"And now, good people, here's a word of advice to you, before I go my last ride, a pillion to my old friend Endymion Leer. Never you make a pet of a dead man. For the dead are dirty curs and bite the hand that has fed them;" and with an evil smile she climbed down from the pulpit, while more than one person in the audience felt faint with horror and would willingly have left the hall.
There was nothing left but for Master Polydore to pronounce the sentence; and though the accused had stolen some of his thunder, nevertheless the solemn time-honoured words did not fail to produce their wonted thrill:
"Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, I find you guilty of murder, and I consign your bodies to the birds, and your souls to whence they came. And may all here present take example from your fate, correcting their conduct if it needs correction, or, if it be impeccable, keeping it so. For every tree can be a gallows, and every man has a neck to hang."
The widow received her sentence with complete stolidity; Endymion Leer with a scornful smile. But as it was pronounced there was a stir and confusion at the back of the hall, and a grotesque frenzied figure broke loose from the detaining grip of her neighbours, and, struggling up to the dais, flung herself at the feet of Master Polydore. It was Miss Primrose Crabapple.
"Your Worship! Your Worship!" she cried, shrilly, "Hang me instead of him! My life for his! Was it not I who gave your daughters fairy fruit, with my eyes open! And I glory in the knowledge that I was made a humble instrument of the same master whom he has served so well. Dear Master Polydore, have mercy on your country, spare your country's benefactor, and if the law must have a victim let it be me—a foolish useless woman, whose only merit was that she believed in loveliness though she had never seen it."
Weeping and struggling, her face twisted into a grotesque tragic mask, they dragged her from the hall, amid the laughter and ironical cheers of the public.
That afternoon Mumchance came to Master Polydore to inform him that a young maid-servant from the Academy had just been to the guard-room to say that Miss Primrose Crabapple had killed herself.
Master Polydore at once hurried off to the scene of the tragedy, and there in the pleasant old garden where so many generations of Crabapple Blossoms had romped, and giggled, and exchanged their naughty little secrets, he found Miss Primrose, hanging stone-dead from one of her own apple-trees.
"Well, as the old song has it, Mumchance," said Master Polydore—"'Here hangs a maid who died for love.'"
Master Polydore was noted for his dry humour.
A gibbet had been set up in the great court of the Guildhall, and the next day, at dawn, Endymion Leer and the widow Gibberty were hanged by the neck till they died.
Rumour said that as the Doctor's face was contorted in its last grimace strange silvery peals of laughter were heard proceeding from the room where long ago Duke Aubrey's jester had killed himself.
About two hours after he had set out from the farm, Master Nathaniel reached a snug little hollow at the foot of the hills, chosen for their camp by the consignment of the Lud Yeomanry stationed, by his own orders, at the foot of the Debatable Hills.
"Halt!" cried the sentry. And then he dropped his musket in amazement. "Well, I'm blessed if it ain't his Worship!" he cried. Some six or seven of his mates, who were lounging about the camp, some playing cards, some lying on their backs and staring up at the sky, came hurrying up at the sound of the challenge, and, speechless with astonishment, they stared at Master Nathaniel.
"I have come to look for my son," he said. "I have been told that ... er ... he came this way some two or three nights ago. If so, you must have seen him."
The Yeomen shook their heads. "No, your Worship, we've seen no little boy. In fact, all the weeks we've been here we've not seen a living soul. And if there are any folks about they must be as swift as swallows and as silent-footed as cats, and as hard to see—well, as the dead themselves. No, your Worship, little Master Chanticleer has not passed this way."
Master Nathaniel sighed wearily. "I had a feeling that you would not have seen him," he said; adding dreamily more to himself than to them: "Who knows? He may have gone by the Milky Way."
And then it struck him that this was probably the last normal encounter he would ever have with ordinary human beings, and he smiled at them wistfully.
"Well, well," he said, "you're having a pleasant holiday, I expect ... nothing to do and plenty to eat and drink, eh? Here's a couple of crowns for you. Send to one of the farms for a pigskin of red wine and drink my health ... and my son's. I'm off on what may prove a very long journey; I suppose this bridle-path will be as good a route as any?"
They stared at him in amazement.
"Please, your Worship, if you'll excuse me mentioning it, you must be making a mistake," said the sentry, in a shocked voice. "All the bridle-paths about here lead to nowhere but the Elfin Marches ... and beyond."
"It is for beyond that I am bound," answered Master Nathaniel curtly. And digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, he dashed past the horrified Yeomen, and up one of the bridle-paths, as if he would take the Debatable Hills by storm.
For a few seconds they stood staring at one another, with scared, astonished eyes. Then the sentry gave a low whistle.
"He must be powerful fond of that little chap," he said.
"If the little chap really slipped past without our seeing him, that will be the third Chanticleer to cross the hills. First there was the little missy at the Academy, then the young chap, then the Mayor."
"Aye, but they didn't do it on an empty stomach—leastways, we know the Crabapple Blossoms didn't, and if the talk in Lud be true, the little chap had had a taste too of what he oughtn't," said another. "But it's another story to go when you're in your right mind. Doctor Leer can't have been in the right when he said all them Magistrates were played out, for it's the bravest thing has ever been done in Dorimare."
Master Nathaniel, for how long he could not have said, went riding up and up the bridle-path that wound in and out among the foothills, which gradually grew higher and higher. Not a living creature did he meet with—not a goat, not so much as a bird. He began to feel curiously drowsy, as if he were riding in a dream.
Suddenly his consciousness seemed to have gone out of gear, to have missed one of the notches in time or space, for he found himself riding along a high-road, in the midst of a crowd of peasants in holiday attire. Nor did this surprise him—his passive uncritical mood was impervious to surprise.
And yet ... what were these people with whom he had mingled? An ordinary troop of holiday-making peasants? At first sight, so they seemed. There were pretty girls, with sunny hair escaping from under red and blue handkerchiefs, and rustic dandies cross-gartered with gay ribands, and old women with quiet, nobly-lined faces—a village community bound for some fair or merry-making.
But why were their eyes so fixed and strange, and why did they walk in absolute silence?
And then the invisible cicerone of dreams, who is one's other self, whispered in his ear, These are they whom men call dead.
