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Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there

were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other

nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful

streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were

other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of

roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery

turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But,

the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and

South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The

altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it,

no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to

calculate successfully.

CHAPTER XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock