stiff upon
the frozen ground, staring up at next night's moon, with eyes that no
longer see! A rope round the neck, a hole in the side, a cracked skull!
what matters which mode Dame Death will choose for our ultimate end. But
'tis a pity about the prisoner! A true fighter if there was one, a stoic
and a philosopher. "The Cavalier" we pretty soon call him.

"What ho!" he shouts, "call me the Laughing Cavalier!"

Poor devil! he tries not to show his hurts. He suffers much what with
that damnable wind and those ropes that cut into his tough sinews, but
he smiles at every twinge of pain: smiles and laughs and cracks the
broadest jokes that have e'er made these worm-eaten beams ring with
their echo.

The Laughing Cavalier in sooth!

There! now we can ease him somewhat. Jan's back is turned: we dare not
touch the ropes, but a cloak put between his back and the beam, and
another just against his head.

Is that not better, old compeer?

Aye! but is it not good to be a villain and a rogue and herd with other
villains and other rogues who are so infinitely more kind and gentle
than all those noble lords?

Diogenes--his head propped against the rude cushion placed there by the
hand of some rough Samaritan--has fallen into a fitful doze.

Whispers around him wake him with a start. Ye gods! was there ever so
black a night? The whispers become more eager, more insistent.

"Let us but speak with him. We'll do no harm!"

St. Bavon tell us how those two scarecrows have got here! For they are
here in the flesh, both of them, Diogenes would have spotted his brother
philosophers through darkness darker than the blackest hell. Pythagoras
rolling in fat and Socrates lean and hungry-looking, peering like a huge
gaunt bird through the gloom. Someone is holding up a lanthorn and
Pythagoras' tip-tilted nose shines with a ruddy glow.

"But how did you get here, you old mushroom-face?" asks one of the men.

"We had business with him at Rotterdam," quoth Socrates with one of his
choicest oaths and nodding in the direction of the prisoner. "All day we
have wondered what has become of him."

"Then in the afternoon," breaks in Pythagoras, to the accompaniment of a
rival set of expletives, "we saw him trussed like a fowl and tied into a
sledge drawn by a single horse, which started in the wake of a larger
one wherein sat a lovely jongejuffrouw."

"Then what did you do?" queries some one.

"Do?" exclaimed the philosophers simultaneousl