And, like everything else said by that cicerone, these words seemed to throw a flood of light on the situation, to make it immediately normal, even prosaic.
Then the road took a sudden turn, and before them stretched a sort of heath, dotted with the white booths of a fair.
"That is the market of souls," whispered the invisible cicerone. "Of course, of course," muttered Master Nathaniel, as if all his life he had known of its existence. And, indeed, he had forgotten all about Ranulph, and thought that to visit this fair had been the one object of his journey.
They crossed the heath, and then they paid their gate-money to a silent old man. And though Master Nathaniel paid with a coin of a metal and design he had never seen before, it was with no sense of a link missing in the chain of cause and effect that he produced it from his pocket.
Outwardly, there was nothing different in this fair from those in Dorimare. Pewterers, shoemakers, silversmiths were displaying their wares; there were cows and sheep and pigs, and refreshment booths and raree-shows. But instead of the cheerful, variegated din that is part of the fun of the every-day fair, over this one there reigned complete silence; for the beasts were as silent as the people. Dead silence, and blazing sun.
Master Nathaniel started off to investigate the booths. In one of them they were flinging darts at a pasteboard target, on which were painted various of the heavenly bodies, with the moon in the centre. Anyone whose dart struck the moon was allowed to choose a prize from a heap of glittering miscellaneous objects—golden feathers, shells painted with curious designs, brilliantly-coloured pots, fans, silver sheep-bells.
"They're like Hempie's new ornaments," thought Master Nathaniel.
In another booth there was a merry-go-round of silver horses and gilded chariots—both sadly tarnished. It was a primitive affair that moved not by machinery, but by the ceaseless trudging of a live pony—a patient, dingy little beast—tied to it with a rope. And the motion generated a thin, cracked music—tunes that had been popular in Lud-in-the-Mist when Master Nathaniel had been a little boy.
There was "Oh, you Little Charmer with your pretty Puce Bow," there was "Old Daddy Popinjay fell down upon his Rump," there was "Why did she cock her Pretty Blue Eye at the Lad with the Silver Buckles?"
But, except for one solitary little boy, the tarnished horses and chariots whirled round without riders; and the pert tunes sounded so thin and wan as to accentuate rather than destroy the silence and atmosphere of melancholy.
In a hopeless, resigned sort of way, the little boy was sobbing. It was as if he felt that he was doomed by some inexorable fate to whirl round for ever and ever with the tarnished horses and chariots, the dingy, patient pony, and the old cracked tunes.
"It is not long," said the invisible cicerone, "since that little boy was stolen from the mortals. He still can weep."
Master Nathaniel felt a sudden tightening in his throat. Poor little boy! Poor little lonely boy! What was it he reminded him of? Something painful, and very near his heart.
Round and round trudged the pony, round and round went the hidden musical-box, grinding out its thin, blurred tunes.
Why did she cock her pretty blue eyeAt the lad with the silver buckles,When the penniless lad who was handsome and spryGot nought but a rap on his knuckles?
Why did she cock her pretty blue eyeAt the lad with the silver buckles,When the penniless lad who was handsome and spryGot nought but a rap on his knuckles?
Why did she cock her pretty blue eye
At the lad with the silver buckles,
When the penniless lad who was handsome and spry
Got nought but a rap on his knuckles?
These vulgar songs, though faded, were not really old. Nevertheless, to Master Nathaniel, they were the oldest songs in existence—sung by the Morning Stars when all the world was young. For they were freighted with his childhood, and brought the memory, or, rather, the tang, the scent, of the solemn innocent world of children, a world sans archness, sans humour, sans vulgarity, where they had sounded as pure and silvery as a shepherd's pipe. Where the little charmer with her puce bow, and the scheming hussy who had cocked her blue eye had been own sisters to the pretty fantastic ladies of the nursery rhymes, like them walking always to the accompaniment of tinkling bells and living on frangipane and sillabubs of peaches and cream; and whose gestures were stylised and actions preposterous—nonsense actions that needed no explanation. While mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, falling in love—they were just pretty words like brightly-coloured beads, strung together without meaning.
As Master Nathaniel listened, he knew that other people would have heard other tunes—whatever tunes through the milkman's whistle, or the cracked fiddle of a street musician, or the voices of young sparks returning from the tavern at midnight, the Morning Stars may have happened to sing in their own particular infancy.
Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow,I'll tell mamma if you carry on so!
Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow,I'll tell mamma if you carry on so!
Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow,
I'll tell mamma if you carry on so!
Round and round whirled the tarnished horses and chariots with their one pathetic little rider; round and round trudged the pony—the little dusty, prosaic pony.
Master Nathaniel rubbed his eyes and looked round; he felt as if after a dive he were slowly rising to the surface of the water. The fair seemed to be coming alive—the silence had changed into a low murmur. And now it was swelling into the mingled din of chattering voices, lowing cows, grunting pigs, blasts from tin trumpets, hoarse voices of cheap-jacks praising their wares—all the noises, in short, that one connects with an ordinary fair.
He sauntered away from the merry-go-round and mingled with the crowd. All the stall-keepers were doing a brisk trade, but, above all, the market gardeners—their stalls were simply thronged.
But, lo and behold! the fruit that they were selling was of the kind he had seen in the mysterious room of the Guildhall, and concealed inside the case of his grandfather's clock—it was fairy fruit; but the knowledge brought no sense of moral condemnation.
Suddenly he realized that his throat was parched with thirst and that nothing would slake it but one of these translucent globes.
The wizened old woman who was selling them cried out to him coaxingly, "Three for a penny, sir! Or, for you, I'll make it four for a penny—for the sake of your hazel eyes, lovey! You'll find them as grateful as dew to the flowers—four for a penny, pretty master. Don't say no!"
But he had the curious feeling that one sometimes has in dreams, namely, that he himself was inventing what was happening to him, and could make it end as he chose.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I am telling myself one of Hempie's old stories, about a youngest son who has been warned against eating anything offered to him by strangers, so, of course, I shall not touch it."
So with a curt "No thank'ee, nothing doing today," he contemptuously turned his back on the old woman and her fruit.
