and they kissed the three principal women. The landlord took and kissed
them, and they kissed the landlord; and the cry was, "Come back, the
sooner the better!"

"Never pass 'The Three Fish'; should your purses be void, bring
yourselves: 'le sieur credit' is not dead for you."

And they took the road again.

They came to a little town, and Denys went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper
was in the doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with a bow down
to the ground. The customer was soon fitted, and followed to the street,
and dismissed with graceful salutes from the doorstep.

The friends agreed it was Elysium to deal with such a shoemaker as this.
"Not but what my German shoes have lasted well enough," said Gerard the
just.

Outside the town was a pebbled walk.

"This is to keep the burghers's feet dry, a-walking o' Sundays with
their wives and daughters," said Denys.

Those simple words of Denys, one stroke of a careless tongue, painted
"home" in Gerard's heart. "Oh, how sweet!" said he.

"Mercy! what is this? A gibbet! and ugh, two skeletons thereon!
Oh, Denys, what a sorry sight to woo by!"

"Nay," said Denys, "a comfortable sight; for every rogue i' the air
there is one the less a-foot."

A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a
huge wheel closely studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were
bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel.

Gerard hid his face in his hands. "Oh, to think those patches and bones
are all that is left of a man! of one who was what we are now."

"Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than
that?"

"How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture
too?"

"None of my kith ever found their way to the gibbet, I know."

"The better their luck. Prithee, how died the saints?"

"Hard. But not in Burgundy."

"Ye massacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's
threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime, because you read not
story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that bloody day we sigh for to
this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the
gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father
Martin says."

"The blaspheming old hound!"

"Oh, fie! fie! a holy and a book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y'had read
them, that suffered there, by the bare light of the gibbet. 'Drive
in the nails!' y'had cried: 'drive in the spear!' Here