Explore "The Broad Highway" by Jeffery Farnol on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That day I passed through several villages, stopping only to eat and drink; thus evening was falling as, having left fair Sevenoaks behind, I came to the brow of a certain hill, a long and very steep descent which (I think) is called the River Hill. And here, rising stark against the evening sky, was a gibbet, and standing beneath it a man, a short, square man in a somewhat shabby coat of a bottle-green, and with a wide-brimmed beaver hat sloped down over his eyes, who stood with his feet well apart, sucking the knob of a stick he carried, while he stared up at that which dangled by a stout chain from the cross-beam of the gibbet, -- something black and shrivelled and horrible that had once been human.
As I came up, the man drew the stick from his mouth and touched the brim of his hat with it in salutation.