"And now, good people, here's a word of advice to you, before I go my last ride, a pillion to my old friend Endymion Leer. Never you make a pet of a dead man. For the dead are dirty curs and bite the hand that has fed them"; and with an evil smile she climbed down from the pulpit, while more than one person in the audience felt faint with horror and would willingly have left the hall.
There was nothing left but for Master Polydore to pronounce the sentence; and though the accused had stolen some of his thunder, nevertheless the solemn time-honoured words did not fail to produce their wonted thrilclass="underline"
"Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, I find you guilty of murder, and I consign your bodies to the birds, and your souls to whence they came. And may all here present take example from your fate, correcting their conduct if it needs correction, or, if it be impeccable, keeping it so. For every tree can be a gallows, and every man has a neck to hang."
The widow received her sentence with complete stolidity; Endymion Leer with a scornful smile. But as it was pronounced there was a stir and confusion at the back of the hall, and a grotesque frenzied figure broke loose from the detaining grip of her neighbours, and, struggling up to the dais, flung herself at the feet of Master Polydore. It was Miss Primrose Crabapple.
"Your Worship! Your Worship!" she cried, shrilly, "Hang me instead of him! My life for his! Was it not I who gave your daughters fairy fruit, with my eyes open! And I glory in the knowledge that I was made a humble instrument of the same master whom he has served so well. Dear Master Polydore, have mercy on your country, spare your country's benefactor, and if the law must have a victim let it be me - a foolish useless woman, whose only merit was that she believed in loveliness though she had never seen it."
Weeping and struggling, her face twisted into a grotesque tragic mask, they dragged her from the hall, amid the laughter and ironical cheers of the public.
That afternoon Mumchance came to Master Polydore to inform him that a young maid-servant from the Academy had just been to the guard-room to say that Miss Primrose Crabapple had killed herself.
Master Polydore at once hurried off to the scene of the tragedy, and there in the pleasant old garden where so many generations of Crabapple Blossoms had romped, and giggled, and exchanged their naughty little secrets, he found Miss Primrose, hanging stone-dead from one of her own apple-trees.
"Well, as the old song has it, Mumchance" said Master Polydore - "`Here hangs a maid who died for love.'"
Master Polydore was noted for his dry humour.
A gibbet had been set up in the great court of the Guildhall, and the next day, at dawn, Endymion Leer and the widow Gibberty were hanged by the neck till they died.
Rumour said that as the Doctor's face was contorted in its last grimace strange silvery peals of laughter were heard proceeding from the room where long ago Duke Aubrey's jester had killed himself.
Chapter XXVII
The Fair in the Elfin Marches
About two hours after he had set out from the farm, Master Nathaniel reached a snug little hollow at the foot of the hills, chosen for their camp by the consignment of the Lud Yeomanry stationed, by his own orders, at the foot of the Debatable Hills.
"Halt!" cried the sentry. And then he dropped his musket in amazement. "Well, I'm blessed if it ain't his Worship!" he cried. Some six or seven of his mates, who were lounging about the camp, some playing cards, some lying on their backs and staring up at the sky, came hurrying up at the sound of the challenge, and, speechless with astonishment, they stared at Master Nathaniel.
"I have come to look for my son," he said. "I have been told that er he came this way some two or three nights ago. If so, you must have seen him."
The Yeomen shook their heads. "No, your Worship, we've seen no little boy. In fact, all the weeks we've been here we've not seen a living soul. And if there are any folks about they must be as swift as swallows and as silent-footed as cats, and as hard to see - well, as the dead themselves. No, your Worship, little Master Chanticleer has not passed this way."
Master Nathaniel sighed wearily. "I had a feeling that you would not have seen him," he said; adding dreamily more to himself than to them: "Who knows? He may have gone by the Milky Way."
And then it struck him that this was probably the last normal encounter he would ever have with ordinary human beings, and he smiled at them wistfully.
"Well, well," he said, "you're having a pleasant holiday, I expect nothing to do and plenty to eat and drink, eh? Here's a couple of crowns for you. Send to one of the farms for a pigskin of red wine and drink my health and my son's. I'm off on what may prove a very long journey; I suppose this bridle-path will be as good a route as any?"
They stared at him in amazement.
"Please, your Worship, if you'll excuse me mentioning it, you must be making a mistake," said the sentry, in a shocked voice. "All the bridle-paths about here lead to nowhere but the Elfin Marches and beyond."
"It is for beyond that I am bound," answered Master Nathaniel curtly. And digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, he dashed past the horrified Yeomen, and up one of the bridle-paths, as if he would take the Debatable Hills by storm.
For a few seconds they stood staring at one another, with scared, astonished eyes. Then the sentry gave a low whistle.
"He must be powerful fond of that little chap," he said.
"If the little chap really slipped past without our seeing him, that will be the third Chanticleer to cross the hills. First there was the little missy at the Academy, then the young chap, then the Mayor."
"Aye, but they didn't do it on an empty stomach -leastways, we know the Crabapple Blossoms didn't, and if the talk in Lud be true, the little chap had had a taste too of what he oughtn't," said another. "But it's another story to go when you're in your right mind. Doctor Leer can't have been in the right when he said all them Magistrates were played out, for it's the bravest thing has ever been done in Dorimare."
Master Nathaniel, for how long he could not have said, went riding up and up the bridle-path that wound in and out among the foothills, which gradually grew higher and higher. Not a living creature did he meet with - not a goat, not so much as a bird. He began to feel curiously drowsy, as if he were riding in a dream.
Suddenly his consciousness seemed to have gone out of gear, to have missed one of the notches in time or space, for he found himself riding along a high-road, in the midst of a crowd of peasants in holiday attire. Nor did this surprise him - his passive uncritical mood was impervious to surprise.
And yet what were these people with whom he had mingled? And ordinary troop of holiday-making peasants? At first sight, so they seemed. There were pretty girls, with sunny hair escaping from under red and blue handkerchiefs, and rustic dandies cross-gartered with gay ribands, and old women with quiet, nobly-lined faces - a village community bound for some fair or merry-making.