upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her
old gray head--cursing them! why an' thou should'st live a thousand years
thoud'st never hear so masterful a cursing. Alack, her art died with
her. There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy."

The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general
depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts
like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a
fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under
peculiarly favouring circumstances--as in cases like to this, for
instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir. However, a
deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners.

"Have any others of our friends fared hardly?" asked Hobbs.

"Some--yes. Particularly new comers--such as small husbandmen turned
shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from
them to be changed to sheep ranges. They begged, and were whipped at the
cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in
the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and
deprived of an ear; they begged a third time--poor devils, what else
could they do?--and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then
sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged. 'Tis a
brief tale, and quickly told. Others of us have fared less hardly. Stand
forth, Yokel, Burns, and Hodge--show your adornments!"

These stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their
backs, criss-crossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up
his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another
showed a brand upon his shoulder--the letter V--and a mutilated ear; the