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Speaker 1: The Highwayman by Lord Duncanet. Tom O the Roads had

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ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the night.

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From where he was, a man might see the white

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recumbent sheep, and the black outline of the lonely downs,

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and the gray line of the further and lonelier downs

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beyond them, Or in the hollows far below him, out

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of the pitiless wind, he might see the gray smoke

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of hamlets arising from black valleys. But all alike were

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black to the eyes of tom and all the sounds

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were silence in his ears. Only his soul struggled to

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slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into paradise,

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and the wind blue and blue. For Tom tonight had

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not but the wind to ride. They had taken his

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true black horse on the day when they took from

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him the green fields and the sky men's voices and

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the laughter of women, and had left him alone with

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chains around his neck to swing in the wind forever.

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And the wind blew and bleww. But the soul of

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tom O the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains,

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and whenever it struggled to escape, it was beaten backwards

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into the iron collar. By the wind that blows from

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Paradise from the south, and swinging there by the neck.

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There fell away old sneers from off his lips, and

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scoffed that he had long since scoffed at God, fell

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from his tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out

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of his heart, and from his fingers the stains of

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deeds that were evil, and they all fell to the

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ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And

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when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul

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was clean again, as his early love had found it

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a long while since in spring. And it swung up

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in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with

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his old torn coat and rusty chains, and the wind

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blue and blue and ever and anon the souls of

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the sepulcherd came from consecrated acres, would go by beating

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up the wind to Paradise, past the gallows tree, and

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past the soul of Tom that might not go free.

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Night after night, Tom watched the sheep upon the downs

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with empty hollow sockets, until his dead hair grew and

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covered his poor face and hid the shame of it

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from the sheep. And the wind blue and blue. Sometimes

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on gusts of the wind came someone's tears, and beat

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and beat against the iron chains, but could not rust

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them through, And the wind blew and blue, and every

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evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came

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flocking in from doing their work in the world, the

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work that might not cease, and sat along the gallows

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branches and shirruped to the soul of Tom, the soul

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that might not go free. All the thoughts that he

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had ever uttered, and the evil thoughts rebuked the soul

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that bore them because they might not die. And all

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those that he had uttered the most furtively chirruped the

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loudest and the shrillest in the branches all the night,

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And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about

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himself now pointed at the wet bones and mocked the

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old torn coat. But the thoughts that he had thought

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of others were the only companions that his soul had

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to soothe it in the night as it swam to

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and fro. And they twittered to the soul and cheered

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the poor dumb thing that could have dreams no more

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till there came a murderous thought and drove them all away,

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and the wind blew and blew. Paul, Archbishop of Alloy

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and Vallennes, lay in his white sepulcher of marble, facing

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full to the southward toward Paradise, and over his tomb

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was sculpted the Cross of Christ, that his soul might

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have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in

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the lonely tree tops up upon the downs, but came

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with gentle breezes orchards scented over the lowlands from Paradise

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from the southwards, and played about forget me nots and

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grasses in the consecrated land where lay the poseful round

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the sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Vayense. Easy

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it was for a man's soul to pass from such

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a sepulcher, and, flitting low over remembered fields, to come

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upon the garden lands of Paradise and find eternal ease,

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and the wind blew and blue. In a tavern of

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foul repute, three men were lapping gin. Their names were

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Joe and Will, and the gipsy PUGLIONI. None other names

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had they for of whom their fathers were. They had

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no knowledge, but only dark suspicions. Sin had caressed and

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stroked their faces, often with its paw, but the face

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of Puglioni, Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin.

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Their food was robbery, and their pastime murder. All of

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them had incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity

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of man. They sat at a table with a pack

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of cards before them, all greasy with marks of cheating thumbs,

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and they whispered to one another over their gin, but

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so low that the landlord of the tavern at the

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other end of the room could only hear muffled oaths,

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and knew not by whom they swore or what they said.

