r feet
and lead you to eternal bliss!"

"Gramercy for these good wishes!" said Sir Nigel. "But I perceive,
master alderman, that this man who hangs here is, by mark of foot, the
very robber-knight of whom we have spoken. But there is a cartel pinned
upon his breast, and I pray you, Alleyne, to read it to me."

The dead robber swung slowly to and fro in the wintry wind, a fixed
smile upon his swarthy face, and his bulging eyes still glaring down the
highway of which he had so long been the terror; on a sheet of parchment
upon his breast was printed in rude characters;

ROGER PIED-BOT.

Par l'ordre du Senechal de
Castelnau, et de l'Echevin de
Cahors, servantes fideles du
tres vaillant et tres puissant
Edouard, Prince de Galles et
d'Aquitaine.
Ne touchez pas,
Ne coutez pas,
Ne depechez pas

"He took a sorry time in dying," said the man who sat beside him. "He
could stretch one toe to the ground and bear him self up, so that I
thought he would never have done. Now at last, however, he is safely in
paradise, and so I may jog on upon my earthly way." He mounted, as he
spoke, a white mule which had been grazing by the wayside, all gay
with fustian of gold and silver bells, and rode onward with Sir Nigel's
party.

"How know you then that he is in paradise?" asked Sir Nigel. "All things
are possible to God, but, certes, without a miracle, I should scarce
expect to find the soul of Roger Clubfoot amongst the just."

"I know that he is there because I have just passed him in there,"
answered the stranger, rubbing his bejewelled hands together in placid
satisfaction. "It is my holy mission to be a sompnour or pardoner. I am
the unworthy servant and delegate of him who holds the keys. A contrite
heart and ten nobles to holy mother Church may stave off perdition; but
he hath a pardon of the first degree, with a twenty-five livre benison,
so that I doubt if he will so much as feel a twinge of purgatory. I came
up even as the seneschal's archers were tying him up, and I gave him my
fore-word that I would bide with him until he had passed. There were two
leaden crowns among the silver, but I would not for that stand in the
way of his salvation."

"By Saint Paul!" said Sir Nigel, "if you have indeed this power to open
and to shut the gates of hope, then indeed you stand high above