No curious followers were allowed.  In all times the police have had a taste for arrests of the kind.  This description of seizure was termed sequestration of the person.

The wapentake turned round in one motion, like a piece of mechanism revolving on its own pivot, and with grave and magisterial step proceeded towards the door of the Green Box.

Gwynplaine looked at Ursus.  The latter went through a pantomime composed as follows:  he shrugged his shoulders, placed both elbows close to his hips, with his hands out, and knitted his brows into chevrons—­all which signifies, “We must submit to the unknown.”

Gwynplaine looked at Dea.  She was in her dream.  She was still smiling.  He put the ends of his fingers to his lips, and sent her an unutterable kiss.

Ursus, relieved of some portion of his terror now that the wapentake’s back was turned, seized the moment to whisper in Gwynplaine’s ear,—­

“On your life, do not speak until you are questioned.”

Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he would have taken in a sickroom, took his hat and cloak from the hook on the partition, wrapped himself up to the eyes in the cloak, and pushed his hat over his forehead.  Not having been to bed, he had his working clothes still on, and his leather esclavin round his neck.  Once more he looked at Dea.  Having reached the door, the wapentake raised his staff and began to descend the steps; then Gwynplaine set out as if the man was dragging him by an invisible chain.  Ursus watched Gwynplaine leave the Green Box.  At that moment the wolf gave a low growl; but Ursus silenced him, and whispered, “He is coming back.”

In the yard, Master Nicless was stemming, with servile and imperious gestures, the cries of terror raised by Vinos and Fibi, as in great distress they watched Gwynplaine led away, and the mourning-coloured garb and the iron staff of the wapentake.

The two girls were like petrifactions:  they were in the attitude of stalactites.  Govicum, stunned, was looking open-mouthed out of a window.

The wapentake preceded Gwynplaine by a few steps, never turning round or looking at him, in that icy ease which is given by the knowledge that one is the law.

In death-like silence they both crossed the yard, went through the dark taproom, and reached the street.  A few passers-by had collected about the inn door, and the justice of the quorum was there at the head of a squad of police.  The idlers, stupefied, and without breathing a word, opened out and stood aside, with English discipline, at the sight of the constable’s staff.  The wapentake moved off in the direction of the narrow street then called the Little Strand, running by the Thames; and Gwynplaine, with the justice of the quorum’s men in ranks on each side, like a double hedge, pale, without a motion except that of his steps, wrapped in his cloak as in a shroud, was leaving the inn farther and farther behind him as he followed the silent man, like a statue following a spectre.