But whose was that shrill voice? Probably that of some cheapjack whose patter or whose wares, to judge from the closely-packed throng hiding him from view, had some particularly attractive quality. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and, his curiosity aroused, Master Nathaniel joined the crowd of spectators.
He could discern nothing but the top of a red head, but the patter was audible: "Now's your chance, gentlemen! Beauty doesn't keep, but rots like apples. Apple-shies! Four points if you hit her on the breast, six if you hit her on the mouth, and he who first gets twenty points wins the maid. Don't fight shy of the apple-shies! Apples and beauty do not keep—there's a worm in both. Step up, step up, gentlemen!"
Yes, he had heard that voice before. He began to shoulder his way through the crowd. It proved curiously yielding, and he had no difficulty in reaching the centre of attraction, a wooden platform on which gesticulated, grimaced and pirouetted ... who but his rascally groom Willy Wisp, dressed as a harlequin. But Willy Wisp was not the strangest part of the spectacle. Out of the platform grew an apple tree, and tied to it was his own daughter, Prunella, while grouped around her in various attitudes of woe were the other Crabapple Blossoms.
Suddenly Master Nathaniel felt convinced that this was not merely a story he was inventing himself, but, as well, it was a dream—a grotesque, illogical, synthesis of scraps of reality, to which he could add what elements he chose.
"What's happening?" he asked his neighbour.
But he knew the answer—Willy Wisp was selling the girls to the highest bidder, to labour in the fields of gillyflowers.
"But you have no right to do this!" he cried out in a loud angry voice, "no right whatever. This is not Fairyland—it is only the Elfin Marches. They cannot be sold until they have crossed over into Fairyland—I say they cannot be sold."
All round him he heard awed whispers, "It is Chanticleer—Chanticleer the dreamer, who has never tasted fruit." Then he found himself giving a learned dissertation on the law of property, as observed in the Elfin Marches. The crowd listened to him in respectful silence. Even Willy Wisp was listening, and the Crabapple Blossoms gazed at him with inexpressible gratitude.
With what seemed to him a superbly eloquent peroration he brought his discourse to an end. Prunella stretched out her arms to him, crying, "Father, you have saved us! You and the Law."
"You and the Law! You and the Law!" echoed the other Crabapple Blossoms.
"Chanticleer and the Law! Chanticleer and the Law!" shouted the crowd.
The fair had vanished. He was in a strange town, and was one of a great crowd of people all hurrying in the same direction.
"They are looking for the bleeding corpse," whispered the invisible cicerone, and the words filled Master Nathaniel with an unspeakable horror.
Then the crowd vanished, leaving him alone in a street as silent as the grave. He pressed forward, for he knew that he was looking for something; but what it was he had forgotten. At every street corner he came on a dead man, guarded by a stone beggar with a face like the herm in the Gibberty's orchard. He was almost choked by the horror of it. The terror became articulate: "Supposing one of the corpses should turn out to be that little lonely boy on the merry-go-round!"
This possibility filled him with an indescribable anguish.
Suddenly he remembered about Ranulph. Ranulph had gone to the country from which there is no return.
But he was going to follow him there and fetch him back. Nothing would stop him—he would push, if necessary, through fold after fold of dreams until he reached their heart.
He bent down and touched one of the corpses. It was warm, and it moved. As he touched it he realized that he had incurred the danger of contamination from some mysterious disease.
"But it isn't real, it isn't real," he muttered. "I'm inventing it all myself. And so, whatever happens, I shan't mind, because it isn't real."
It was growing dark. He knew that he was being followed by one of the stone beggars, who had turned into a four-footed animal called Portunus. In one sense the animal was a protection, in another a menace, and he knew that in summoning him he must be very careful to use the correct ritual formulary.
He had reached a square, on one side of which was a huge building with a domed roof. Light streamed from it through a great window of stained glass, on which was depicted a blue warrior fighting with a red dragon ... no, it was not a stained glass window but merely the reflection on the white walls of the building from a house in complete darkness in the opposite side of the square, inhabited by creatures made of red lacquer. He knew that they were expecting him to call, because they believed that he was courting one of them.
"What else could bring him here save all this lovely spawn?" said a voice at his elbow.
He looked round—suddenly the streets were pullulating with strange semi-human fauna: tiny green men, the wax figures of his parents from Hempie's chimney-piece, grimacing greybeards with lovely children gamboling round them dressed in beetles' shards.
Now they were dancing, some slow old-fashioned dance ... in and out, in and out. Why, they were only figures on a piece of tapestry flapping in the wind!
Once more he felt his horse beneath him. But what were these little pattering footsteps behind him? He turned uneasily in his saddle, to discover that it was nothing but a gust of wind rustling a little eddy of dead leaves.
The town and its strange fauna had vanished, and once more he was riding up the bridle-path; but now it was night.
Though it was a relief to have returned to the fresh air of reality, Master Nathaniel was frightened. He realized that he was alone at dead of night in the Elfin Marches. And the moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and boulders into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true humourist that she was, with a solemn impassive face. But, how was this? She was a waxing moon, and almost full, while the night before—or what he supposed was the night before—she had been a half moon on the wane.
Had he left time behind him in Dorimare?
Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its lair, there sprang up a mighty wind. The pines creaked and rustled and bent beneath its onslaught, the grasses whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face of the moon.
Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle. He drew his cloak closely round him, and longed, with an unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud; and it flashed into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that bed, to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually occurring—he was tired, he was cold, and the wind was finding the fissures in his doublet.
Suddenly, as if some hero had slain the monster, the wind died down, the moon sailed clear of the clouds, and the pines straightened themselves and once more stood at attention, silent and motionless. In spite of this, his horse grew strangely restive, rearing and jibbing, as if something was standing before it in the path that frightened it; and in vain Master Nathaniel tried to quiet and sooth it.
Then it shuddered all over and fell heavily to the ground.
Fortunately, Master Nathaniel was thrown clear, and was not hurt, beyond the inevitable bruises entailed by the fall of a man of his weight. He struggled to his feet and hurried to his horse. It was stone dead.
For some time he sat beside it ... his last link with Lud and familiar things; as yet too depressed in mind and aching in body to continue his journey on foot.
