung
off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness.
A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now
withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a
heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night) drove it home
through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled with quicklime, and
the bystanders, as if relieved of some oppression, broke at once into a
sound of whispered speech.

My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I found my
tongue with difficulty.

"I beg your pardon," I gasped to a neighbour, "what is this? what has he
done? is it allowed?"

"Why, where do you come from?" replied the man.

"I am a traveller, sir," said I, "and a total stranger in this part of
the country. I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and came by
chance on this--this incredible scene. Who was the man?"

"A suicide," said he. "Ay, he was a bad one was Johnny Green."

It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous murders,
and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand. And
the nightmare at the cross-roads was the regular punishment, according
to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a
virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as,
indeed, it's a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured
blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the
grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority--and take a
thimbleful of brandy for the stomach's sake.

I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to
bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned
English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid.
We had a good many pleasant passages as she wai