eeper I thrust the more there be.
Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men's
flesh creep that heard it."

"Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones
of beeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women.
Holy saints preserve us!"

"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the
ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but
soldiers-men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found
their bones picked as clean by the crows as these I doubt have been by
thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake
I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field
of battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour
agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face: now then, what is
this, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.

"Alas! I know not."

"Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of
a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is
not one?"

And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap
of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.

The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers are
sinners," said he; "we give short measure and baptize the wine: we are
fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not
assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's
lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have
been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here: I swear by
God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron
saint--ah!"

Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no
man, however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep
or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless
heart.

The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees
gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers
dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch, staring
fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed,
but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lip now
opened and opened, but could utter no sound.

"Ah!" said Denys solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the
sockets out of