









                          Chapter V
                              
                     Ranulph Goes to the
                    Widow Gibberty's Farm


But Endymion Leer was right.  Reason is only a drug, and its
effects cannot be permanent.  Master Nathaniel was soon
suffering from life-sickness as much as ever.
   For one thing, there was no denying that in the voice of
Endymion Leer singing to Ranulph, he had once again heard
the Note; and the fact tormented him, reason with himself as
he might.
   But it was not sufficient to make him distrust Endymion
Leer -- one might hear the Note, he was convinced, in the
voices of the most innocent; just as the mocking cry of the
cuckoo can rise from the nest of the lark or the
hedgesparrow.  But he was certainly not going to let him
take Ranulph away to that western farm.
   And yet the boy was longing, nay craving to go, for
Endymion Leer, when he had been left alone with him in the
parlour that morning, had fired his imagination with its
delights.
   When Master Nathaniel questioned him as to what other
things Endymion Leer had talked about, he said that he had
asked him a great many questions about the stranger in green
he had seen dancing, and had made him repeat to him several
times what exactly he had said to him.
   "Then," said Ranulph, "he said he would sing me well and
happy.  And I was just beginning to feel so wonderful, when
you came bursting in, father."
   "I'm sorry, my boy," said Master Nathaniel.  "But why did
you first of all scream so and beg not to be left alone with
him?"
   Ranulph wriggled and hung his head.  "I suppose it was
like the cheese," he said sheepishly.  "But, father, I want
to go to that farm.  *Please* let me go."
   For several weeks Master Nathaniel steadily refused his
consent.  He kept the boy with him as much as his business
and his official duties would permit, trying to find for him
occupations and amusements that would teach him a "different
tune."  For Endymion Leer's words, in spite of their having
had so little effect on his spiritual condition, had
genuinely and permanently impressed him.  However, he could
not but see that Ranulph was daily wilting and that his talk
was steadily becoming more fantastic; and he began to fear
that his own objection to letting him go to the farm sprang
merely from a selfish desire to keep him with him. 
   Hempie, oddly enough, was in favour of his going.  The
old woman's attitude to the whole affair was a curious one. 
Nothing would make her believe that it was *not* fairy fruit
that Willy Wisp had given him.  She said she had suspected
it from the first, but to have mentioned it would have done
no good to anyone.
   "If it wasn't *that* what was it then?" she would ask
scornfully.  "For what is Willy Wisp himself?  He left his
place -- and his wages not paid, too -- during the twelve
nights of Yuletide.  And when dog or servant leaves, sudden
like, at *that* time, we all know what to think."
   "And what are we to think, Hempie?" enquired Master
Nathaniel.
   At first the old woman would only shake her head and look
mysterious.  But finally she told him that it was believed
in the country districts that, should there be a fairy among
the servants, he was bound to return to his own land on one
of the twelve nights after the winter solstice; and should
there be among the dogs one that belonged to Duke Aubrey's
pack, during these nights he would howl and howl, till he
was let out of his kennel, and then vanish into the darkness
and never be seen again.
   Master Nathaniel grunted with impatience.
   "Well, it was you dragged the words from my lips, and
though you *are* the Mayor and the Lord High Seneschal, you
can't come lording it over my thoughts... I've a right to
them!" cried Hempie, indignantly.
   "My good Hempie, if you really believe the boy has
eaten... a certain thing, all I can say is you seem very
cheerful about it," growled Master Nathaniel.
   "And what good would it do my pulling a long face and
looking like one of the old statues in the fields of
Grammary I should like to know?" flashed back Hempie.  And
then she added, with a meaning nod, "Besides, whatever
happens, no harm can ever come to a Chanticleer.  While Lud
stands the Chanticleers will thrive.  So come rough, come
smooth, you won't find me worrying.  But if I was you,
Master Nat, I'd give the boy his way.  There's nothing like
his own way for a sick person -- be he child or grown man. 
His own way to a sick man is what grass is to a sick dog."
   Hempie's opinion influenced Master Nathaniel more than he
would like to admit; but it was a talk he had with
Mumchance, the captain of the Lud Yeomanry, that finally
induced him to let Ranulph have his way.
   The Yeomanry combined the duties of a garrison with those
of a police corps, and Master Nathaniel had charged their
captain to try and find the whereabouts of Willy Wisp.
   It turned out that the rogue was quite familiar to the
Yeomanry, and Mumchance confirmed what Endymion Leer had
said about his having turned the town upside down with his
pranks during the few months he had been in Master
Nathaniel's service.  But since his disappearance at
Yule-tide, nothing had been seen or heard of him in
Lud-in-the-Mist, and Mumchance could find no traces of him.
   Master Nathaniel fumed and grumbled a little at the 
inefficiency of the Yeomanry; but, at the bottom of his 
heart he was relieved.  He had a lurking fear that Hempie
was right and Endymion Leer was wrong, and that it had
really been fairy fruit after all that Ranulph had eaten. 
But it is best to let sleeping facts lie.  And he feared
that if confronted with Willy Wisp the facts might wake up
and begin to bite.  But what was this that Mumchance was
telling him?
   It would seem that during the past months there had been
a marked increase in the consumption of fairy fruit -- in
