The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

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 in the house 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 cocked his eye at her, and next minute away with the nurseling's 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 reassured 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 cleared 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 quantities 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.'

      “'Tis false,” cried Jorian, made suspicious by the other's suspicion. “'Tis a trick to rob me of my hundred crowns. Oh! I know you, burgomaster.” And Jorian was ready to whimper.

      A mellow voice fell on them both like oil upon the waves.

      “No, good man, it is not false, nor yet is it quite true: there was another parchment.”

      “There, there, there! Where is it?”

      “But,” continued Margaret calmly, “it was not a town record (so you have gained your hundred crowns, good man): it was but a private deed between the burgomaster here and my grandfather Flor—”

      “Hush, hush!”

      “—is Brandt.”

      “Where is it, girl? that is all we want to know.”

      “Have patience, and I shall tell you. Gerard read the title of it, and he said, 'This is as much yours as the burgomaster's,' and he put it apart, to read it with me at his leisure.”

      “It is in the house, then?” said the burgomaster, recovering his calmness.

      “No, sir,” said Margaret gravely, “it is not.” Then, in a voice that faltered suddenly, “You hunted—my poor Gerard—so hard—and so close-that you gave him—no time-to think of aught—but his life—and his grief. The parchment was in his bosom, and he hath ta'en it with him.”

      “Whither, whither?”

      “Ask me no more, sir. What right is yours to question me thus? It was for your sake, good man, I put force upon my heart, and came out here, and bore to speak at all to this hard old man. For, when I think of the misery he has brought on him and me, the sight of him is more than I can bear;” and she gave an involuntary shudder, and went slowly in, with her hand to her head, crying bitterly.

      Remorse for the past, and dread of the future—the slow, but, as he now felt, the inevitable future—avarice, and fear, all tugged in one short moment at Ghysbrecht's tough heart. He hung his head, and his arms fell listless by his sides. A coarse chuckle made him start round, and there stood Martin Wittenhaagen leaning on his bow, and sneering from ear to ear. At sight of the man and his grinning face, Ghysbrecht's worst passions awoke.

      “Ho! attach him, seize him, traitor and thief!” cried he. “Dog, thou shalt pay for all.”

      Martin, without a word, calmly thrust the duke's pardon under Ghysbrecht's nose. He looked, and had not a word to say. Martin followed up his advantage.

      “The duke and I are soldiers. He won't let you greasy burghers trample on an old comrade. He bade me carry you a message too.”

      “The duke send a message to me?”

      “Ay! I told him of your masterful doings, of your imprisoning Gerard for loving a girl; and says he, 'Tell him this is to be a king, not a burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more humble, or I'll hang him at his own door,'”

      (Ghysbrecht trembled: he thought the duke capable of the deed)

      “'as I hanged the burgomaster of Thingembob.' The duke could not mind which of you he had hung, or in what part; such trifles stick not in a soldier's memory; but he was sure he had hanged one of you for grinding poor folk, 'and I'm the man to hang another,' quoth the good duke.”

      These repeated insults from so mean a man, coupled with his invulnerability, shielded as he was by the duke, drove the choleric old man into a fit of impotent fury: he shook his fist at the soldier, and tried to threaten him, but could not speak for the rage and mortification that choked him: then he gave a sort of screech, and coiled himself up in eye and form like a rattlesnake about to strike; and spat furiously upon Martin's doublet.

      The thick-skinned soldier treated this ebullition with genuine contempt. “Here's a venomous old toad! he knows a kick from his foot would send him to his last home; and he wants me to cheat the gallows. But I have slain too many men in fair fight to lift limb against anything less than a man; and this I count no man. What is it, in Heaven's name? an old goat's-skin bag full o' rotten bones.”

      “My mule! my mule!” screamed Ghysbrecht.

      Jorian helped the old man up trembling in every joint. Once in the saddle, he seemed to gather in a moment unnatural vigour; and the figure that went flying to Tergou was truly weird-like and terrible: so old and wizened the face; so white and reverend the streaming hair; so baleful the eye; so fierce the fury which shook the bent frame that went spurring like mad; while the quavering voice yelled, “I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. All of them. All!—all!—all!”

      The black sheep sat disconsolate amidst the convivial crew, and eyed Hans Memling's wallet. For more ease he had taken it off, and flung it on the table. How readily they could have slipped out that letter and put in another. For the first time in their lives they were sorry they had not learned to write, like their brother.

      And now Hans began to talk of going, and the brothers agreed in a whisper to abandon their project for the time. They had scarcely resolved this, when Dierich Brower stood suddenly in the doorway, and gave them a wink.

      They went out to him. “Come to the burgomaster with all speed,” said he,

      They found Ghysbrecht seated at a table, pale and agitated. Before him lay Margaret Van Eyck's handwriting. “I have written what you desired,” said he. “Now for