forms wanted the round and supple grace of early years. Living
principally in the open air, trained from infancy to feats of
activity, their muscles were sharp and prominent, their aspects had
something of masculine audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in
them more loathsome than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice
had set its ineffable, unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had
sprung the tears of compassion or woman's gentle sorrow; on those
brows never had flushed the glow of modest shame: their very voices
half belied their sex,--harsh and deep and hoarse, their laughter loud
and dissonant. Some amongst them were not destitute of a certain
beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a common hideousness of
expression,--an expression at once cunning, bold, callous, licentious.
Womanless through the worst vices of woman, passionless through the
premature waste of passion, they stood between the sexes like foul and
monstrous anomalies, made up and fashioned from the rank depravities
of both. These creatures seemed to have newly arrived from some long
wayfaring; their shoes and the hems of their robes were covered with
dust and mire; their faces were heated, and the veins in their bare,
sinewy, sunburned arms were swollen by fatigue. Each had beside her
on the floor a timbrel, each wore at her girdle a long knife in its
sheath: well that the sheaths hid the blades, for not one--not even
that which yon cold-eyed child of fifteen wore--but had on its steel
the dark stain of human blood!

The presence of soldiers fresh from the scene of action had naturally
brought into the hostelry several of the idle gossips of the suburb,
and these stood round the table, drinking into their large ears the
boasting narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the
revellers, but evidently listening with attention to all the news of
the hour, sat a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap,