did but curse the more. So there crouched I 'gainst the tree,
shivering like the miserable wretch I was and consumed with a
ravening hunger. At last, becoming aware that I yet grasped a
weapon in either hand, I thrust my knife in my girdle and fell to
handling this other, judging it by touch since it was yet too
dark for eyes to serve me. And by its feel I knew it for no
honest knife; here was a thing wrought by foreign hands, a haft
cunningly shaped and wrought, a blade curiously slender and long
and three-edged, a very deadly thing I judged by the feel. Now
since it had no sheath (and it so sharp) I twisted my neckerchief
about it from pommel to needle-point, and thrusting it into the
leathern wallet at my belt, went on some way further 'mid the
trees, seeking some place where I might be sheltered from the
cold wind. Then, all at once, I heard that which brought me to a
stand.

A man was singing and at no great distance, a strange, merry air
and stranger words; and the voice was loud, yet tuneful and
mellow, and the words (the which I came to know all too well)
were these:

"Cheerly O and cheerly O,
Right cheerly I'll sing O,
Whiles at the mainyard to and fro
We watch a dead man swing O.
With a rumbelow and to and fro
He by the neck doth swing O!

One by the knife did part wi' life
And three the bullet took O,