But what were those sudden strains of piercingly sweet music, and from what strange instrument did they proceed? They were too impersonal for a fiddle, too passionate for a flute, and much too sweet for any pipes or timbrels. It must be a human—or superhuman—voice, for now he was beginning to distinguish the words.
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brier,And bon-fire,And strawberry-wire,And columbine."
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brier,And bon-fire,And strawberry-wire,And columbine."
"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,
And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine."
The voice stopped, and Master Nathaniel buried his face in his hands and sobbed as if his heart would break.
In this magically sweet music once more he had heard the Note. It held, this time, no menace as to things to come; but it aroused in his breast an agonizing tumult of remorse for having allowed something to escape that he would never, never recapture. It was as if he had left his beloved with harsh words, and had returned to find her dead.
Through his agony he was conscious of a hand laid on his shoulder: "Why, Chanticleer! Old John o' Dreams! What ails you? Has the cock's crow become too bitter-sweet for Chanticleer?" said a voice, half tender and half mocking, in his ear.
He turned round, and by the light of the moon saw standing behind him—Duke Aubrey.
The Duke smiled. "Well, Chanticleer," he said, "so we meet at last! Your family has been dodging me down the centuries, but some day you were bound to fall into my snares. And, though you did not know it, you have been working for some time past as one of my secret agents. How I laughed when you and Ambrose Honeysuckle pledged each other in words taken from my Mysteries! And little did you think, when you stood cursing and swearing at the door of my tapestry-room, that you had pronounced the most potent charm in Faerie," and he threw back his head and broke into peal upon peal of silvery laughter.
Suddenly his laughter stopped, and his eyes, as he looked at Master Nathaniel, became wonderfully compassionate.
"Poor Chanticleer! Poor John o' Dreams!" he said gently. "I have often wished my honey were not so bitter to the taste. Believe me, Chanticleer, I fain would find an antidote to the bitter herb of life, but none grows this side of the hills—or the other."
"And yet ... I have never tasted fairy fruit," said Master Nathaniel in a low broken voice.
"There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various are the fruit they bear—music and dreams and grief and, sometimes, joy. All your life, Chanticleer, you have eaten fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will hear the Note again—but that I cannot promise. And now I will grant you a vision—they are sometimes sweet to the taste."
He paused. And then he said, "Do you know why it was that your horse fell down dead? It was because you had reached the brink of Fairyland. The winds of Faerie slew him. Come with me, Chanticleer."
He took Master Nathaniel's hand and dragged him to his feet, and they scrambled a few yards further up the bridle-path and stepped on to a broad plateau. Beneath them lay what, in the uncertain moonlight, looked like a stretch of desolate uplands.
Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and cried out in a loud voice, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle light and proved to be fair and fertile—the perpetual seat of Spring; for there were vivid green patches of young corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the smoke of distant hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers and daisies, which was the great inland sea of Faerie. And everything—ships, spires, houses—was small and bright and delicate, yet real. It was not unlike Dorimare, or rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the Fields of Grammary. And as he gazed he knew that in that land no winds ever howled at night, and that everything within its borders had the serenity and stability of trees, the unchanging peace of pictures.
Then, suddenly, it all vanished. Duke Aubrey had vanished too, and he was standing alone on the edge of a black abyss, while wafted on the wind came the echo of light, mocking laughter.
Was Fairyland, then, a delusion? Had Ranulph vanished into nothingness?
For a second or two he hesitated, and then—he leaped down into the abyss.
The information given by Luke Hempen had enabled the authorities in Lud finally to put a stop to the import of fairy fruit. As we have seen, the Dapple had been dragged near its source, and wicker frails had been brought up, so cunningly weighted that they could float beneath the surface of the water, and closely packed with what was unmistakably fairy fruit. After that no further cases of fruit-eating came to Mumchance's notice. But, for all that, his anxieties were by no means at an end, for the execution of Endymion Leer came near to causing a popular rising. An angry mob, armed with cudgels and led by Bawdy Bess, stormed the court of the Guildhall, cut down the body—which had been left hanging on the gibbet as an example to evildoers—and bore it off in triumph; and the longest funeral procession that had been seen for years was shortly following it to the Fields of Grammary.
The cautious Mumchance considered it would be imprudent to interfere with the obsequies.
"After all, your Worship," he said to Master Polydore, "the Law has had his blood, and if it will mean a little peace and quiet she can do without his corpse."
The next day many of the 'prentices and artizans went on strike, and several captains of merchant vessels reported that their crews showed signs of getting out of hand.
Master Polydore was terrified out of his wits, and Mumchance was inclined to take a very gloomy view of the situation: "If the town chooses to rise the Yeomanry can do nothing against them," he said dejectedly. "We ain't organized (if your Worship will pardon the expression) for trouble—no, we ain't."
Then, as if by a miracle, everything quieted down. The strikers, as meek as lambs, returned to their work, the sailors ceased to be turbulent, and Mumchance declared that it was years since the Yeomanry had had so little to do.
"There's nothing like taking strong measures at once," Master Polydore remarked complacently to Master Ambrose (whom he had taken as his mentor in the place of Endymion Leer). "Once let them feel that there is a strong man at the helm, and you can do anything with them. And, of course, they never felt that with poor old Nat."
Master Ambrose's only answer was a grunt—and a rather sardonic smile. For Master Ambrose happened to be one of the few people who knew what had really happened.
The sudden calm was due neither to a miracle, nor to the strong hand of Master Polydore. It had been brought about by two humble agents—Mistress Ivy Peppercorn and Hazel Gibberty.
One evening they had been sitting in the little parlour behind the grocer's shop over the first fire of the season.
As plaintiff and principal witness in the unpopular trial, their situation was not without danger. In fact, Mumchance had advised them to move into Lud till the storm had blown over. But, to Hazel, Lud was the place where the widow was buried, and, full as she was of western superstitions, she felt that she could not bear to sleep enclosed by the same town walls as the angry corpse. Nor would she return to the farm. Her aunt had told her of Master Nathaniel's half-joking plan to communicate with her, and Hazel insisted that even though he had gone behind the Debatable Hills it was their clear duty to remain within reach of a message.
