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<h2> CHAPTER XXV </h2>
<p>Denys caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be
doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck, or
a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy carcass his
head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was needless. She
panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not so harmless; and
soon she breathed her last; and the judicious Denys propped Gerard up
against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by degrees, but
confused, and feeling the bear around him, rolled away, yelling.</p>
<p>“Courage,” cried Denys, “le diable est mort.”</p>
<p>“Is it dead? quite dead?” inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his
courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been
for some time.</p>
<p>“Behold,” said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened her
jaws and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst of
which Gerard was violently sick.</p>
<p>Denys laughed at him.</p>
<p>“What is the matter now?” said he, “also, why tumble off your perch just
when we had won the day?”</p>
<p>“I swooned, I trow.”</p>
<p>“But why?”</p>
<p>Not receiving an answer, he continued, “Green girls faint as soon as look
at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever fainted up a
tree?”</p>
<p>“She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have
overpowered me! Faugh! I hate blood.”</p>
<p>“I do believe it potently.”</p>
<p>“See what a mess she has made me</p>
<p>“But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy
you.”'</p>
<p>“You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the colour
of your shirt.”</p>
<p>“Let us distinguish,” said Denys, colouring; “it is permitted to tremble
for a friend.”</p>
<p>Gerard, for answer, flung his arms round Denys's neck in silence.</p>
<p>“Look here,” whined the stout soldier, affected by this little gush of
nature and youth, “was ever aught so like a woman? I love thee, little
milksop—go to. Good! behold him on his knees now. What new caprice
is this?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Denys, ought we not to return thanks to Him who has saved both our
lives against such fearful odds?” And Gerard kneeled, and prayed aloud.
And presently he found Denys kneeling quiet beside him, with his hands
across his bosom after the custom of his nation, and a face as long as his
arm. When they rose, Gerard's countenance was beaming.</p>
<p>“Good Denys,” said he, “Heaven will reward thy piety.”</p>
<p>“Ah, bah! I did it out of politeness,” said the Frenchman. “It was to
please thee, little one. C'est egal, 'twas well and orderly prayed, and
edified me to the core while it lasted. A bishop had scarce handled the
matter better; so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted
with us—marchons.”</p>
<p>Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. “By-the-by, the cub!”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, no!” cried Gerard.</p>
<p>“You are right. It is late. We have lost time climbing trees, and tumbling
off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting, and praying; and the brute is heavy
to carry. And now I think on't, we shall have papa after it next; these
bears make such a coil about an odd cub. What is this? you are wounded!
you are wounded!”</p>
<p>“Not I.”</p>
<p>“He is wounded; miserable that I am!”</p>
<p>“Be calm, Denys. I am not touched; I feel no pain anywhere.”</p>
<p>“You? you only feel when another is hurt,” cried Denys, with great
emotion; and throwing himself on his knees, he examined Gerard's leg with
glistening eyes.</p>
<p>“Quick! quick! before it stiffens,” he cried, and hurried him on.</p>
<p>“Who makes the coil about nothing now?” inquired Gerard composedly.</p>
<p>Denys's reply was a very indirect one.</p>
<p>“Be pleased to note,” said he, “that I have a bad heart. You were man
enough to save my life, yet I must sneer at you, a novice in war. Was not
I a novice once myself? Then you fainted from a wound, and I thought you
swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly, I have a bad tongue
and a bad heart.”</p>
<p>“Denys!”</p>
<p>“Plait-il?”</p>
<p>“You lie.”</p>
<p>“You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to
you,” mumbled the remorseful Denys.</p>
<p>Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg
contracted and stiffened, till presently Gerard could only just put his
toe to the ground, and that with great pain.</p>
<p>At last he could bear it no longer.</p>
<p>“Let me lie down and die,” he groaned, “for this is intolerable.”</p>
<p>Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty;
and cold and hunger ill companions; and that it would be unreasonable to
lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct. So Gerard
leaned upon his axe, and hobbled on; but presently he gave in, all of a
sudden, and sank helpless in the road.</p>
<p>Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his
crossbow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any
ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them keep
aloof; and should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces. “Honest
men keep the path; and, knaves in a wood, none but fools do parley with
them.” With this he snatched up Gerard's axe, and set off running—not,
as Gerard expected, towards Dusseldorf, but on the road they had come.</p>
<p>Gerard lay aching and smarting; and to him Rome, that seemed so near at
starting, looked far, far off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer
it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it would
be one day to hold Margaret's hand, and tell her all he had gone through
for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him; and in the midst of
pain and irritation of the nerves be lay resigned, and sweetly, though
faintly, smiling.</p>
<p>He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts; and
the next moment something struck a tree hard by, and quivered in it.</p>
<p>He looked, it was an arrow.</p>
<p>He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and the
wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell, for
noises in these huge woods are so reverberated, that a stranger is always
at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air.
