There was a street lamp on the corner and carriages were lined up along the sidewalk.
Flower girls were selling roses, and coachmen were talking to them.
"He was dragged through the town with a rope round his neck.
Poor man!"
"They've put him in an iron cage.
And the cage is in the Palace of the Three Fat Men," said a fat driver in a light-blue top hat with a ribbon on it.
Just then a fine lady and a little girl came up to buy some roses.
"Who have they put in a cage?" the fine lady asked.
"Prospero the Gunsmith.
The Guards captured him."
"Thank goodness!" she said.
Her daughter began to sniffle.
"Why are you crying, silly?" the fine lady said. "Are you sorry for the gunsmith?
You shouldn't be.
He's a very bad man.
Now, just look at these lovely roses."
There, in bowls that were full of water and leaves, the large roses floated as slowly as swans.
"Take these three.
And stop crying.
They're all rebels.
If you don't put such people in iron cages, they'll take away our houses, our fine clothes and our roses. And then they'll kill us."
A boy ran by.
First, he pulled at the lady's embroidered cape, then he tugged the girl's pigtail.
"Hey, Countess!" he shouted. "Prospero the Gunsmith is locked up in a cage, but Tibul the Acrobat is free!"
"You dreadful boy!"
The lady stamped her foot and dropped her bag.
The flower girls laughed.
A fat coachman lost no time in asking the fine lady if she would care to get in his carriage and drive away.
The fine lady and her daughter drove off.
"Hey, you! Wait a minute!" one of the flower girls shouted to the boy.
"Come back here and tell us what you know."
Two drivers climbed down from their boxes. Shuffling forward in their long coats with five small capes attached to the collars they came up to the flower girls.
"That's some whip!
It sure is a beauty!" the boy thought as he looked at the coachman's long whip.
He would have loved to have one like it, but he knew he never would.
"What did you say?" the coachman asked in a deep voice. "Did you say Tibul the Acrobat is free?"
"So I heard.
I was down at the docks...."
"Didn't the Guards kill him?" the other coachman asked in an equally deep voice.
"No, they didn't.
Pretty miss, will you give me a rose?"
"Wait, stupid!
Tell us what happened."
"Well, it was like this.
At first, everyone thought he'd been killed.
So they looked for him among the dead, but couldn't find him."
"Perhaps they tossed him into the river?" one of the coachmen said.
At that point a beggar joined them.
"Who was tossed into the river?" he asked. "Tibul the Acrobat's not a kitten to be tossed into the river!
He's alive!