Part 66 (1/2)

”Well, keep him drinking! We will see, we will see.” And he sent them off discomfited.

To explain all this we must retrograde a step. This very morning then, Margaret Brandt had met Jorian Ketel near her own door. He pa.s.sed her with a scowl. This struck her, and she remembered him.

”Stay,” said she. ”Yes! it is the good man who saved him. Oh! why have you not been near me since? And why have you not come for the parchments? Was it not true about the hundred crowns?”

Jorian gave a snort: but, seeing her face that looked so candid, began to think there might be some mistake. He told her he had come, and how he had been received.

”Alas!” said she, ”I knew nought of this. I lay at death's door.” She then invited him to follow her, and took him into the garden and showed him the spot where the parchments were buried. ”Martin was for taking them up, but I would not let him. _He_ put them there: and I said none should move them but you, who had earned them so well of him and me.”

”Give me a spade!” cried Jorian, eagerly. ”But stay! No; he is a suspicious man. You are sure they are there still?”

”I will openly take the blame if human hand hath touched them.”

”Then keep them but two hours more, I prithee, good Margaret,” said Jorian, and ran off to the Stadthouse of Tergou a joyful man.

The burgomaster jogged along towards Sevenbergen, with Jorian striding beside him, giving him a.s.surance that in an hour's time the missing parchments would be in his hand.

”Ah, master!” said he, ”lucky for us it wasn't a thief that took them.”

”Not a thief? not a thief? what call you him, then?”

”Well, saving your presence, I call him a jackdaw. This is jackdaw's work, if ever there was; 'take the thing you are least in need of, and hide it'--that's a jackdaw. I should know,” added Jorian, oracularly, ”for I was brought up along with a chough. He and I were born the same year, but he cut his teeth long before me, and, wow! but my life was a burden for years all along of him. If you had but a hole in your hose no bigger than a groat, in went his beak like a gimlet; and, for stealing, Gerard all over. What he wanted least, and any poor Christian wanted most, that went first. Mother was a notable woman, so, if she did but look round, away flew her thimble. Father lived by cordwaining, so about sunrise Jack went diligently off with his awl, his wax, and his twine.

After that, make your bread how you could! One day I heard my mother tell him to his face he was enough to corrupt half a dozen other children; and he only c.o.c.ked his eye at her, and next minute away with the nurseling shoe off his very foot. Now this Gerard is tarred with the same stick. The parchments are no more use to him than a thimble or an awl to Jack. He took 'em out of pure mischief and hid them, and you would never have found them but for me.”

”I believe you are right,” said Ghysbrecht, ”and I have vexed myself more than need.”

When they came to Peter's gate he felt uneasy.

”I wish it had been anywhere but here.”

Jorian rea.s.sured him.

”The girl is honest and friendly,” said he. ”She had nothing to do with taking them, I'll be sworn:” and he led him into the garden. ”There, master, if a face is to be believed, here they lie; and, see, the mould _is_ loose.”

He ran for a spade which was stuck up in the ground at some distance, and soon went to work and uncovered a parchment. Ghysbrecht saw it and thrust him aside and went down on his knees and tore it out of the hole.

His hands trembled and his face shone. He threw out parchment after parchment, and Jorian dusted them and cleaned them and shook them. Now, when Ghysbrecht had thrown out a great many, his face began to darken and lengthen, and, when he came to the last, he put his hands to his temples and seemed to be all amazed.

”What mystery lies here?” he gasped. ”Are fiends mocking me? Dig deeper!

There _must_ be another.”

Jorian drove the spade in and threw out quant.i.ties of hard mould. In vain. And even while he dug, his master's mood had changed.

”Treason! treachery!” he cried. ”You knew of this.”

”Knew what, master, in Heaven's name?”

”Caitiff, you knew there was another one worth all these twice told.”