Presently there was a lull; then he heard the fierce galloping of hoofs;
and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans;
and above all, strange and terrible sounds, like fierce claps of thunder,
bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of
flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphurous
smoke came drifting over his head. And all was still.</p>
<p>Gerard was struck with awe. “What will become of Denys?” he cried. “Oh,
why did you leave me? Oh, Denys, my friend! my friend!”</p>
<p>Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle. It
was the bear's skin.</p>
<p>Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.</p>
<p>“I thought never to see you again, dear Denys. Were you in the battle?”</p>
<p>“No. What battle?”</p>
<p>“The bloody battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while
agone;” and with this he described it to the life, and more fully than I
have done.</p>
<p>Denys patted him indulgently on the back.</p>
<p>“It is well,” said he; “thou art a good limner; and fever is a great spur
to the imagination. One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked skull, and
saw two hosts manoeuvre and fight a good hour on eight feet square, the
which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only not so
gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning.</p>
<p>“What, then, you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over
my head, and the combatants shouted, and—”</p>
<p>“May the foul fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it.”</p>
<p>Gerard took his arm, and quietly pointed to a tree close by.</p>
<p>“Why, it looks like—it is-a broad arrow, as I live!” And he went
close, and looked up at it.</p>
<p>“It came out of the battle. I heard it, and saw it.”</p>
<p>“An English arrow.”</p>
<p>“How know you that?”</p>
<p>“Marry, by its length. The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear, others
only to the right breast. Hence the English loose a three-foot shaft, and
this is one of them, perdition seize them! Well, if this is not glamour,
there has been a trifle of a battle. And if there has been a battle in so
ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis no business of
mine, for my Duke hath no quarrel hereabouts. So let's to bed,” said the
professional. And with this he scraped together a heap of leaves, and made
Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side. He then lay down beside him, with
one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bear-skin over them, hair inward.
They were soon as warm as toast, and fast asleep.</p>
<p>But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.</p>
<p>“What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?”</p>
<p>“Do? why, go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine.”</p>
<p>“But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep,” snapped Gerard.</p>
<p>“Let us march, then,” replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.</p>
<p>He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears' ears,
rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and they took
the road.</p>
<p>Gerard leaned on his axe, and propped by Denys on the other side, hobbled
along, not without sighs.</p>
<p>“I hate pain.” said Gerard viciously.</p>
<p>“Therein you show judgment,” replied papa smoothly.</p>
<p>It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the end
of the wood at no great distance: a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf they
knew was but a short league further.</p>
<p>At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they
stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose in
the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood many
figures, that looked like human forms.</p>
<p>“I go no farther till I know what this is,” said Gerard, in an agitated
whisper. “Are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the road?
or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? Nay, living men
they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see. Oh! Denys, let us
turn back till daybreak; this is no mortal sight.”</p>
<p>Denys halted, and peered long and keenly. “They are men,” said he, at
last. Gerard was for turning back all the more. “But men that will never
hurt us, nor we them. Look not to their feet, for that they stand on!”</p>
<p>“Where, then, i' the name of all the saints?”</p>
<p>“Look over their heads,” said Denys gravely.</p>
<p>Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of a dark
wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and as the pair got nearer,
walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snake-like cords came out in the
moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as wire.</p>
<p>Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale
vengeance a light air swept by, and several of the corpses swung, or
gently gyrated, and every rope creaked. Gerard shuddered at this ghastly
salute. So thoroughly had the gibbet, with its sickening load, seized and
held their eyes, that it was but now they perceived a fire right
underneath, and a living figure sitting huddled over it. His axe lay
beside him, the bright blade shining red in the glow. He was asleep.</p>
<p>Gerard started, but Denys only whispered, “courage, comrade, here is a
fire.”</p>
<p>“Ay! but there is a man at it.”</p>
<p>“There will soon be three;” and he began to heap some wood on it that the
watcher had prepared; during which the prudent Gerard seized the man's
axe, and sat down tight on it, grasping his own, and examining the
sleeper. There was nothing outwardly distinctive in the man. He wore the
dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered
hat called a Brunswicker, stiff enough to turn a sword cut, and with a
thick brass hat-band. The weight of the whole thing had turned his ears
entirely down, like a fancy rabbit's in our century; but even this, though
it spoiled him as a man, was nothing remarkable. They had of late met
scores of these dog's-eared rustics. The peculiarity was, this clown
watching under a laden gallows. What for?</p>
<p>Denys, if he felt curious, would not show it; he took out two bears' ears
from his bundle, and running sticks through them, began to toast them.
