It proved to be a small iron box with a key attached to it.
“Out with it! out with it!” cried Master Nathaniel excitedly. “I wonder if it contains a halter! By the Sun, Moon and Stars, I wonder!”
But he was sobered by a glimpse of poor Hazel’s scared face.
“Forgive me, my child,” he said gently, “my thirst for revenge has made me forget both decency and manners. And, as like as not, there will be nothing in it but a handful of Duke Aubrey crowns—the nest-egg of one of your ancestors.”
They unlocked the box and found that it contained nothing but a sealed parchment package, addressed thus:
“To the First Who Finds Me.”
“I think, Miss Hazel, it should be you who opens it. Don’t you agree, Master Lawman?” said Master Nathaniel. So, with trembling fingers, Hazel broke the seal, tore open the wrapper, and drew out a sheet of writing.
By the light of the blacksmith’s lantern they read as follows:
I, Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer and lawman of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, having ever been a merry man who loved his joke, do herein crack my last, this side of the Debatable Hills, in the hopes that it will not lie so long in the damp earth as to prove but a lame rocket when the time comes to fire it off. And this is my last joke, and may all who hear it hold their sides, and may the tears run down their cheeks. I, Jeremiah Gibberty, was wilfully murdered by my second wife, Clementina, daughter of Ralph Baldbreeches, sailor, and an outlandish woman from the far North. In the which crime she was aided by her lover, Christopher Pugwalker, a foreigner who called himself an herbalist. And I know by sundry itchings of my skin which torment me as I write and by my spotted tongue that I have been given what the folks who know them call death-berries. And they were boiled down to look like mulberry jelly, offered to me by my dear wife, and of which I ate in my innocence. And I bid him who finds this writing to search for a little lad, by name Peter Pease, the son of a tipsy tinker. For this little lad, having an empty stomach and being greedy for pence, came to me but an hour ago with a basket full of these same death-berries and asked me if I should like to buy them. And I, to test him, asked him if he thought there was a blight in my orchard that I should be so hard put to it for fruit. And he said he thought we must like them up at Gibberty’s for he had seen the gentleman who lived with us (Christopher Pugwalker) but a week since, gathering them. And if Christopher Pugwalker should leave these parts, then let the law search for a dumpy fellow, with nut-brown hair, a pug-nose freckled like a robin’s egg, and one eye brown, the other blue. And in order that my last joke may be a well-built one, I have tested the berries I bought from the little lad, though it wrung my heart to do so, on one of the rabbits of a certain little maid, by name, Marjory Beach, the daughter of my carter. And I have done so because she, being seven years old and a healthy lass, runs a good chance of being still this side of the hills when someone digs up this buried jest. And if she be alive she will not have forgotten how one of her rabbits took to scratching itself, and how its tongue was spotted like a snake, and how she found it lying dead. And I humbly beg her pardon for having played such a cruel trick on a little maid, and I ask my heirs (if so be any of them still alive) to send her a fine buck rabbit, a ham, and ten gold pieces. And, though I am lawman and could put them under arrest before I die, yet, for a time, I hold my hand. Partly because I have been a hunter all my life, and as the hare and deer are given their chance to escape, so shall they have theirs; and partly because I should like to be very far on my wanderings down the Milky Way before Clementina mounts Duke Aubrey’s wooden horse; because I think the sound of her strangling would hurt my ears; and, last of all, because I am very weary. And here I sign my name for the last time.
XXIV
Belling the Cat
When they had finished reading, Hazel burst into hysterical sobs, crying alternately, “Poor grandfather!” and “Will they hang her for it?” Master Nathaniel soothed her as best he could, and, when she had dried her eyes, she said, “Poor Marjory Beach! She must have that ham and that buck rabbit.”
“She’s still alive, then?” asked Master Nathaniel eagerly. Hazel nodded: “She is poor, and still a maid, and lives in Swan.”
“And what about Peter Pease, the tinker’s smart little lad? Is there nothing for him, Miss Hazel?” cried the blacksmith with a twinkle.
Hazel stared at him in bewilderment, and Master Nathaniel cried gleefully, “Why, it’s the same name, by the Harvest of Souls! Were you, then, the little chap who saw Pugwalker picking the berries?”
And Hazel said in slow amazement, “You were the little boy who spoke to my grandfather … that night? I never thought …”
“That I’d begun so humbly, eh? Yes, I was the son of a tinker, or, as they liked to be called, of a whitesmith. And now I’m a blacksmith, and as white is better than black I suppose I’ve come down in the world.” And he winked merrily.
“And you remember the circumstances alluded to by the late farmer?” asked Master Nathaniel eagerly.
“That I do, my lord Seneschal. As well if they had happened yesterday. I won’t easily forget the