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These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had

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given unto a man, and he to whom their friendship

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had been given, had nothing else besides save some bones

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that swung in the wind and rain, and an old

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torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might

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not go free. But as the night wore on, the

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three friends left their gin and stole away and crept

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down to the graveyard, where rested in his sepulcher, Paul,

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Archbishop of Alloy and Venet at the edge of the graveyard,

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But outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave,

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two digging while one watched in the wind and rain,

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and the worms that crept in the unhallowed ground wondered

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and waited. And the terrible hour of midnight came upon

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them with his fears, and found them still beside the

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place of tombs. And the three friends trembled at the

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horror of such an hour in such a place, and

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shivered in the wind and drenching rain, and still worked on,

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and the wind blew and blew. Soon they had finished,

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and at once they left the hungry grave, with all

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its worms unfed, and went over to the wet fields,

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stealthily but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind

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them in the midnight. And as they went they shivered,

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each man as he shivered, cursing the rain aloud. And

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so they came to the spot where they had hidden

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a ladder and a lantern. There they held a long

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debate whether they should light the lantern or whether they

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should go without it for fear of the king's men.

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But in the end it seemed to them better that

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they should have the light of their lantern and risk

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being taken by the King's men, and hanged then that

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they should come suddenly face to face in the darkness

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with whatever one might come face to face with a

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little after midnight about the Gallows Tree on three roads

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in England, whereupon it was not the wont of folks

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to go their ways in safety. Travelers tonight went unmolested.

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But the three friends walked several paces wide of the

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King's Highway approaching the Gallows Tree. And Will carried the lamp,

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and Joe the latter, but Puglioni carried a great sword,

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wherewith to do the work that must be done. When

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they came close, they saw how bad was the case

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with Tom, for little remained of the fine figure of

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a man, and nothing at all of his great, resolute spirit.

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Only as they came they thought they heard a whimpering cry,

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like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree.

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To and fro to and fro in the winds swung

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the bones and soul of Tom for the sins that

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he had sinned on the King's Highway against the laws

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of the King. And with shadows and a lantern through

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the darkness, at the peril of their lives, came the

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three friends that his soul had won before it swung

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in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom's own soul that

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he had sown all his life had grown into a

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gallows tree that bore in season iron chains in clusters,

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while the careless seeds that he had strewn here and

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there a kindly jest and a few merry words had

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grown into a triple friendship that would not desert his bones.

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Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and

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Puglione went up with his sword in his right hand,

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and at the top of it he reached up and

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began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently,

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the bones and the old coat and the soul of

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Tom fell down with a rattle, and a moment afterwards

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his head, which had washed so long alone, swung clear

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from the swinging chain. These things, Will and Joe gathered up,

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and Puglione came running down his ladder, and they heaped

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upon its rungs the terrible remains of their friend, and

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hastened away, wet with the rain, with the fear of

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phantoms in their heart, and horror lying before them on

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the ladder. By two o'clock they were down again in

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the valley out of the bitter wind. But they went

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on past the open grave into the graveyard, all among

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the tombs, and with their lantern and their ladder, and

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the terrible thing upon it which kept their friendship still.

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Then these three that had robbed the law of its

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due and proper victim, still sinned on for what was

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still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs from

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the sacred sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Aloi and the yuns.

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And from it they took the very bones of the

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archbishop himself and carried them away to the eager grave

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that they had left, and put them in and shoveled

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back the earth. But all that lay on the ladder

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they placed, with a few tears, within the great white

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sepulcher under the cross of Christ, and put back the

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marble slabs. Thence the soul of tom A, rising hallowed

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out of the sacred ground, went at dawn down the valley, and,

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lingering a little about his mother's cottage and old haunts

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of childhood, passed on and came to the wide lands

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beyond the clustered homesteads. There there met with all the

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kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had,

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and they flew and sang beside it all the way southward,

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until at last, with singing all about it, it came

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to paradise. But Will and Joe and the gipsy Paglione

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went back to their gin, and robbed and cheated again

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in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not that

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in their sinful lives they had sinned, one sin at

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which the angels smiled. The end of the Highwayman by

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Lord Dunsanet