red me. I was eleven months with him. A young man courted me. I
loved him. I found out that travellers came and never went away again.
I told my lover. He bade me hold my peace. He threatened me. I found my
lover was one of a band of thieves. When travellers were to be robbed,
the landlord went out and told the band to come. Then I wept and prayed
for the travellers' souls. I never told. A month ago my lover died.

"The soldier put me in mind of my lover. He was bearded like him I had
lost. I cannot tell whether I should have interfered, if he had had no
beard. I am sorry I told now."

The paper almost dropped from Gerard's hands. Now for the first time he
saw that Manon's life was in mortal danger. He knew the dogged law, and
the dogged men that executed it. He threw himself suddenly on his knees
at the alderman's feet. "Oh, sir! think of the difference between those
cruel men and this poor weak woman! Could you have the heart to send her
to the same death with them; could you have the heart to condemn us to
look on and see her slaughtered, who, but that she risked her life for
ours, had not now been in jeopardy? Alas, sir! show me and my comrade
some pity, if you have none for her, poor soul. Denys and I be true men,
and you will rend our hearts if you kill that poor simple girl. What
can we do? What is left for us to do then but cut our throats at her
gallows' foot?"

The alderman was tough, but mortal; the prayers and agitation of Gerard
first astounded, then touched him. He showed it in a curious way. He
became peevish and fretful. "There, get up, do," said he. "I doubt
whether anybody would say as many words for me. What ho, Daniel!
go fetch the town clerk." And on that functionary entering from an
adjoining room, "Here is a foolish lad fretting about yon girl. Can
we stretch a point? say we admit her to bear witness, and question her
favourably."

The town clerk was one of your "impossibility" men.

"Nay, sir, we cannot do that: she was not concerned in this business.
Had she been accessory, we might have offered her a pardon to bear
witness."

Gerard burst in, "But she did better. Instead of being accessory, she
stayed the crime; and she proffered herself as witness by running hither
with the tale."

"Tush, young man, 'tis a matter of law." The alderman and the clerk then
had a long discussion, the one maintaining, the other denying, that she
stood as fair in law as if she had been accessory to the attem