le. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary
tilt against the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the mass,
knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint; and there
he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but
really in convulsion, sense and wind being driven out together by the
concussion.

"What is to do now, in Heaven's name?" cried the alderman, starting up
with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany
his worship. "So be it," said the latter. His men picked themselves
ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the
premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was
postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.

Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and
evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's
net, and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one
constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.

CHAPTER XXXV

Gerard awoke, and found Denys watching him with some anxiety.

"It is you for sleeping! Why, 'tis high noon."

"It was a blessed sleep," said Gerard; "methinks Heaven sent it me. It
hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think
that you and I sit here alive and well. How terrible a dream I seem to
have had!"

"Ay, lad, that is the wise way to look at these things when once they
are past, why, they are dreams, shadows. Break thy fast, and then thou
wilt think no more on't. Moreover, I promised to bring thee on to the
town by noon, and take thee to his worship."

Gerard then sopped some rye bread in red wine and ate it to break his
fast: then went with Denys over the scene of combat, and came back
shuddering, and finally took the road with his friend, and kept peering
through the hedges, and expecting sudden attacks unreasonably, till they
reached the little town. Denys took him to "The White Hart".

"No fear of cut-throats here," said he. "I know the landlord this many
a year. He is a burgess, and looks to be bailiff. 'Tis here I was making
for yestreen. But we lost time, and night o'ertook us--and--

"And you saw a woman at the door, and would be wiser than a Jeanneton;
she told us they were nought."

"Why, what saved our lives if not a woman? Ay, and risked her own to do
it."

"That is true, Denys; and though women are nothing to me, I long to
th