The comrades hurried onwards eagerly, and topping the brow of a small rising they saw upon the other side the source from which these strange noises arose.
A tall man, much stooped in the shoulders, was walking slowly with bended head and clasped hands in the centre of the path.

He was dressed from head to foot in a long white linen cloth, and a high white cap with a red cross printed upon it.

His gown was turned back from his shoulders, and the flesh there was a sight to make a man wince, for it was all beaten to a pulp, and the blood was soaking into his gown and trickling down upon the ground.

Behind him walked a smaller man with his hair touched with gray, who was clad in the same white garb.

He intoned a long whining rhyme in the French tongue, and at the end of every line he raised a thick cord, all jagged with pellets of lead, and smote his companion across the shoulders until the blood spurted again.