"Ayegive us but swords, and one to lead, and we will follow!" Quoth Beltane: "Go you then to Sir Benedict within Bourne and say to all men that Beltane the Duke hath this night burned down Black Ivo's shameful gibbet, for a sign that he is come at last and is at work, nor will he stay until he die, or Pentavalon be free!"

Dismissing the nautical hypothesis, your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright.

Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be.

One can easily imagine the strange and melancholy aspect of this monumental gibbet if one thinks of the number of corpses continually attached to it, and which were feasted upon by thousands of crows.

For several centuries, and down to the Revolution, hanging was the most common mode of execution in France; consequently, in every town, and almost in every village, there was a permanent gibbet, which, owing to the custom of leaving the bodies to hang till they crumbled into dust, was very rarely without having some corpses or skeletons attached to it.

Then, with a most undaunted courage, he went up to the top of that prodigious gibbet.

As I went past the great four-square gibbet which had made an end of Ritterdom in Plassenburg, I noted that there was a gathering of the hooded folkthe carrion crows.

Several of the rioters (if they should not rather be described as conspirators) endeavoured to remove the stone which filled up the socket in which the end of the fatal tree was sunk when it was erected for its fatal purpose; others sought for the means of constructing a temporary gibbet, the place in which the gallows itself was deposited being reported too secure to be forced, without much loss of time.

To get rid of them, the Cardinal of Lorraine had a proclamation issued by the king, warning all persons, of whatever condition, who had come to dun for payment of debts, for compensations, or for graces, to take themselves off within twenty-four hours on pain of being hanged; and, that it might appear how seriously meant the threat was, a very conspicuous gibbet was erected at Fontainebleau close to the palace.

"If the rogue is so desperate," returned the youth straightening his powerful limbs, with a look of rising pride, "why do not the Island and the Plantations fit out a coaster in order to bring him in, that he might get a sight of a wholesome gibbet?