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"Och, will ye wait for the hangman's rope?" in a fierce whisper below his breath. "There's a hidie-hole I ken, but little good it'll dae ye when the hitch is on your thrapple." And we started the long race to the hills, picking out the patches behind the dykes where the ground was bare. Lag 'a bheithe=the hollow of the birch.
"Like snakes the molten metal hisses, Curses come instead of kisses." She plunged her hand into the water "I search a harp for harmony, But daggers only do I see; I search a heart for love and hope, But find a ghastly hangman's rope. Woe! Woe!" Three times round the pail she went, moaning, groaning, writhing her body, and wringing her hands "Woe! Woe!
"Then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. You'll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an' that's what a woman does. By the same tokin, we'll be attacked before the dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason.
They had lived in affectionate unity, inspired by the same motives, labouring for the same cause, and death did not dissolve the tie. "They died hand in hand, like true brothers." When the hangman's hideous office was completed, the bodies were taken down, and the executioner, in accordance with the barbarous custom of the time, proceeded to sever the heads from the bodies.
"Hand me that rope!" the Villicus ordered a teamster. He knotted a hangman's noose at one end of the rope, tried it to make sure it worked properly and ordered the estate slaves to hang the body to a convenient limb of a near by tree. They did. I stood, gazing questioningly, first at the swinging corpse, then at the Villicus. "Felix," said he, "I perceive that you do not understand.
Exactly as if these blood-hounds were tragic actors of which one could best produce his effects by fire and pathos, and the other by the subtlety of his conception. I call that an unprejudiced judgment. And why should not a man be great even as a murderer? From what hangman's noose did you drag out the neck of one, and from what headsman's block did you rescue the other when you found them?
We stared at Talbot fascinated. And then for the first time we learned that the five thousand dollars we had sent down from Hangman's Gulch, and the sum left from the robbery, was not slumbering in some banker's safe, but had been sent dancing with the other dollars at Talbot's command.
I was not unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted an astral lamp that stood on a table. He pointed to a portrait hanging against the wall. Look at her, he said, look at her! Wasn't that a pretty neck to slip a hangman's noose over? The portrait was of a young woman, something more than twenty years old, perhaps.
"Yes," said he, pacing the apartment with folded arms, "yes, all is safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps now without a witness. I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman's gripe. Back to thyself, henceforth and forever, my busy heart! Let not thy secret stir from its gloomy depth!
Might not a shudder come over the souls of men as coming events vaguely shaped themselves to prophetic eyes? Meantime there was religious peace in Hungary, in Austria, in Bohemia, in France, in Great Britain, in the Netherlands. The hangman's hands were for a period at rest, so far as theology had need of them. Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended throughout Christendom.
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