That evening Mistress Ivy was waxing a little plaintive over her obstinacy. "I sometimes think, Hazel, your wits have been turned, living so long with that bad bold woman ... and I don't wonder, I'm sure, poor child; and if my poor Peppercorn hadn't come along, I don't know what would have happened to me. But there's no sense, I tell you, in waiting on here—with the hams and bacon at home not cured yet, nor the fish salted for winter, nor your fruit pickled or preserved. You're a farmer on your own now, and you shouldn't forget it. And I wish to goodness you'd get all that silly nonsense out of your head. A message from the Mayor, indeed! Though I can't get over its being him that came to see me, and me never knowing, but giving him sauce, as if he'd been nothing but a shipmate of my poor Peppercorn's! No, no, poor gentleman, we'll never hear from him! Leastways, not this side of the Debatable Hills."
Hazel said nothing. But her obstinate little chin looked even more obstinate than usual.
Then suddenly she looked up with startled eyes.
"Hark, auntie!" she cried. "Didn't you hear someone knocking?"
"What a girl you are for fancying things! It's only the wind," said Mistress Ivy querulously.
"Why, auntie, there it is again! No, no, I'm sure it's someone knocking. I'll just go and see," and she took a candle from the table; but her hand was trembling.
The knocking was audible now to Mistress Ivy as well.
"You just stay where you are, my girl!" she cried shrilly. "It'll be one of these rough chaps from the town, and I won't have you opening the door—no, I won't."
But Hazel paid no attention, and, though her face was white and her eyes very scared, she marched boldly into the shop and called, "Who's there?" through the door.
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!" came the answer.
"Auntie! Auntie!" she cried shrilly, "it's from the Mayor. He has sent a messenger, and you must come."
This brought Mistress Ivy hurrying to her side. Though she was not of an heroic character, she came of good sturdy stock, and she was not going to leave her dead brother's child to face the dangers of the unseen alone, but her teeth were chattering with terror. Evidently the messenger was growing impatient, for he began beating a tattoo on the door and singing in a shrill sweet voice:
"Maids in your smocksLook well to your locksAnd beware of the foxWhen the bellman knocks."
"Maids in your smocksLook well to your locksAnd beware of the foxWhen the bellman knocks."
"Maids in your smocks
Look well to your locks
And beware of the fox
When the bellman knocks."
Hazel (not without some fumbling, for her hands were still trembling) drew the bolts, lifted the latch, and flung the door wide open. A sudden gust of wind extinguished her candle, so they could not see the face of the messenger.
He began speaking in a shrill, expressionless voice, like that of a child repeating a lesson: "I have given the pass-word, so you know from whom I come. I am to bid you go at once to Lud-in-the-Mist, and find a sailor, by name Sebastian Thug—he will probably be drinking at the tavern of the Unicorn—also a deaf-mute, commonly known as Bawdy Bess, whom you will probably find in the same place. You will have need of no other introduction than the words, By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West. You are to tell them that there is to be no more rioting, and that they are to keep the people quiet, for the Duke will send his deputy. And next you will go to Master Ambrose Honeysuckle and bid him remember the oath which he and Master Nathaniel pledged each other over wild-thyme gin, swearing to ride the wind with a loose rein, and to be hospitable to visions. And tell him that Lud-in-the-Mist must throw wide its gates to receive its destiny. Can you remember this?"
"Yes," said Hazel in a low puzzled voice.
"And now just a trifle to the messenger for his pains!" and his voice became gay and challenging. "I am an orchard thief and the citizen of a green world. Buss me, green maid!" and before Hazel had time to protest he gave her a smacking kiss on the lips and then plunged into the night, leaving the echoes of his "Ho, ho, hoh!" like a silvery trail in his wake.
"Well, I never did!" exclaimed Mistress Ivy in amazement, adding with a fat chuckle, "It would seem that it isn't only this side of the hills that saucy young fellows are to be found. But I don't quite know what to make of it, my girl. How are we to know he really comes from the Mayor?"
"Well, auntie, we can't know, of course, for certain—though, for my part, I don't think he was a Dorimarite. But he gave the pass-word, so I think we must deliver the messages—there's nothing in them, after all, that could do any harm."
"That's true," said Mistress Ivy. "Though I'm sure I don't want to go trudging into Lud at this time of night on a fool's errand. But, after all, a promise is a promise—and doubly so when it's been given to somebody as good as dead."
So they put on their pattens and cloaks, lighted a lanthorn, and started off to walk into Lud, as briskly as Mistress Ivy's age and weight would allow, so as to get there before the gates were shut. Master Ambrose, as a Senator, would give them a pass to let them through on the way back.
The Unicorn was a low little tavern down by the wharf, of a not very savoury reputation. And as they peeped in at the foul noisy little den, Hazel had considerable difficulty in persuading Mistress Ivy to enter.
"And to think of the words we have to use too!" the poor woman whispered disconsolately; "they're not at the best of times the sort of words I like to hear on a woman's lips, but in a place like this you can't be too careful of your speech ... it's never safe to swear at folks in liquor."
But the effect produced by the words was the exact opposite of what she had feared. On first crossing the threshold they had been greeted by hostile glances and coarse jests, which, on one of the revellers recognizing them as two of the protagonists in the trial, threatened to turn into something more serious. Whereupon, to the terror of Mistress Ivy, Hazel had made a trumpet of her hands and shouted with all the force of her strong young lungs, "Sebastian Thug and Mistress Bess! By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
The words must indeed have contained a charm, for they instantly calmed the angry company. A tall young sailor, with very light eyes and a very sunburned face, sprang to his feet, and so did a bold-eyed, painted woman, and they hurried to Hazel's side. The young man said in a respectful voice, "You must excuse our rough and ready ways when we first saw you, missie; we didn't know you were one of us." And then he grinned, showing some very white teeth, and said, "You see, pretty fresh things don't often come our way, and sea-dogs are like other dogs and bark at what they're not used to."
Bawdy Bess's eyes had been fixed on his lips, and his last words caused her to scowl and toss her head; but from Hazel they brought forth a little, not unfriendly, smile. Evidently, like her aunt, she was not averse to seafaring men. And, after all, sailors are apt to have a charm of their own. When on dry land, like ghosts when they walk, there is a tang about them of an alien element. And Sebastian Thug was a thorough sailor.
