de over the hill.
"It is he, it is he," her heart sang sweet.
Then out of the window climbed to meet
The lover who made her hot heart beat.
Yes there he was with his handsome head,
And now the same dear things he said
As he drew close with a sweep of his arm.
The gods of the gallows need no rest--
They ride like chieftains twelve abreast.

One flower touched as she fluttered by,
Swung on its stem,
And one bright star in the purple sky
Shone over them.
And what he said, it matters not,
Nor what she said to him.
And he stopped to listen like one who is stirred;
His horse even hearkened, as though he heard.
For down the road there came abreast
Twelve men in ancient armor dressed.
There was something strange in the way they rode;
There was something odd in their manners.
They did not see the lovers there,
Nor heed the house at all,
But they rode like mad their horses backs....
Rode through the solid wall.
When she had opened her frightened eyes
What was her pitiful heart's surprise
To find him gone
And the yellow dawn
A roaring flame in the new day's skies.

And now they have vanished leaving hope,
And a thing that hangs at the end of a rope.

They found her there
In a little heap
As though she had walked
In her lilied sleep.
And they never knew,
Though her mother said:
"It's a pity, so,
With her lover dead
On the gallows' tree
Three days ago...."

Chapter LX

"Why do you weep?" asked Gud, "since most of these dead ones will go to
Hell anyway."

The man did not answer but kept on weeping. So Gud paused to read the
epitaph on the tombstone of the grave on which the man was sitting. The
inscription was: "IN THIS GRAVE LIE THE DAMNED SOULS OF UNBAPTIZED
BABES."

"Come," said Gud, shaking the weeping man by the shoulder. "If your
child wasn't baptized it ought to be damned, but there is no use weeping
about it."

"I never had a child," said the man, "but if I were going to have one, I
would take no chances, for I would call the priest before I sent for the
doctor."

"Then why are you weeping?" repeated Gud.

"Not over the contents of this grave, I assure you, but because of the
contents of that grave there by the creek's edge."

"Is a relative of yours buried there?" asked Gud.

"He was no relative of mine," said the man. "An