“'Twill be eating coined money,” said he; “for the burgomaster of
Dusseldorf had given us a rix-dollar for these ears, as proving the death
of their owners; but better a lean purse than a lere stomach.”</p>
<p>“Unhappy man!” cried Gerard, “could you eat food here?”</p>
<p>“Where the fire is lighted there must the meat roast, and where it roasts
there must it be eaten; for nought travels worse than your roasted meat.”</p>
<p>“Well, eat thou, Denys, an thou canst! but I am cold and sick; there is no
room for hunger in my heart after what mine eyes have seen,” and he
shuddered over the fire. “Oh! how they creak! and who is this man, I
wonder? what an ill-favoured churl!”</p>
<p>Denys examined him like a connoisseur looking at a picture, and in due
course delivered judgment. “I take him to be of the refuse of that
company, whereof these (pointing carelessly upward) were the cream, and so
ran their heads into danger.</p>
<p>“At that rate, why not stun him before he wakes?” and Gerard fidgeted
where he sat.</p>
<p>Denys opened his eyes with humorous surprise. “For one who sets up for a
milksop you have the readiest hand. Why should two stun one? tush! he
wakes: note now what he says at waking, and tell me.”</p>
<p>These last words were hardly whispered when the watcher opened his eyes.
At sight of the fire made up, and two strangers eyeing him keenly, he
stared, and there was a severe and pretty successful effort to be calm;
still a perceptible tremor ran all over him. Soon he manned himself, and
said gruffly. “Good morrow. But at the very moment of saying it he missed
his axe, and saw how Gerard was sitting upon it, with his own laid ready
to his hand. He lost countenance again directly. Denys smiled grimly at
this bit of byplay.</p>
<p>“Good morrow!” said Gerard quietly, keeping his eye on him.</p>
<p>The watcher was now too ill at ease to be silent. “You make free with my
fire,” said he; but he added in a somewhat faltering voice, “you are
welcome.”</p>
<p>Denys whispered Gerard. The watcher eyed them askant.</p>
<p>“My comrade says, sith we share your fire, you shall share his meat.”</p>
<p>“So be it,” said the man warmly. “I have half a kid hanging on a bush hard
by, I'll go fetch it;” and he arose with a cheerful and obliging
countenance, and was retiring.</p>
<p>Denys caught up his crossbow, and levelled it at his head. The man fell on
his knees.</p>
<p>Denys lowered his weapon, and pointed him back to his place. He rose and
went back slowly and unsteadily, like one disjointed; and sick at heart as
the mouse, that the cat lets go a little way, and then darts and replaces.</p>
<p>“Sit down, friend,” said Denys grimly, in French.</p>
<p>The man obeyed finger and tone, though he knew not a word of French.</p>
<p>“Tell him the fire is not big enough for more than thee. He will take my
meaning.”</p>
<p>This being communicated by Gerard, the man grinned; ever since Denys spoke
he had seemed greatly relieved. “I wist not ye were strangers,” said he to
Gerard.</p>
<p>Denys cut a piece of bear's ear, and offered it with grace to him he had
just levelled crossbow at.</p>
<p>He took it calmly, and drew a piece of bread from his wallet, and divided
it with the pair. Nay, more, he winked and thrust his hand into the heap
of leaves he sat on (Gerard grasped his axe ready to brain him) and
produced a leathern bottle holding full two gallons. He put it to his
mouth, and drank their healths, then handed it to Gerard; he passed it
untouched to Denys.</p>
<p>“Mort de ma vie!” cried the soldier, “it is Rhenish wine, and fit for the
gullet of an archbishop. Here's to thee, thou prince of good fellows,
wishing thee a short life and a merry one! Come, Gerard, sup! sup! Pshaw,
never heed them, man! they heed not thee. Natheless, did I hang over such
a skin of Rhenish as this, and three churls sat beneath a drinking it and
offered me not a drop, I'd soon be down among them.”</p>
<p>“Denys! Denys!”</p>
<p>“My spirit would cut the cord, and womp would come my body amongst ye,
with a hand on the bottle, and one eye winking, t'other.”</p>
<p>Gerard started up with a cry of horror and his fingers to his ears, and
was running from the place, when his eye fell on the watcher's axe. The
tangible danger brought him back. He sat down again on the axe with his
fingers in his ears.</p>
<p>“Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!” shouted Denys gaily, and offered him
a piece of bear's ear, put it right under his nose as he stopped his ears.
