Which Will You, Madame

It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun
rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle.
The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its
retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to
sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the
causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the
gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it
through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at
Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a
nightmare. But rub as he might, and stare as he might, the ugly outlines
of the thing he had seen persisted--nay, grew sharper as the haze began
to lift from the grey, slow-heaving floor of sea. He called another man
and bade him look.

"What is it?" he said. "D'you see, there? Below the village?"

"'Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had watched
all night. "God keep us from it."

"A gibbet?"

"Ay!"

"But what is it for? What is it doing there?"

"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man answered,
stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared at it and
growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten on the roof
of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by-
and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white
flag in his hand.