Then in a low voice Hazel gave the message, which Thug repeated on his fingers for the benefit of Bawdy Bess. He insisted on conducting them to Master Ambrose's, and said he would wait outside for them and see them home.
Master Ambrose made them repeat the words several times, and questioned them closely about the messenger.
Then he took two or three paces up and down the room, muttering to himself, "Delusion! Delusion!"
Then he turned suddenly to Hazel and said sharply, "What reason have you to believe, young woman, that this fellow really came from Master Nathaniel?"
"None, sir," answered Hazel. "But there was nothing for us to do but to act as if he did."
"I see, I see. You, too, ride the wind—that's the expression, isn't it? Well, well, we are living in strange times."
And then he sank into a brown study, evidently forgetful of their presence; so they thought it best quietly to steal away.
From that evening the rabble of Lud-in-the-Mist ceased to give any trouble.
When the Yeomen stationed on the border were recalled to Lud and spread the news that they had seen Master Nathaniel riding alone towards the Elfin Marches, Dame Marigold was condoled with as a widow, and went into complete retirement, refusing even to see her oldest friends, although they had all come to regret their unjust suspicions of Master Nathaniel, and were, in consequence, filled with contrition, and eager to prove it in services to his wife.
Occasionally she made an exception for Master Ambrose; but her real support and stay was old Hempie. Nothing could shake the woman's conviction that all was well with the Chanticleers. And the real anchor is not hope but faith—even if it be only somebody else's faith. So the gay snug little room at the top of the house, where Master Nathaniel had played when he was a little boy, became Dame Marigold's only haven, and there she would spend the most of her day.
Though Hempie never forgot that she was only a Vigil, nevertheless, in her own way, she was growing fond of her. Indeed, she had almost forgiven her for having spilled her cup of chocolate over her sheets, when, after her betrothal, she had come on a visit to Master Nathaniel's parents—almost, but not quite, for to Hempie the Chanticleers' linen was sacrosanct.
One night, at the beginning of December, when the first snow was lying on the ground, Dame Marigold, who had almost lost the power of sleep, was tossing wakefully in her bed. Her bedroom ran the whole length of the house, so one of its windows looked out on the lane, and suddenly she heard what sounded like low knocking on the front door. She sat up and listened—there it was again. Yes, someone was knocking at the door.
She sprang from bed, flung on a cloak and hurried downstairs, her heart beating violently.
With trembling fingers she drew the bolts and flung wide the door. A small, slight figure was cowering outside.
"Prunella!" she gasped. And with a sort of sob Prunella flung herself into her mother's arms.
For some minutes they stood crying and hugging each other, too profoundly moved for questions or explanations.
But they were roused by a scolding voice from the stairs: "Dame Marigold, I'm ashamed of you, that I am, not having more sense at your age than to keep her standing there when she must be half frozen, poor child! Come up to your room this minute, Miss Prunella, and no nonsense! I'll have your fire lighted and a warming-pan put in your bed."
It was Hempie, candle in hand, frowning severely from under the frills of an enormous nightcap. Prunella rushed at her, half laughing, half crying, and flung her arms round her neck.
For a few seconds Hempie allowed herself to be hugged, and then, scolding hard all the time, she chivvied her up to her room. And, when Prunella was finally settled in her warm bed, with an inexorable expression she strode in carrying a cup of some steaming infusion.
It was black currant tea, for the brewing of which Hempie was famous. And it had always been one of her grievances against Dame Marigold and Prunella that they detested the stuff, and refused to drink it, even when they had a bad cold. For it had always been loved by all true Chanticleers, from old Master Josiah downwards.
"Now, miss, you just drink that down, every drop of it," she said severely.
Prunella was too exhausted that night to tell them her adventures. But the next morning she gave a confused account of wanderings at the bottom of the sea, and how they had lost their way in a terrible marine jungle, out of which they had been guided by Master Nathaniel. It was evident that she had no very clear recollection of what had happened to her since her flight from Lud; or, rather, since "Professor Wisp" had given his first dancing lesson.
The other Crabapple Blossoms returned to their respective homes the same night as Prunella; and each gave a different account of their adventures. Moonlove Honeysuckle said they had danced wildly down the waste places of the sky, and then had been imprisoned in a castle in the moon; Viola Vigil said they had been chased by angry trees into the Dapple, where they had got entangled in the weeds, and could not extricate themselves—and so on. But on one point all the accounts agreed, namely, that it had been Master Nathaniel Chanticleer who had delivered them.
At first the Crabapple Blossoms felt as if they had awakened from an evil dream, but they soon found that it was a dream that had profoundly influenced their souls. Though they showed no further desire to run away and roam the hills, they were moody, silent, prone to attacks of violent weeping, and haunted by some nameless fear—strange melancholy denizens, in fact, of the comfortable, placid homes of their parents.
One would not have imagined that a daughter in this condition would have met with much sympathy from Master Ambrose Honeysuckle. Nevertheless, his tenderness and patience with Moonlove proved boundless. Night after night he sat by her holding her hand till she fell asleep, and by day he soothed her ravings, and in her quieter moments they would have long intimate talks together, such as they had never had before she ran away. And the result of these talks was that his stiff but fundamentally honest mind was beginning to creak on its hinges. And he would actually listen without protest when Moonlove expressed her conviction that although fairy fruit had robbed her of her peace of mind, nevertheless nothing but fairy fruit could restore it to her, and that at Miss Primrose Crabapple's she had either been given the wrong kind or not enough.
The reign of winter was now established, and Lud-in-the-Mist seemed at last to have settled down into its old peaceful rut.
Master Nathaniel had turned into "poor old Nat," and was to most people no more than a lovable ghost of the past. Indeed, Master Polydore was thinking of suggesting to Dame Marigold that two empty coffins should be placed in the Chanticleers' chapel bearing respectively the names of Nathaniel and Ranulph.