Gerard turned his head away with loathing.</p>
<p>“Wine!” he gasped. “Heaven knows I have much need of it, with such
companions as thee and—”</p>
<p>He took a long draught of the Rhenish wine: it ran glowing through his
veins, and warmed and strengthened his heart, but could not check his
tremors whenever a gust of wind came. As for Denys and the other, they
feasted recklessly, and plied the bottle unceasingly, and drank healths
and caroused beneath that creaking sepulchre and its ghastly tenants.</p>
<p>“Ask him how they came here,” said Denys, with his mouth full, and
pointing up without looking.</p>
<p>On this question being interpreted to the watcher, he replied that treason
had been their end, diabolical treason and priest-craft. He then, being
rendered communicative by drink, delivered a long prosy narrative, the
purport of which was as follows. These honest gentlemen who now dangled
here so miserably were all stout men and true, and lived in the forest by
their wits. Their independence and thriving state excited the jealousy and
hatred of a large portion of mankind, and many attempts were made on their
lives and liberties; these the Virgin and their patron saints, coupled
with their individual skill and courage constantly baffled. But yester eve
a party of merchants came slowly on their mules from Dusseldorf. The
honest men saw them crawling, and let them penetrate near a league into
the forest, then set upon them to make them disgorge a portion of their
ill-gotten gains. But alas! the merchants were no merchants at all, but
soldiers of more than one nation, in the pay of the Archbishop of Cologne;
haubergeons had they beneath their gowns, and weapons of all sorts at
hand; natheless, the honest men fought stoutly, and pressed the traitors
hard, when lo! horsemen, that had been planted in ambush many hours
before, galloped up, and with these new diabolical engines of war, shot
leaden bullets, and laid many an honest fellow low, and so quelled the
courage of others that they yielded them prisoners. These being taken
red-handed, the victors, who with malice inconceivable had brought cords
knotted round their waists, did speedily hang, and by their side the dead
ones, to make the gallanter show. “That one at the end was the captain. He
never felt the cord. He was riddled with broad arrows and leaden balls or
ever they could take him: a worthy man as ever cried, 'Stand and deliver!'
but a little hasty, not much: stay! I forgot; he is dead. Very hasty, and
obstinate as a pig. That one in the—buff jerkin is the lieutenant,
as good a soul as ever lived: he was hanged alive. This one here, I never
could abide; no (not that one; that is Conrad, my bosom friend); I mean
this one right overhead in the chicken-toed shoon; you were always
carrying tales, ye thief, and making mischief; you know you were; and,
sirs, I am a man that would rather live united in a coppice than in a
forest with backbiters and tale-bearers: strangers, I drink to you.” And
so he went down the whole string, indicating with the neck of the bottle,
like a showman with his pole, and giving a neat description of each, which
though pithy was invariably false; for the showman had no real eye for
character, and had misunderstood every one of these people.</p>
<p>“Enough palaver!” cried Denys. “Marchons! Give me his axe: now tell him he
must help you along.”</p>
<p>The man's countenance fell, but he saw in Denys's eye that resistance
would be dangerous; he submitted. Gerard it was who objected. He said, “Y
pensez-vous? to put my hand on a thief, it maketh my flesh creep.”</p>
<p>“Childishness! all trades must live. Besides, I have my reasons. Be not
you wiser than your elder.”</p>
<p>“No. Only if I am to lean on him I must have my hand in my bosom, still
grasping the haft of my knife.”</p>
<p>“It is a new attitude to walk in; but please thyself.”</p>
<p>And in that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices and deadly
suspicion the trio did walk. I wish I could draw them—I would not
trust to the pen.</p>
<p>The light of the watch-tower at Dusseldorf was visible as soon as they
cleared the wood, and cheered Gerard. When, after an hour's march, the
black outline of the tower itself and other buildings stood out clear to
the eye, their companion halted and said gloomily, “You may as well slay
me out of hand as take me any nearer the gates of Dusseldorf town.”</p>
<p>On this being communicated to Denys, he said at once, “Let him go then,
