back could recover from
his surprise, a squadron of royal troops, going on duty as extra
watchmen, surrounded him, and he was seized and bound.

The gypsy girl sat gracefully upon the officer's saddle, placing both
hands upon the young man's shoulders, and gazing at him fixedly. Then
breaking the silence, she said tenderly, "What is your name, M.
l'Officier?"

"Captain Phaebus de Chateaupers, at your service, my pretty maid!" said
the officer, drawing himself up.

"Thank you."

And while Captain Phaebus twirled his mustache, she slipped from his
horse and vanished like a flash of lightning.

"The bird has flown, but the bat remains, captain," said one of the
troopers, tightening Quasimodo's bonds.

Quasimodo being deaf, understood nothing of the proceedings in the court
next day, when he was charged with creating a disturbance, and of
rebellion and disloyalty to the King's Archers.

The chief magistrate, also being deaf and at the same time anxious to
conceal his infirmity, understood nothing that Quasimodo said.

The hunchback was sentenced to be taken to the pillory in the Greve, to
be beaten, and to be kept there for two hours.

Quasimodo remained utterly impassive, while the crowd which yesterday
had hailed him as Lord of Misrule now greeted him with hooting and
derision.

The pillory was a simple cube of masonry, some ten feet high, and hollow
within. A horizontal wheel of oak was at the top, and to this the victim
was bound in a kneeling posture. A very steep flight of stone steps led
to the wheel.

All the people laughed merrily when Quasimodo was seen in the pillory;
and when he had been beaten by the public executioner, they added to the
wretched sufferer's misery by insults, and, occasionally, stones. There
was hardly a spectator in the crowd that had not some grudge, real or
imagined, against the hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame.

Quasimodo had endured the torturer's whip with patience, but he rebelled
against the stones, and struggled in his fetters till the old pillory-
wheel creaked on its timbers. Then, as he could accomplish nothing by
his struggles, his face became quiet again.

For a moment the cloud was lightened when the poor victim saw a priest
seated on a mule approach in the roadway. A strange smile came on the
face of Quasimodo as he glanced at the priest; yet when the mule was
near enough to the pillory for his rider to recognise the prisoner, the
priest cast down his eyes, t