Down this, as they came abreast of it, there walked two men, the one a pace or two behind the other.

The cavaliers could not but pull up their horses to look at them, for a stranger pair were never seen journeying together.

The first was a misshapen, squalid man with cruel, cunning eyes and a shock of tangled red hair, bearing in his hands a small unpainted cross, which he held high so that all men might see it.

He seemed to be in the last extremity of fright, with a face the color of clay and his limbs all ashake as one who hath an ague.

Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's heels, there walked a very stern, black-bearded man with a hard eye and a set mouth.