“The Mayor then declared the prisoner to be at liberty. When he had done so he said, ‘I strongly urge you to place yourself under my protection for the present, that you may be freed from the impertinent folly and curiosity of some whose infatuation might lead you from that better mind to which I believe you are now happily restored. I wish you to remain for some few hours secluded in the privacy of my own study, where Dr. Downie and the two excellent Professors will administer that ghostly counsel to you, which will be likely to protect you from any return of your unhappy delusion.’
“The man humbly bowed assent, and was taken by the Mayor’s younger sons to the Mayor’s own house, where he was duly cared for. About midnight, when all was quiet, he was conducted to the outskirts of the town towards Clearwater, and furnished with enough money to provide for his more pressing necessities till he could reach some relatives who reside three or four days’ walk down on the road towards the capital. He desired the man who accompanied him to repeat to the Mayor his heartfelt thanks for the forbearance and generosity with which he had been treated. The remembrance of this, he said, should be ever present with him, and he was confident would protect him if his unhappy monomania showed any signs of returning.
“Let us now, however, remind our readers that the poacher who threatened Professors Hanky and Panky’s life on Thursday evening last is still at large. He is evidently a man of desperate character, and it is to be hoped that our fellow-citizens will give immediate information at the Ranger’s office if they see any stranger in the neighbourhood of the preserves whom they may have reasonable grounds for suspecting.
XXIII
My Father Is Escorted to the Mayor’s House, and Is Introduced to a Future Daughter-in-Law
My father said he was followed to the Mayor’s house by a good many people, whom the Mayor’s sons in vain tried to get rid of. One or two of these still persisted in saying he was the Sunchild—whereon another said, “But his hair is black.”
“Yes,” was the answer, “but a man can dye his hair, can he not? look at his blue eyes and his eyelashes?”
My father was doubting whether he ought not to again deny his identity out of loyalty to the Mayor and Yram, when George’s next brother said, “Pay no attention to them, but step out as fast as you can.” This settled the matter, and in a few minutes they were at the Mayor’s, where the young men took him into the study; the elder said with a smile, “We should like to stay and talk to you, but my mother said we were not to do so.” Whereon they left him much to his regret, but he gathered rightly that they had not been officially told who he was, and were to be left to think what they liked, at any rate for the present.
In a few minutes the Mayor entered, and going straight up to my father shook him cordially by the hand.
“I have brought you this morning’s paper,” said he. “You will find a full report of Professor Hanky’s sermon, and of the speeches at last night’s banquet. You see they pass over your little interruption with hardly a word, but I dare say they will have made up their minds about it all by Thursday’s issue.”
He laughed as he produced the paper—which my father brought home with him, and without which I should not have been able to report Hanky’s sermon as fully as I have done. But my father could not let things pass over thus lightly.
“I thank you,” he said, “but I have much more to thank you for, and know not how to do it.”
“Can you not trust me to take everything as said?”
“Yes, but I cannot trust myself not to be haunted if I do not say—or at any rate try to say—some part of what I ought to say.”
“Very well; then I will say
