Thinking that his wife was speaking to him, Travers held forth the bacon.
"Sister," said he, "God is yet above the Devil. You see we have again our own."
Then he, who never thought to lay hands upon the meat, seized upon it greedily.
"Do not wait for me, husband, but get to bed as quickly as you can, for now you may sleep without any fear."
So Travers returned to his own house, and Barat hastened to his brother, bearing the bacon with him.
When Travers found his wife in tears—
"Certes, Mary," said he, "all this has come upon us by reason of our sins. I thought to charge your shoulders with our bacon in the garden, but now I know well that these rogues have bestowed it upon theirs. Heavens, I wonder where he learned to play the part of a woman so bravely in manner and in speech! Hard is the lesson I am set to learn in school, because of a flitch of bacon. But, please God, I will find them this night, yea, though I walk till I have no sole to my shoe, and supplant them yet."
Travers took the path leading to the wood, and entering in the coppice, saw the red blaze of a fire which these two thieves had litten. He heard their voices lifted in dispute, so he concealed himself behind an oak, and listened to their words. At the end Barat and Haimet agreed that it were better to eat the bacon forthwith, lest a new cast of the dice should go against them. Whilst they went to seek dry cones and brushwood for the fire, Travers crept privily to the oak beneath which it was burning. But the wood was damp and green, so that more smoke and smother came from that fire than flame. Then Travers climbed into the tree, and by the aid of bough and branch came at last to the place where he would be. The two thieves returned presently with cones and brambles. These they threw upon the fire in handfuls, saying that very soon it would grill their bacon, and Travers hearkened to their speech. He had stripped himself to his shirt, and hung from a limb of the oak by his arm. Now, in a while, Haimet lifted his eyes to the tree, and saw above him the hanged man, tall, grotesque and horrible to see, naked in his very shirt.
"Barat," whispered he, "our father is spying upon us. Behold him hanging from this branch in a very hideous fashion. Surely it is he come back to us, is it not?"