the low quarters of town, of course.
   "It's got to be stopped, Mumchance, d'ye hear?" cried
Master Nathaniel hotly.  "And what's more, the smugglers
must be caught and clapped into gaol, every mother's son of
them.  This has gone on too long."
   "Yes, your Worship," said Mumchance stolidly, "it went on
in the time of my predecessor, if your Worship will pardon
the expression" (Mumchance was very fond of using long
words, but he had a feeling that it was presumption to use
them before his betters), "and in the days of *his*
predecessor... and way back.  And it's no good trying to be
smarter than our forebears.  I sometimes think we might as
well try and catch the Dapple and clap it into prison as
them smugglers.  But these are sad times, your Worship, sad
times -- the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every
little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty
little urchin thinking he can give impudence to his
betters!  You see, your Worship, I sees and hears a good
deal in my way of business, if you'll pardon the
expression... but the things one's eyes and ears tells one,
they ain't in words, so to speak, and its not easy to tell
other folks what they say... no more than the geese can tell
you how they know it's going to rain," and he laughed
apologetically.  "But I shouldn't be surprised -- no, I
shouldn't, *if there wasn't something brewing.*"
   "By the Sun, Moon, and Stars, Mumchance, don't speak in
riddles!" cried Master Nathaniel irritably.  "What d'ye
mean?"
   Mumchance shifted uneasily from one foot to the other:
"Well, your Worship," he began, "it's this way.  Folks are
beginning to take a wonderful interest in Duke Aubrey
again.  Why, all the girls are wearing bits of tawdry
jewelry with his picture, and bits of imitation ivy and
squills stuck in their bonnets, and there ain't a poor
street in this town where all the cockatoos that the sailors
bring don't squawk at your from their cages that the Duke
will come to his own again... or some such rubbish, and..."
   "My good Mumchance!" cried Master Nathaniel, impatiently,
"Duke Aubrey was a rascally sovereign who died more than two
hundred years ago.  You don't believe he's going to come to
life again, do you?"
   "I don't say that he will, your Worship," answered
Mumchance evasively.  "But all I know is that when Lud
begins talking about him, it generally bodes trouble.  I
remember how old Tripsand, he who was Captain of the
Yeomanry when I was a little lad, used always to say that
there was a deal of that sort of talk before the great
drought." 
   "Fiddlesticks!" cried Master Nathaniel.
   Mumchance's theories about Duke Aubrey he immediately
dismissed from his mind.  But he was very much disturbed by
what he had said about fairy fruit, and began to think that
Endymion Leer had been right in maintaining that Ranulph
would be further from temptation at Swan-on-the-Dapple than
in Lud.
   He had another interview with Leer, and the long and
short of it was that it was decided that as soon as Dame
Marigold and Hempie could get Ranulph ready he should set
out for the widow Gibberty's farm.  Endymion Leer said that
he wanted to look for herbs in the neighbourhood, and would
be very willing to escort him there.
   Master Nathaniel, of course, would much have preferred to
have gone with him himself; but it was against the law for
the Mayor to leave Lud, except on circuit.
   In his stead, he decided to send Luke Hempen, old
Hempie's grand-nephew.  He was a lad of about twenty, who
worked in the garden and had always been the faithful slave
of Ranulph.
   On a beautiful sunny morning, about a week later,
Endymion Leer came riding up to the Chanticleers' to fetch
Ranulph, who was impatiently awaiting him, booted and
spurred, and looking more like his old self than he had done
for months.
   Before Ranulph mounted, Master Nathaniel, blinking away a
tear or two, kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "The
black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as
brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig.  And if you want
me, just send a word by Luke, and I'll be with you as fast
as horses can gallop -- law or no law."  And from her
latticed window at the top of the house appeared the head
and shoulders of old Hempie in her nightcap, shaking her
fist, and crying, "Now then, young Luke, if you don't take
care of my boy -- you'll *catch it!*"
   Many a curious glance was cast at the little cavalcade as
they trotted down the cobbled streets.  Miss Lettice and
Miss Rosie Prim, the two buxom daughters of the leading
watchmaker who were returning from their marketing
considered that Ranulph looked sweetly pretty on horseback. 
"Though," added Miss Rosie, "they do say he's a bit...
*queer*, and it *is* a pity, I must say, that he's got the
Mayor's ginger hair."
   "Well, Rosie," retorted Miss Lettice, "at least he
doesn't cover it up with a black wig, like a certain
apprentice I know!"
   And Rosie laughed, and tossed her head.
   A great many women, as they watched them pass, called
down blessings on the head of Endymion Leer; adding that it
was a pity that *he* was not Mayor and High Seneschal.  And
several rough-looking men scowled ominously at Ranulph.  But
Mother Tibbs, the half-crazy old washerwoman, who, in spite
of her forty summers danced more lightly than any maiden,
and was, in consequence, in great request as a partner at 
those tavern dances that played so great a part in the life
of the masses in Lud-in-the-Mist -- crazy, disreputable,
Mother Tibbs, with her strangely noble innocent face, tossed
him a nosegay and cried in her sing-song penetrating voice,
"Cockadoodle doo!  Cockadoodle doo!  The little master's
bound for the land where the eggs are all gold!"
   But no one ever paid any attention to what Mother Tibbs
might say.
   
