"I warn you!" cried the old man. "Stand from out of my path,
you!"

It must have been with the courage of desperation that the
soldier dared to use force. But the hand he stretched out dropped
limply back to his side the moment it touched the old man's bare
shoulder, as though it had been struck by some shock. He seemed
almost to have expected some such repulse; yet when he picked up
that hand with the other, and looked at it, and saw its whiteness,
he let out of him a yell like a wounded beast. "Oh, Gods!" he
cried. "Not that. Spare me!"

But Zaemon was glowering at him still. A twitching seized the
man's face, and he put up his sound hand to it and plucked at his
beard, which was curled and plaited after the new fashion of the
day. A woman standing near screamed as the half of the beard came
off in his fingers. Beneath was silver whiteness over half his
face. Zaemon had smitten him with a sudden leprosy that was past
cure.

Yet the punishment was not ended even then. Other twitchings
took him on other parts of the body, and he tore off his armour and
his foppish clothes, and always where the bare flesh showed, there
had the horrid plague written its white mark; and in the end, being
able to endure no more, the man fell to the pavement and lay there
writhing.

Zaemon said no further word. He lifted the Symbol before him,
set his eyes on the farther door of the banqueting-hall and walked