, and sometimes aiding with a gentle admonition of their
pike-heads those who lingered, as, slowly retreating, they moved down
the different narrow streets that led from the central market-place,
like streams flowing off in different channels after an inundation.
Window after window was closing in the quaintly-carved and
strangely-decorated gables of the houses; and many a small casement had
been pulled to, over sundry withered old faces, that, peering from the
dark and narrow aperture, and illumined by the glaring light that had
filled the market-place, had resembled some darkly-traced picture placed
against the opening. In the middle of the square still smoked, in a
heavy volume of cloud, the last gleaming ashes of a lately blazing pile,
still filling the air with a noisome stench. The night was closing
darkly in, and one human being alone seemed yet to linger in the
market-place.

It would have been difficult, indeed, to discover that the dark object
just discernible upon the edge of the blackened mass of smoking cinders
really was a human being, so shapeless was the form, so strangely was it
crouched down before the spot where the pile had been consumed. From
time to time only an upward-flung movement of two thin arms, as if in
the violent emotion of earnest prayer or deprecation, showed that this
object was a living thing; until, when the moon rose from behind the old
town-hall, disengaging itself, ever and anon, from among the heavy
clouds of a gathering storm, its light fell full upon this indistinct
apparition, and revealed the form of a man, curiously bent together in a
half-squatting, half-kneeling position. His head was bare. His long
tangled black locks hung around a swarthy face, young still in years,
but worn and withered, and prematurely aged by sickness, sorrow, or
violence of passion--perhaps by the constant operation of all three. At
this moment it was ghastly pale, and bore the marks of the faintness and
exhaustion attendant upon a reaction after intense excitement. The dress
of this creature was not the usual costume of the lower classes, and
consisted almost entirely of a ragged and soiled garment of coarse brown
linen, made somewhat in the shape of a modern _blouse_, and bound round
his waist by a coarse leathern band. Around his neck hung a square bag,
or satchel, which at once designated his calling to be that of a common
beggar, privileged by the religious authorities of the place. The stoop
of