was speaking again.
'Now, young master, you merit an explanation. It's all very simple. My good friend Jack here and I are in commerce together. Every time he goes out at night and takes up in his public some likely one of the gentry—an old person, a sick person, or this time a very young person, sir—he gives him that opiate of his and brings him to me. Then we send to the person's family and we ask for quite a small sum, maybe twenty pounds, maybe more, in return for the person's being set free unharmed. We hold to our word. If the money comes, well and good. If it doesn't, the person is harmed and set free, but that's rare indeed, rare indeed. Isn't it very simple, sir?'
'Too much so.' Hubert tried to maintain his air of superiority. 'How simple is it when the constables come looking?'
'About the same, yes. The constables in these parts, we see to it that they like us a great deal, so they don't look too closely. If the person himself and his family come looking, they never find this place: do you know just where you are, sir?—no.
And if they did find it, we wouldn't be here. Everybody in these parts likes us a great deal, you see. And so on and so forth. It's all simple. Now, I'm sure your father will have the wit to pay the money as soon as he can. And don't think to scream or call for help now, young master. Some folk might hear you, but they won't come to Jacob's house for that, and if you continue, then I'll hurt you, I'm afraid.'
'But you don't know who my father is or where he lives.'
'No no, sir, but you'll tell me when I ask you.'
'You will that, no error,' said Jack, draining his mug and refilling it. He went on genially, 'No more nor two ways it can happen—he asks you the once and you tells him quick, or he asks you and asks you and asks you till you tell him. M'm, simple it is indeed. There's that iron in the fire there. You wouldn't much care to—'
Jacob raised his hand in a solemn gesture like a priest's. 'Enough, Jack. Leave your drink and take that public of yours to the garage. It's in the way, you see. The constables don't like that. Go, my boy.'
Hurriedly again, Jack reached over his chair and. put his mug down on the cupboard, then went out of the room by the further door. To his great surprise, Hubert at once felt a faint but unmistakable sense of affinity with Jacob, a much reduced version of what he would have felt when Mark left him alone with Thomas, a sense that the time had come for any confidences or confessions. Perhaps Jacob felt the same: at any rate, his glance now was directly questioning. Hubert began at the one obvious point.
'Don't you wonder that I dress like a child of the people?'
'It's no interest of mine, young master.'
'Attend, Jacob, I'm a runaway from—my school and from the priests. From my father too. If you send me back to him he'll punish me severely and hand me over to the priests and they'll punish me more and lock me up.'
'Eh, eh, what have you done?'
'Been disobedient and now run away. A sin and a crime. I'm at risk of infants' purification. Please keep me here. I'll work for you.'
'Such a pity. Sinner and criminal. Disfavoured by both Church and State. Such a pity.'
Jacob's stoop-shouldered figure moved slowly up the room in the direction of the little window. Under this and along the adjacent half-wall there ran (Hubert noticed for the first time) a narrow ledge on which lay a row of small objects. Some of them-a painted paper fan, a balance and set of weights, some finger-rings and necklaces, a china doll, a silver stylus-holder—were easy enough to identify; others were not, or were containers with no certain contents. Jacob touched or momentarily picked up each one, muttering gently to himself or to them, or both, like a man on some rural task, a farmhand feeding hens, a shepherd greeting as well as numbering his flock. Hubert sank back on the day-bed: nothing painful or frightening or of any importance could happen until Jack returned.
Whatever Jacob had been doing came to an end. He turned aside to a battered press of unvarnished wood and took from it a small box, from which in turn he took a rough russet-coloured cylinder five or six inches long. Putting one end of this in his mouth, he struck a phosphorus and held it to the other. When a thin cloud of greyish smoke appeared, one of the unfamiliar smells in the room was explained. Hubert felt a mild instinctive disgust: tobacco-smoking was the practice of New Englanders and other low persons. A gentleman would as soon think of indulging in it as of eating with his fingers or appearing drunk at Mass; a thought to keep to oneself.
Puffing smoke with signs of satisfaction, Jacob walked back, stood above Hubert and gazed down at him. After a pause, he drew his shawl away from his left sleeve, revealing a small yellow star sewn to it. He said quietly, 'You know what this is, young master?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, you know what it is. And you know what it means?'
'Yes.'
'No, you don't know what it means. Oh, maybe you know it must be there by law. Maybe you know it means I may not own land or fight the devilish Turk or serve the King or any of his ministers. Maybe. But to know all of what it means you must have led my life or the life of one of my tribe. You understand that, sir?'
Jacob was not talking quietly now. It could never be said, thought Hubert, that a man's eyes could blaze, or said only by writers of TR, who need have no care for truth; all that could be said with truth was that eyes could be bright in colour, and bright because there was enough moisture on their surface to reflect everything else that was bright, and prominent because that was how they were, and prominent because the skin round them was stretched— but, however true, that fell short.
'Ask yourself, ask yourself where goes the money that comes from the families. Not into any part of my house, that you can tell. Ah, when I began, when I got my first hundred and then my second and my third, I had brave ideas, you see. The money would go to the people, not to my tribe but to all the people, I mean all those who'd dare to do what I'd dare to do and rebel against Church and State. I'd begin-and I could only begin-to lead them out of captivity into a land where the Pope and the King could never reach them. But-at first I couldn't believe it—they preferred to stay. They preferred to be poor and hopeless and full of sin and crime, because they were afraid not to be. No no, because they'd come to need to be as they were. I was four hundred and fifty years too late. So now what do I do, what do I do with the money? I give it to my tribe, for food and medicines, and for schooling for those with wit, you see. I've led a few from the captivity of the spirit-ah, but how few.'
Out of an obscure feeling that it would be best for him if Jacob continued to talk, Hubert said, 'But what