As for the Senate, it was very busy preparing for its annual banquet, which was celebrated every December in the Guildhall, to commemorate the expulsion of the Dukes; and it was kept fully occupied by such important questions as how many turkeys should be ordered and from what poulterers; which Senator was to have the privilege of providing the wine, and which the marzipan and ginger; and whether they would be justified in expending on goose liver and peacocks' hearts the sum left them in the will of a late linen-draper, to be devoted to the general welfare of the inhabitants of Lud-in-the-Mist.
But one morning a polished conceit of Master Polydore's concerning "that sweet and pungent root commonly known as ginger, a kindly snake who stings us that we may better enjoy the fragrant juice of the grape," was rudely interrupted by the sudden entry of Mumchance, his eyes almost starting out of his head with terror, with the appalling tidings that an army of Fairies had crossed the Debatable Hills, and that crowds of terrified peasants were pouring into Lud.
The news produced something like pandemonium in the Senate. Everyone began talking at once, and a dozen different schemes of defence were mooted, each one more senseless than the last.
Then Master Ambrose Honeysuckle rose to his feet. He was the man that carried most weight among his colleagues, and all eyes were turned to him expectantly.
In a calm, matter of fact voice, he began thus: "Senators of Dorimare! Before the entry of the Captain of the Yeomanry we were discussing what dessert we should have at our annual feast. It seems unnecessary to start a fresh subject of discussion before the previous one has been settled to our satisfaction. So, with your permission, I will return to the sweet and pungent (I think these were his Worship's well-chosen words) subject of dessert; for there is one item I should like to add to those that have already been suggested."
He paused, and then he said in a loud challenging voice, "Senators of Dorimare! I propose that for the first time since the foundation of our annual feast, we should partake at it of ... fairy fruit!"
His colleagues stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. Was this some ill-timed jest? But Ambrose was not given to jesting ... especially on serious occasions.
Then, with a certain rough poetry breaking through the artificial diction of the Senate, he began to speak of the events of the year that was nearly over, and the lessons to be learned from them. And the chief lessons, he said, were those of humility and faith.
He ended thus: "One of our proverbs says, 'Remember that the Dapple flows into the Dawl.' I have sometimes wondered, recently, whether we have ever really understood the true meaning of that proverb. Our ancestors built the town of Lud-in-the-Mist between these two rivers, and both have brought us their tribute. The tribute of the Dawl has been gold, and we have gladly accepted it. But the tribute of the Dapple we have ever spurned. The Dapple—our placid old friend, in whose waters we learned as lads the gentle art of angling—has silently, through the centuries, been bringing fairy fruit into Dorimare ... a fact that, to my mind, at least, proves that fairy fruit is as wholesome and necessary for man as the various other gifts brought for our welfare by our silent friends—the Dawl's gift of gold, the earth's gift of corn, the hills' gift of shelter and pasturage, and the trees' gift of grapes and apples and shade.
"And if all the gifts of Life are good, perhaps, too, are all the shapes she chooses to take, and which we cannot alter. The shape she has taken now for Dorimare is that of an invasion by our ancient foes. Why should we not make a virtue of necessity and throw our gates wide to them as friends?"
His colleagues, at first, expressed themselves as horrified. But perhaps they, too, though unknown to themselves, had been altered by recent events.
At any rate, this was one of the crises when the strongest man inevitably finds himself at the helm. And there could be no doubt that the strongest man in the Senate was Master Ambrose Honeysuckle.
When the Senate rose, he addressed the terrified populace from the market-place, with the result that before nightfall he had quieted the panic-stricken crowds and had persuaded the citizens, with the exception of such models of old-fashioned respectability as Ebeneezor Prim, to accept with calm passivity whatever the future might hold in store.
His two most ardent supporters were Sebastian Thug and the disreputable Bawdy Bess.
Only a few months ago what would he have said if someone had told him the day would come when he, Ambrose Honeysuckle, would turn demagogue, and, assisted by a rough sailor and a woman of the town, would be exhorting the citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist to throw wide their gates and welcome in the Fairies!
So, instead of repairing its walls and testing its cannon and laying in provision against a siege, Lud-in-the-Mist hoisted its flags and festooned its windows with wreaths of Duke Aubrey's ivy, and flung the west gate wide open; and a throng of silent, expectant people lined the streets and waited.
First came the sounds of wild sweet music, then the tramp of a myriad feet, and then, like hosts of leaves blown on the wind, the invading army came pouring into the town.
As he watched, Master Ambrose remembered the transfigured tapestry in the Guildhall, and the sense they had had of noisy, gaudy, dominant dreams flooding the streets and scattering reality in their wake.
Behind the battalions of mail-clad dead marched three gigantic old men, with long white beards reaching below their girdles. Their long stiff robes were embroidered in gold and jewels with strange emblems, and behind them were led sumpter mules laden with coffers of wrought gold. And the rumour passed through the waiting crowd that these were none other than the balsam-eating priests of the sun and moon.
And bringing up the rear on a great white charger was—Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, with Ranulph riding by his side.
The accounts of what took place immediately after the entry of the fairy army read more like legends than history. It would seem that the trees broke into leaf and the masts of all the ships in the bay into blossom; that day and night the cocks crowed without ceasing; that violets and anemones sprang up through the snow in the streets, and that mothers embraced their dead sons, and maids their sweethearts drowned at sea.
But one thing seems certain, and that is that the gold-wrought coffers contained the ancient offering of fairy fruit to Dorimare. And the coffers were of such miraculous capacity that there was enough and to spare, not only for the dessert of the Senate, but for that of every household in Lud-in-the-Mist.
You may, perhaps, have wondered why a man so full of human failings, and set in so unheroic a mould as Master Nathaniel Chanticleer should have been cast for so great a role. Yet the highest spiritual destinies are not always reserved for the strongest men, nor for the most virtuous ones.
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey's deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel as of old—whimsical, child-like, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one ... or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.
And, strange to say, far from being set up by his new honours, he felt oddly ashamed of them—it was almost as if he was for the first time running the gauntlet of his friends' eyes after having been afflicted by some physical disfigurement.
When things had returned again to their usual rut, Master Ambrose came to spend a quiet evening with Master Nathaniel.
They sat for some time in silence puffing at their pipes, and then Master Ambrose said, "Tell me what your theory is about Endymion Leer, Nat. He was a double-dyed villain, all right, I suppose?"
