Ursus, who had heard some one enter and raised his head without loosing his hold of Homo, recognized the terrible personage.  He shook from head to foot, and whispered to Gwynplaine,—­

“It’s the wapentake.”

Gwynplaine recollected.  An exclamation of surprise was about to escape him, but he restrained it.  The iron staff, with the crown at each end, was called the iron weapon.  It was from this iron weapon, upon which the city officers of justice took the oath when they entered on their duties, that the old wapentakes of the English police derived their qualification.

Behind the man in the wig, the frightened landlord could just be perceived in the shadow.

Without saying a word, a personification of the Muta Themis of the old charters, the man stretched his right arm over the radiant Dea, and touched Gwynplaine on the shoulder with the iron staff, at the same time pointing with his left thumb to the door of the Green Box behind him.  These gestures, all the more imperious for their silence, meant, “Follow me.”

Pro signo exeundi, sursum trahe, says the old Norman record.

He who was touched by the iron weapon had no right but the right of obedience.  To that mute order there was no reply.  The harsh penalties of the English law threatened the refractory.  Gwynplaine felt a shock under the rigid touch of the law; then he sat as though petrified.

If, instead of having been merely grazed on the shoulder, he had been struck a violent blow on the head with the iron staff, he could not have been more stunned.  He knew that the police-officer summoned him to follow; but why? That he could not understand.

On his part Ursus, too, was thrown into the most painful agitation, but he saw through matters pretty distinctly.  His thoughts ran on the jugglers and preachers, his competitors, on informations laid against the Green Box, on that delinquent the wolf, on his own affair with the three Bishopsgate commissioners, and who knows?—­perhaps—­but that would be too fearful—­Gwynplaine’s unbecoming and factious speeches touching the royal authority.

He trembled violently.

Dea was smiling.

Neither Gwynplaine nor Ursus pronounced a word.  They had both the same thought—­not to frighten Dea.  It may have struck the wolf as well, for he ceased growling.  True, Ursus did not loose him.

Homo, however, was a prudent wolf when occasion required.  Who is there who has not remarked a kind of intelligent anxiety in animals?  It may be that to the extent to which a wolf can understand mankind he felt that he was an outlaw.

Gwynplaine rose.

Resistance was impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew.  He remembered Ursus’s words, and there was no question possible.  He remained standing in front of the wapentake.  The latter raised the iron staff from Gwynplaine’s shoulder, and drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude of command—­a constable’s attitude which was well understood in those days by the whole people, and which expressed the following order:  “Let this man, and no other, follow me.  The rest remain where they are.  Silence!”