nd made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side. He then lay down
beside him, with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bear-skin over
them, hair inward. They were soon as warm as toast, and fast asleep.

But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.

"What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?"

"Do? why, go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine."

"But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep," snapped Gerard.

"Let us march, then," replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.

He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears'
ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and
they took the road.

Gerard leaned on his axe, and propped by Denys on the other side,
hobbled along, not without sighs.

"I hate pain." said Gerard viciously.

"Therein you show judgment," replied papa smoothly.

It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the
end of the wood at no great distance: a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf
they knew was but a short league further.

At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they
stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose
in the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood
many figures, that looked like human forms.

"I go no farther till I know what this is," said Gerard, in an agitated
whisper. "Are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the
road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? Nay,
living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see. Oh!
Denys, let us turn back till daybreak; this is no mortal sight."

Denys halted, and peered long and keenly. "They are men," said he, at
last. Gerard was for turning back all the more. "But men that will never
hurt us, nor we them. Look not to their feet, for that they stand on!"

"Where, then, i' the name of all the saints?"

"Look over their heads," said Denys gravely.

Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of
a dark wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and as the pair got
nearer, walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snake-like cords came out
in the moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as
wire.

Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale
vengeance a light air swept by, and several of the corpses swung, or
gently gyrated, and every rope creaked. Gerard shuddered at this ghastly
salute. So