“Rope, sir? There is none for miles around, I am sure. Let you and I …”

“No rope, Fairy!” jeered Vinculus.

But something was happening in the air above them. The lines of sleet and snow were somehow twisting together. They snaked across the sky towards Stephen. Without warning a length of strong rope fell into his hand.

“There!” cried the gentleman, triumphantly. “Stephen, look! Here is a tree! One tree in all this desolate waste, exactly where we need it! But England has always been my friend. She has always served me well. Throw the rope over a branch and let us hang this rogue!”

Stephen hesitated, uncertain for the moment how to prevent this new disaster. The rope in his hand seemed to grow impatient with him; it jumped away and divided itself neatly into two lengths. One snaked across the ground to Vinculus and trussed him tight and the other quickly formed itself into a well-made noose and hung itself neatly over a branch.

The gentleman was in high glee, his spirits quite restored at the prospect of a hanging. “Do you dance, rogue?” he asked Vinculus. “I shall teach you some new steps!”

Everything took on the character of a nightmare. Events happened quickly and seamlessly, and Stephen never found the right moment to intervene or the right words to say. As for Vinculus himself, he behaved very oddly throughout his entire execution. He never appeared to understand what was happening to him. He said not another word, but he did make several exclamations of exasperation as if he was being put to some serious inconvenience and it was putting him out of temper.

Without any appearance of exertion the gentleman took hold of Vinculus and placed him beneath the noose. The noose draped itself about his neck and hoisted him abruptly into the air; at the same time the other rope unwound itself from his body and folded itself neatly on the ground.

Vinculus kicked his feet uselessly in the empty air; his body jerked and spun. For all his boast of being hard to kill, his neck broke very easily – the snapping sound could be clearly heard on the empty moor. A jerk or two more and he was finished.

Stephen – forgetting that he had determined to hate all Englishmen – covered his face with his hands and wept.

The gentleman danced round and sang to himself, as a child will when something has pleased it particularly; and when he was done he said in a conversational tone, “Well, that was disappointing! He did not struggle at all. I wonder who he was?”

“I told you, sir,” said Stephen, wiping his eyes. “He is the man who told me that prophecy. He has a strange disfiguration upon his body. Like writing.”