Master Nathaniel did not answer at once, and then he said thoughtfully, "I suppose so. I read the report of his defence, however, and his words seemed to me to ring true. But I think there was some evil lurking in his soul, and everything he touched was contaminated by it, even fairy fruit—even Duke Aubrey."
"And that spiritual sin he accused himself of ... what do you suppose it was?"
"I think," said Master Nathaniel slowly, "he may have mishandled the sacred objects of the Mysteries."
"What are these sacred objects, Nat?"
Master Nathaniel moved uneasily in his chair, and said, with an embarrassed little laugh, "Life and death, I suppose." He hated being asked about these sorts of things.
Master Ambrose sat for a few moments pondering, and then he said, "It was curious how in all his attacks on you he defeated his own ends."
"Yes," cried Master Nathaniel, with much more animation than he had hitherto shown, "that was really very curious. Everything he did produced exactly the opposite effect he had intended it should. He feared the Chanticleers, and wanted to be rid of them, so he gets Ranulph off to Fairyland, whence nobody had ever before returned. And he manages to get me so discredited that I have to leave Lud, and he thinks me safely out of the way. But, in reality, he was only bringing about his own downfall. I have to leave Lud, and so I go to the farm, and there I find old Gibberty's incriminating document. While the fact of Ranulph's having gone off yonder sends me after him, and that is why, I suppose, I come back as Duke Aubrey's deputy," and again he gave an embarrassed laugh; and then added dreamily, "It is useless to try and circumvent the Duke."
"He who rides the wind needs must go where his steed carries him," quoted Master Ambrose.
Master Nathaniel smiled, and for some minutes they puffed at their pipes in silence.
Then Master Nathaniel gave a reminiscent chuckle: "Those were queer months that we lived through, Ambrose!" he cried. "All of us, that's to say those of us who had parts to play, seemed to be living each others' dreams or dreaming each others' lives, whichever way you choose to put it, and the most incongruous things began to rhyme—apples and bleeding corpses and trees and ghosts. Yes, all our dreams got entangled. Leer makes a speech about men and trees, and I find the solution of the situation under a herm, which is half a man and half a tree, and you see the juice of fairy fruit and think that it is the dead bleeding—and so on. Yes, my adventures went on getting more and more like a dream till ... the climax," and he paused abruptly.
A long silence followed, broken at last by Master Ambrose. "Well, Nat," he said, "I think I've had a lesson in humility. I used to have as good an opinion of myself as most men, I think, but now I've learned that I'm a very ordinary sort of fellow, made of very inferior clay to you and my Moonlove—all the things that you know at first hand and I can only take on faith."
"Suppose, Ambrose, that what we know at first hand is only this—that there is nothing to know?" said Master Nathaniel a little sadly. Then he sank into a brown study, and Master Ambrose, thinking he wanted to be alone, stole quietly from the room.
Master Nathaniel sat gazing moodily into the fire; and his pipe went out without his noticing it. Then the door opened softly, and someone stole in and stood behind his chair. It was Dame Marigold. All she said was, "Funny old Nat!" but her voice had a husky tenderness. And then she knelt down beside him and took him into her soft warm arms. And a new hope was borne in upon Master Nathaniel that someday he would hear the Note again, and all would be clear.
I should like to conclude with a few words as to the fate of the various people who have appeared in these pages.
Hazel Gibberty married Sebastian Thug—and an excellent husband he made her. He gave up the sea and settled on his wife's farm. Mistress Ivy Peppercorn came and lived with them and every summer they had a visit from Master Nathaniel and Ranulph. Bawdy Bess left Lud at the time of Sebastian's marriage—out of pique, said the malicious.
Luke Hempen entered the Lud Yeomanry, where he did so well that when Mumchance retired he was elected Captain in his place.
Hempie lived to a ripe old age—long enough to tell her stories to Ranulph's children; nor had she any scruples about telling them her views on "neighbourliness." And when she died, as a tribute to her long and loving service, she was buried in the family chapel of the Chanticleers.
Mother Tibbs, after taking a conspicuous part in the wild revels which followed on the arrival of the fairy army, vanished for ever from Dorimare. Nor did anyone ever again see Portunus. But, from time to time, a wild red-haired youth would arrive uninvited, and having turned everything topsy-turvy with his pranks, would rush from the house, shouting "Ho! Ho! Hoh!"
By degrees the Crabapple Blossoms recovered their spirits. But they certainly did not grow up into the sort of young ladies their mothers had imagined they would when they first sent them to Miss Primrose Crabapple's Academy. They were never stinted of fairy fruit, for the Dapple continued to bring its tribute to Dorimare, adding thereby considerably to the wealth of the country. For, thanks to the sound practical sense of Master Ambrose, a new industry was started—that of candying fairy fruit, and exporting it to all the countries with which they trafficked, in pretty fancy boxes, the painted lids of which showed that art was creeping back to Dorimare.
As for Ranulph, when he grew up he wrote the loveliest songs that had been heard since the days of Duke Aubrey—songs that crossed the sea and were sung by lonely fishermen in the far North, and by indigo mothers crooning to their babies by the doors of their huts in the Cinnamon Isles.
Dame Marigold continued to smile, and to nibble marzipan with her cronies. But she used sometimes sadly to wonder whether Master Nathaniel had ever really come back from beyond the Debatable Hills; sometimes, but not always.
And Master Nathaniel himself? Whether he ever heard the Note again I cannot say. But in time he went, either to reap the fields of gillyflowers, or to moulder in the Fields of Grammary. And below his coffin in the family chapel a brass tablet was put up with this epitaph:
NATHANIEL CHANTICLEER
PRESIDENT OF THE GUILD OF MERCHANTSTHREE TIMES MAYOR OF LUD-IN-THE-MISTTO WHOM WAS GRANTED NO SMALL SHARE OFTHE PEACE AND PROSPERITYHE HELPED TO BESTOW ONHIS TOWN AND COUNTRY.
An epitaph not unlike those he used to con so wistfully in his visits to the Fields of Grammary.
And this is but another proof that the Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning! And with this final exhortation this book shall close.