But when they finally went upstairs to bed the apprentice had not yet come in, and in the privacy of their bedroom the girls admitted to each other that it was the dullest evening they had spent since his arrival, early in spring. For it was wonderful what high spirits were concealed behind that young man’s prim exterior.
Why, it was sufficient to enliven even an evening spent in the society of papa to watch the comical grimaces he pulled behind that gentleman’s respectable back! And it was delicious when the shrill “Ho, ho, hoh!” would suddenly escape him, and he would instantly snap down on the top of it his most sanctimonious expression. And then, he seemed to possess an inexhaustible store of riddles and funny songs, and there was really no end to the invention and variety of his practical jokes.
The Misses Prim, since their earliest childhood, had craved for a monkey or a cockatoo, such as sailor brothers or cousins brought to their friends; their father, however, had always sternly refused to have any such creature in his house. But the new apprentice had been ten times more amusing than any monkey or cockatoo that had ever come from the Cinnamon Isles.
The next morning, as he did not come for his usual early roll and glass of homemade cordial, the two girls peeped into his room, and found that his bed had not been slept in; and lying neglected on the floor was the neat black wig. Nor did he ever come back to claim it. And when they timidly asked their father what had happened to him, he sternly forbade them ever again to mention his name, adding, with a mysterious shake of the head, “For some time I have had my suspicions that he was not what he appeared.”
And then he sighed regretfully, and murmured, “But never before have I had an apprentice with such wonderfully skillful fingers.”
As for Master Nathaniel—while he was being burned in effigy in the marketplace, he was sitting comfortably in his pipe-room, deep in an in-folio.
He had suddenly remembered that it was something in the widow Gibberty’s trial that was connected in his mind with Master Ambrose’s joke about the dead bleeding. And he was rereading that trial—this time with absorption.
As he read, the colours of his mental landscape were gradually modified, as the colours of a real landscape are modified according to the position of the sun. But if a white road cuts through the landscape it still gleams white—even when the moon has taken the place of the sun. And a straight road still gleamed white across the landscape of Master Nathaniel’s mind.
XVI
The Widow Gibberty’s Trial
The following day, with all the masquerading that the Law delights in, Master Nathaniel was pronounced in the Senate to be dead. His robes of office were taken off him, and they were donned by Master Polydore Vigil, the new Mayor. As for Master Nathaniel—was wrapped in a shroud, laid on a bier and carried to his home by four of the Senators, the populace lining the streets and greeting the mock obsequies with catcalls and shouts of triumph.
But the ceremony over, when Master Ambrose, boiling with indignation at the outrage, came to visit his friend, he found a very cheerful corpse who greeted him with a smack on the back and a cry of “Never say die, Brosie! I’ve something here that should interest you,” and he thrust into his hand an open in-folio.
“What’s this?” asked the bewildered Master Ambrose.
There was a certain solemnity in Master Nathaniel’s voice as he replied, “It’s the Law, Ambrose—the homoeopathic antidote that our forefathers discovered to delusion. Sit down this very minute and read that trial through.”
As Master Ambrose knew well, it was useless trying to talk to Nat about one thing when his mind was filled with another. Besides, his curiosity was aroused, for he had come to realize that Nat’s butterfly whims were sometimes the disguise of shrewd and useful intuitions. So, through force of long habit, growling out a protest about this being no time for tomfoolery and rubbish, he settled down to read the volume at the place where Master Nathaniel had opened it, namely, at the account of the trial of the widow Gibberty for the murder of her husband.
The plaintiff, as we have seen, was a labourer, Diggory Carp by name, who had been in the employ of the late farmer. He said he had been suddenly dismissed by the defendant just after harvest, when it was not easy to find another job.
No reason was given for his dismissal, so Diggory went to the farmer himself, who, he said, had always been a kind and just master, to beg that he might be kept on. The farmer practically admitted that there was no reason for his dismissal except that the mistress had taken a dislike to him. “Women are kittle cattle, Diggory,” he had said, with an apologetic laugh, “and it’s best humouring them. Though it’s hard on the folks they get their knife into. So I fear it will be best for everyone concerned that you should leave my service, Diggory.”
But he gave him a handful of florins over and above his wages, and told him he might take a sack of lentils from the granary—if he were careful that the mistress did not get wind of it.
Now, Diggory had a shrewd suspicion as to why the defendant wanted to get rid of him. Though she was little more than a girl—she was the farmer’s second wife and more like his daughter’s elder sister than her stepdame—she had the reputation of being as staid and sensible as a woman of forty. But Diggory knew better. He had discovered that she had a lover. One evening he had come on her in the orchard, lying in the arms of a young foreigner, called
