The Headsman; A Tale Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: shalt have a choice of husbands, in spite of the axe and the sword that are in thy escutcheon. Let the halberdiers make way for those honest people there, who, at least, are functionaries of the law, and are to be protected as well as ourselves. The crowd obeyed, yielding readily to the ad vance of the officers, and, in a few minutes, the useless attendants of the village nuptials, and the train of Hymen, slunk away, sensible of the ridicule that, in a double degree, attaches itself to folly, when it fails of effecting even its own absurdities. CHAPTER IV. The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor the balm that drops on wounds of woe Prom woman's pitying e'e. Burns. A Large portion of the curious followed the disconcerted mummers from the square, while others hastened to break their fasts at the several places selected for this important feature in the business of the day. Most of those who had been on the estrade now left it, and, in a few minutes, the living carpet of heads around the little area in front of the bailiff was reduced to a few hundreds of those whose better feelings were stronger than their self indulgence. Perhaps this distribution of the multi tude is about in the proportion that is usually found, in those cases in which selfishness draws in one direction, while feeling or sympathy with the wronged pulls in another, among all masses of . human beings that are congregated as spectators E2 of some general and indifferent exhibition of interests in which they have no near personal concern. The bailiff and his immediate friends, the prisoners, and the family of the headsman, with a sufficient number of the guards, were among those who remained. The bustling Peterchen had lost some of his desire to take his place at the ba...