One day they were surprised and taken by robbers, desperate outcasts of the mountains, who gave them twenty-four hours to "make their peace with heaven"-- ere they hanged them because they had slain so many of the band before they were overpowered.
But when those twenty-four hours of grace had elapsed, it would have been easy for them to hang all who remained of those robbers themselves.
So they took the best of their horses and their ill-gotten gold and rode on again, leaving the murderers murdered by a stronger power than man.
They went through desolate villages, where the crops rotted in the fields; they went through stricken towns whereof the moan and the stench rose in a foul incense to heaven; they crossed rivers where the very fish had died by thousands, poisoned of the dead that rolled seaward in their waters.

The pleasant land had become a hell, and untouched, unharmed, they plodded onward through those deeps of hell.

But a night or two before they had slept in a city whereof the population, or those who remained alive of them, seemed to have gone mad.

In one place they danced and sang and made love in an open square.

In another bands of naked creatures marched the streets singing hymns and flogging themselves till the blood ran down to their heels, while the passers-by prostrated themselves before them.