"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Marry, some would
have escaped."

"Then you mean that nobody _did_ unlock them?"

"None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth to
reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful
to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not
escape, but be taken. None were taken."

"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well
to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered
the baron and fired the house."

I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment
the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and
an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something
else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions.
I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects
produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these
three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that
our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now
only pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change,
and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward
other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these
people were relieved to have it take that direction.

The painful thing observable about all this business was the
alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their
cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common
oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel
between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural
and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste
to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever
stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This
man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his
work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against
them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable
as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything
horrible about it.

This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his
head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when
the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and
frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed
their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their
midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to