pt on
our travellers' lives. And this was lucky for Manon: for the alderman,
irritated by the clerk reiterating that he could not do this, and could
not that, and could not do t'other, said "he would show him he could do
anything he chose," And he had Manon out, and upon the landlord of "The
White Hart" being her bondsman, and Denys depositing five gold pieces
with him, and the girl promising, not without some coaxing from Denys,
to attend as a witness, he liberated her, but eased his conscience by
telling her in his own terms his reason for this leniency.

"The town had to buy a new rope for everybody hanged, and present it
to the bourreau, or compound with him in money: and she was not in his
opinion worth this municipal expense, whereas decided characters like
her late confederates, were." And so Denys and Gerard carried her off,
Gerard dancing round her for joy, Denys keeping up her heart by
assuring her of the demise of a troublesome personage, and she weeping
inauspiciously. However, on the road to "The White Hart" the public
found her out, and having heard the whole story from the archers, who
naturally told it warmly in her favour, followed her hurrahing and
encouraging her, till finding herself backed by numbers she plucked up
heart. The landlord too saw at a glance that her presence in the inn
would draw custom, and received her politely, and assigned her an upper
chamber: here she buried herself, and being alone rained tears again.

Poor little mind, it was like a ripple, up and down, down and up, up and
down. Bidding the landlord be very kind to her, and keep her a prisoner
without letting her feel it, the friends went out: and lo! as they
stepped into the street they saw two processions coming towards them
from opposite sides. One was a large one, attended with noise and howls
and those indescribable cries by which rude natures reveal at odd times
that relationship to the beasts of the field and forest, which at other
times we succeed in hiding. The other, very thinly attended by a few
nuns and friars, came slow and silent.

The prisoners going to exposure in the market-place. The gathered bones
of the victims coming to the churchyard.

And the two met in the narrow street nearly at the inn door, and could
not pass each other for a long time, and the bier, that bore the relics
of mortality, got wedged against the cart that carried the men who had
made those bones what they were, and in a few hours must d