for in sooth his neck will be in jeopardy if he wends much further with
us.” Gerard acquiesced as a matter of course. His horror of a criminal did
not in the least dispose him to active co-operation with the law. But the
fact is, that at this epoch no private citizen in any part of Europe ever
meddled with criminals but in self-defence, except, by-the-by, in England,
which, behind other nations in some things, was centuries before them all
in this.</p>
<p>The man's personal liberty being restored, he asked for his axe. It was
given him. To the friends' surprise he still lingered. Was he to have
nothing for coming so far out of his way with them?</p>
<p>“Here are two batzen, friend.</p>
<p>“Add the wine, the good Rhenish?”</p>
<p>“Did you give aught for it?”</p>
<p>“Ay! the peril of my life.”</p>
<p>“Hum! what say you, Denys?”</p>
<p>“I say it was worth its weight in gold. Here, lad, here be silver groshen,
one for every acorn on that gallows tree; and here is one more for thee,
who wilt doubtless be there in due season.”</p>
<p>The man took the coins, but still lingered.</p>
<p>“Well! what now?” cried Gerard, who thought him shamefully overpaid
already. “Dost seek the hide off our bones?”</p>
<p>“Nay, good sirs, but you have seen to-night how parlous a life is mine. Ye
be true men, and your prayers avail; give me then a small trifle of a
prayer, an't please you; for I know not one.”</p>
<p>Gerard's choler began to rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever
since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability. However, he bit his lip
and said, “There go two words to that bargain; tell me first, is it true
what men say of you Rhenish thieves, that ye do murder innocent and
unresisting travellers as well as rob them?”</p>
<p>The other answered sulkily, “They you call thieves are not to blame for
that; the fault lies with the law.”</p>
<p>“Gramercy! so 'tis the law's fault that ill men break it?”</p>
<p>“I mean not so; but the law in this land slays an honest man an if he do
but steal. What follows? he would be pitiful, but is discouraged herefrom;
pity gains him no pity, and doubles his peril: an he but cut a purse his
life is forfeit; therefore cutteth he the throat to boot, to save his own
neck: dead men tell no tales. Pray then for the poor soul who by bloody
laws is driven to kill or else be slaughtered; were there less of this
unreasonable gibbeting on the highroad, there should be less enforced
cutting of throats in dark woods, my masters.”</p>
<p>“Fewer words had served,” replied Gerard coldly. “I asked a question, I am
answered,” and suddenly doffing his bonnet—</p>
<p>“'Obsecro Deum omnipotentem, ut, qua cruce jam pendent isti quindecim
latrones fures et homicidae, in ea homicida fur et latro tu pependeris
quam citissime, pro publica salute, in honorem justi Dei cui sit gloria,
in aeternum, Amen.'”</p>
<p>“And so good day.”</p>
<p>The greedy outlaw was satisfied last. “That is Latin,” he muttered, “and
more than I bargained for.” So indeed it was.</p>
<p>And he returned to his business with a mind at ease. The friends pondered
in silence the many events of the last few hours.</p>
<p>At last Gerard said thoughtfully, “That she-bear saved both our lives-by
God's will.”</p>
<p>“Like enough,” replied Denys; “and talking of that, it was lucky we did
not dawdle over our supper.”</p>
<p>“What mean you?”</p>
<p>“I mean they are not all hanged; I saw a refuse of seven or eight as black
as ink around our fire.”</p>
<p>“When? when?”</p>
<p>“Ere we had left it five minutes.”</p>
<p>“Good heavens! and you said not a word.”</p>
<p>“It would but have worried you, and had set our friend a looking back, and
mayhap tempted him to get his skull split. All other danger was over; they
could not see us, we were out of the moonshine, and indeed, just turning a
corner. Ah! there is the sun; and here are the gates of Dusseldorf.
Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!”</p>
<p>“My head! my head!” was all poor Gerard could reply.</p>
<p>So many shocks, emotions, perils, horrors, added to the wound, his first,
had tried his youthful body and sensitive nature too severely.</p>
<p>It was noon of the same day.</p>
<p>In a bedroom of “The Silver Lion” the rugged Denys sat anxious, watching
his young friend.</p>
<p>And he lay raging with fever, delirious at intervals, and one word for
ever on his lips.</p>
<p>“Margaret!—Margaret Margaret!”</p>
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