'I think, worshipful sir,' said the smith, sinking his hammer, and assuming a more gentle and submissive tone of voice, 'that when so poor a man does his day's job, he might be permitted to work it out after his own fashion. Your horse is shod, and your farrier paid—what need you cumber yourself further than to mount and pursue your journey?'
'Nay, friend, you are mistaken,' replied Tressilian; 'every man has a right to take the mask from the face of a cheat and a juggler; and your mode of living raises suspicion that you are both.'
'If you are so determined; sir,' said the smith, 'I cannot help myself save by force, which I were unwilling to use towards you, Master Tressilian; not that I fear your weapon, but because I know you to be a worthy, kind, and well-accomplished gentleman, who would rather help than harm a poor man that is in a strait.'
'Well said, Wayland,' said the boy, who had anxiously awaited the issue of their conference. 'But let us to thy den, man, for it is ill for thy health to stand here talking in the open air.'
'Thou art right, Hobgoblin,' replied the smith; and going to the little thicket of gorse on the side nearest to the circle, and opposite to that at which his customer had so lately crouched, he discovered a trap-door curiously covered with bushes, raised it, and, descending into the earth, vanished from their eyes. Notwithstanding Tressilian's curiosity, he had some hesitation at following the fellow into what might be a den of robbers, especially when he heard the smith's voice, issuing from the bowels of the earth, call out, 'Flibertigibbet, do you come last, and be sure to fasten the trap!'
'Have you seen enough of Wayland Smith now?' whispered the urchin to Tressilian, with an arch sneer, as if marking his companion's uncertainty.
'Not yet,' said Tressilian firmly; and shaking off his momentary irresolution, he descended into the narrow staircase, to which the entrance led, and was followed by Dickie Sludge, who made fast the trap-door behind him, and thus excluded every glimmer of daylight. The descent, however, was only a few steps, and led to a level passage of a few yards' length, at the end of which appeared the reflection of a lurid and red light. Arrived at this point, with his drawn sword in his hand, Tressilian found that a turn to the left admitted him and Hobgoblin, who followed closely, into a small, square vault, containing a smith's forge, glowing with charcoal, the vapour of which filled the apartment with an oppressive smell, which would have been altogether suffocating, but that by some concealed vent the smithy communicated with the upper air. The light afforded by the red fuel, and by a lamp suspended in an iron chain, served to show that, besides an anvil, bellows, tongs, hammers, a quantity of ready- made horse-shoes, and other articles proper to the profession of a farrier, there were also stoves, alembics, crucibles, retorts, and other instruments of alchemy. The grotesque figure of the smith, and the ugly but whimsical features of the boy, seen by the gloomy and imperfect light of the charcoal fire and the dying lamp, accorded very well with all this mystical apparatus, and in that age of superstition would have made some impression on the courage of most men.
But nature had endowed Tressilian with firm nerves, and his education, originally good, had been too sedulously improved by subsequent study to give way to any imaginary terrors; and after giving a glance around him, he again demanded of the artist who he was, and by what accident he came to know and address him by his name.
'Your worship cannot but remember,' said the smith, 'that about three years since, upon Saint Lucy's Eve, there came a travelling juggler to a certain hall in Devonshire, and exhibited his skill before a worshipful knight and a fair company.—I see from your worship's countenance, dark as this place is, that my memory has not done me wrong.'
'Thou hast said enough,' said Tressilian, turning away, as wishing to hide from the speaker the painful train of recollections which his discourse had unconsciously awakened.
'The juggler,' said the smith, 'played his part so bravely that the clowns and clown-like squires in the company held his art to be little less than magical; but there was one maiden of fifteen, or thereby, with the fairest face I ever looked upon, whose rosy cheek grew pale, and her bright eyes dim, at the sight of the wonders exhibited.'
'Peace, I command thee, peace!' said Tressilian.
'I mean your worship no offence,' said the fellow; 'but I have cause to remember how, to relieve the young maiden's fears, you condescended to point out the mode in which these deceptions were practised, and to baffle the poor juggler by laying bare the mysteries of his art, as ably as if you had been a brother of his order.—She was indeed so fair a maiden that, to win a smile of her, a man might well—'
'Not a word more of her, I charge thee!' said Tressilian. 'I do well remember the night you speak of—one of the few happy evenings my life has known.'
'She is gone, then,' said the smith, interpreting after his own fashion the sigh with which Tressilian uttered these words—'she is gone, young, beautiful, and beloved as she was!—I crave your worship's pardon—I should have hammered on another theme. I see I have unwarily driven the nail to the quick.'
This speech was made with a mixture of rude feeling which inclined Tressilian favourably to the poor artisan, of whom before he was inclined to judge very harshly. But nothing can so soon attract the unfortunate as real or seeming sympathy with their sorrows.
'I think,' proceeded Tressilian, after a minute's silence, 'thou wert in those days a jovial fellow, who could keep a company merry by song, and tale, and rebeck, as well as by thy juggling tricks—why do I find thee a laborious handicraftsman, plying thy trade in so melancholy a dwelling and under such extraordinary circumstances?'
'My story is not long,' said the artist, 'but your honour had better sit while you listen to it.' So saying, he approached to the fire a three-footed stool, and took another himself; while Dickie Sludge, or Flibbertigibbet, as he called the boy, drew a cricket to the smith's feet, and looked up in his face with features which, as illuminated by the glow of the forge, seemed convulsed with intense curiosity. 'Thou too,' said the smith to him, 'shalt learn, as thou well deservest at my hand, the brief history of my life; and, in troth, it were as well tell it thee as leave thee to ferret it out, since Nature never packed a shrewder wit into a more ungainly casket.—Well, sir, if my poor story may pleasure you, it is at your command, But will you not taste a stoup of liquor? I promise you that even in this poor cell I have some in store.'
'Speak not of it,' said Tressilian, 'but go on with thy story, for my leisure is brief.'
'You shall have no cause to rue the delay,' said the smith, 'for your horse shall be better fed in the meantime than he hath been this morning, and made fitter for travel.'
With that the artist left the vault, and returned after a few minutes' interval. Here, also, we pause, that the narrative may commence in another chapter.
CHAPTER XI.
THE artist commenced his narrative in the following terms:—
'I was bred a blacksmith, and knew my art as well as e'er a black-thumbed, leathern-aproned, swart-faced knave of that noble mystery. But I tired of ringing hammer-tunes on iron stithies, and went out into the world,
