w fiery words soon made all clear.

"Bind him like the rest," said the alderman sternly. "I count him the
blackest of them all."

While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that
"the skull might be taken from him."

"Humph!" said the alderman. "Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be
put on mortal man. Yet being there, I will not lift voice nor finger to
doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign,
and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine."

He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang,
or but a part.

"Your worship," said Denys, "there are but seven of them, and this
landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we trundled down dead, the rest are
bound before you."

"Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I
caused to be removed."

Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. "Now, now, now,
where is the hand? that is what I want to see." The speaker was a little
pettifogging clerk.

"You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a crossbow bolt."

"Good!" said the clerk. He whispered his master, "What a goodly show
will the 'pieces de conviction' make!" and with this he wrote them down,
enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them. Skulls--Bones--A
woman's hair--A thief's hands 1 axe--2 carcasses--1 crossbow bolt.
This done, he itched to search the cellar himself: there might be other
invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an earring. The alderman
assenting, he caught up a torch and was hurrying thither, when an
accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or two in the
opposite direction.

The constables had gone up the stair in single file.

But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated
by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like
one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a
sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his recoil,
he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion; but he, shaken by the
shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already
staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who,
like most head constables, was a ponderous man. The two carried away the
third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and
settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on
a card-tab