“What, miserable scamp!” shrieked the old women; “is that the way you forget us? And yet we love such good-for-nothings!”
The young girls still kept silence. Some of them even thought—greatly against their will, of course—that this graceless fellow was very good-looking.
“Oh, ho!” said the soldier; “has the witches’ Sabbath come round again? Beelzebub’s punishment is frightful indeed if he be condemned to hear such choruses once a week!”
No one can say how this fresh squall would have ended, if general attention had not at this moment been utterly absorbed by a noise from without. The uproar increased steadily, and presently a swarm of little ragged boys entered the Spladgest, tumultuously shouting and crowding about a covered bier carried by two men.
“Where does that come from?” the keeper asked the bearers.
“From Urchtal Sands.”
“Oglypiglap!” shouted Spiagudry.
One of the side doors opened, a little man of Lappish race, dressed in leather, entered, and signed to the bearers to follow him. Spiagudry accompanied them, and the door closed before the curious crowd had time to guess, by the length of the body on the bier, whether it were a man or a woman.
This subject still occupied all their thoughts, when Spiagudry and his assistant reappeared in the second compartment, carrying the corpse of a man, which they placed upon one of the granite couches.
“It’s a long time since I’ve handled such handsome clothes,” said Oglypiglap; then, shaking his head and standing on tiptoe, he hung above the dead man the elegant uniform of a captain in the army. The corpse’s head was disfigured, and his limbs were covered with blood; the keeper sprinkled the body several times from an old broken pail.