A tremor of fear ran round the group as they beheld the form of the speaker, the distorted face, the wide mouth, the large rolling eyes, and the deformed figure with the unsightly hump on the shoulders, giving a half-brutal appearance to the stranger, while from lip to lip, ran the whisper—
“The Doomsman, the Doomsman!”
“Aye, aye, the Doomsman! And why not pray? Dare not the Doomsman laugh? Ha, ha, ha! What a fine neck thou hast for the axe, good youth; or now that I think o’t it would stretch a rope passing well. ’Tis a fine day, good folk, and I’m hastening to the Cathedral, to behold the crowning of one of my children, that is Children of the Axe.”
“Thy children?” echoed Francisco, aghast with fear. “Can a shadow like thee, have children?”
“Children o’ th’ axe, boy. I’ faith if all the world had their own, I’d have thy neck—a merry jest, nothing more boy, ho, ho, ho! Do’st see these fingers.”
“Vulture’s talons rather!”
“These, these were round his royal throat, while the lead, the seething lead waited for his princely body, and the wheel of torture was arrayed for his lordly repose. Ha, ha, ha! I would see him crowned, by the fiend would I! But come boy, thou knowest somewhat of city gossip, tell me, does this Sir Geoffrey O’ Th’ Longsword, stabbed by his own son, a good boy, he, he, he, does he yet live?”
“Have not prayers been offered in all the Cathedrals for the miracle?”
“The miracle? Enlighten me, good youth!”
“Hast thou not heard, how the force of the blow was swayed aside, by a piece of the true wood o’ th’ cross, which the old soldier had worn over his heart for years? A miracle, old shadow, a miracle!”