, what only might have been is as tho it could
not be; and to know this may well suffice for us.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Born in 1850, died in 1894; poet and essayist; his father a
noted lighthouse engineer; educated at Edinburgh University;
lived in Samoa after 1889; among his first books were "An
Inland Voyage" published in 1878; "Travels with a Donkey" in
1879; "Virginibus Puerisque" in 1881; his works collected
after his death.

I

FRANCIS VILLON'S TERRORS[64]

No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself,
jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the
embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into
the street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in
sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon
was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighborhood of the dead
Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him
before he should discover the loss of his money, he was the first by
general consent to issue forth into the street.

[Footnote 64: From "A Lodging for the Night: A Story of Francis
Villon," in the volume entitled "New Arabian Nights," published in
1882.]

The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. Only a
few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. It
was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost
more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was
absolutely still; a company of white hoods, a field full of little
Alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it
were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail
behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still
tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he
must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the
crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came
back to him with a new significance. He snapt his fingers as if to
pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stept
boldly forward in snow.

Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the gallows at
Montfaucon in this bright, windy phase of the night's existence, for
one; and for another, the look of the dead man with his bald head and
garland of red curls. Both struck cold upon his heart, and he kept
qui