CHAPTER IX .-- WISWALL HALL.
Shortly before ten o'clock a numerous cortege, consisting of a troop of horse in their full equipments, a band of archers with their bows over their shoulders, and a long train of barefoot monks, who had been permitted to attend, set out from the abbey.

Behind them came a varlet with a paper mitre on his head, and a lathen crosier in his hand, covered with a surcoat, on which was emblazoned, but torn and reversed, the arms of Paslew; argent, a fess between three mullets, sable, pierced of the field, a crescent for difference.

After him came another varlet bearing a banner, on which was painted a grotesque figure in a half-military, half-monastic garb, representing the "Earl of Poverty," with this distich beneath it:-- Priest and warrior--rich and poor, He shall be hanged at his own door.
Next followed a tumbrel, drawn by two horses, in which sat the abbot alone, the two other prisoners being kept back for the present.

Then came Demdike, in a leathern jerkin and blood-red hose, fitting closely to his sinewy limbs, and wrapped in a houppeland of the same colour as the hose, with a coil of rope round his neck.

He walked between two ill-favoured personages habited in black, whom he had chosen as assistants.