, while they were
looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the
Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this
wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing,
until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks went
on,--six weeks,--and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic
affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes
out of his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had become
inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one
morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a little
window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a
great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and
bring him down dead. Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her
mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good
climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the
summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, "Seize
Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the body!" I saw
the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-
Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable
litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting
to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A
heavy animal,--the dullest animal in the stables,--with a stupid head,
and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been,
within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small
moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of
putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed
next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that
they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him
once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the
headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this
murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold
in a little market-place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with
quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust
of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder
was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left
unreaped, within a radius of fi