'But what in the name of fate is this upon our left ?' 'A gibbet, by the look of it,' said Saxon, peering across at the gaunt framework of wood, which rose up from a little knoll.

'Let us ride past it, for it is little out of our way.

They are rare things in England, though by my faith there were more gallows than milestones when Turenne was in the Palatinate.

What between the spies and traitors who were bred by the war, the rascally Schwartzritter and Lanzknechte, the Bohemian vagabonds, and an occasional countryman who was put out of the way lest he do something amiss, there was never such a brave time for the crows.' As we approached this lonely gibbet we saw that a dried-up wisp of a thing which could hardly be recognised as having once been a human being was dangling from the centre of it.

This wretched relic of mortality was secured to the cross-bar by an iron chain, and flapped drearily backwards and forwards in the summer breeze.