   Nothing worth mentioning occurred during their journey to
Swan; except the endless pleasant things of the country in
summer.  There were beech spinneys, wading up steep banks
through their own dead leaves; fields all blurred with
meadow-sweet and sorrel; brown old women screaming at their
goats; acacias in full flower, and willows blown by the wind
into white blossom.
   From time to time, terrestrial comets -- the blue flash
of a kingfisher, the red whisk of a fox -- would furrow and
thrill the surface of the earth with beauty.
   And in the distance, here and there, standing motionless
and in complete silence by the flowing Dapple, were
red-roofed villages -- the least vain of all fair things,
for they never looked at their own reflexion in the water,
but gazed unblinkingly at the horizon.
   And there were ruined castles covered with ivy -- the
badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the
ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of
amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot
with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets.  And the
round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly
encrusted in the sky that, to get to their other side, one
would have to hew out a passage through the celestial
marble.
   And the sun would set, and then our riders could watch
the actual process of colour fading from the world.  Was
that tree still *really* green, or was it only that they
were remembering how a few seconds ago it had been green?
   And the nymph whom all travellers pursue and none has
ever yet caught -- the white high-road, glimmered and
beckoned to them through the dusk.
   All these things, however, were familiar sights to any
Ludite.  But on the third day (for Ranulph's sake they were
taking the journey in easy stages) things began to look
different -- especially the trees; for instead of acacias,
beeches, and willows -- familiar living things for ever
murmuring their secret to themselves -- there were pines and
liege-oaks and olives.  Inanimate works of art they seemed
at first and Ranulph exclaimed, "Oh, look at the funny
trees!  They are like the old statues of dead people in the
Fields of Grammary!"
   But, as well, they were like an old written tragedy.  For
if human, or superhuman, experience, and the tragic clash of
personality can be expressed by plastic shapes, then one
might half believe that these tortured trees had been bent
by the wind into the spiritual shape of some old drama. 
   Pines and olives, however, cannot grow far away from the
sea.  And surely the sea lay to the east of Lud-in-the-Mist,
and with each mile they were getting further away from it?
   It was the sea beyond the Hills of the Elfin Marches --
the invisible sea of Fairyland -- that caused these pines
and olives to flourish.
   
   It was late in the afternoon when they reached the
village of Swan-on-the-Dapple -- a score of houses
straggling round a triangle of unreclaimed common, on which
grew olives and stunted fruit-trees, and which was used as
the village rubbish heap.  In the distance were the low,
pine-covered undulations of the Debatable Hills -- a fine
unchanging background for the changing colours of the
seasons.  Indeed, they lent a dignity and significance to
everything that grew, lay, or was enacted, against them; so
that the little children in their blue smocks who were
playing among the rubbish on the dingy common as our
cavalcade rode past, seemed to be performing against the
background of Destiny some tremendous action, similar to the
one expressed by the shapes of the pines and olives.
   When they had left the village, they took a cart-track
that branched off from the high-road to the right.  It led
into a valley, the gently sloping sides of which were
covered with vine-yards and corn-fields.  Sometimes their
path led through a little wood of liege-oaks with trunks,
where the bark had been stripped, showing as red as blood,
and everywhere there were short, wiry, aromatic shrubs,
beset by myriads of bees.
   Every minute the hills seemed to be drawing nearer, and
the pines with which they were covered began to stand out
from the carpet of heath in a sort of coagulated relief, so
that they looked like a thick green scum of watercress on a
stagnant purple pond.
   At last they reached the farm -- a fine old manor-house,
standing among a cluster of red-roofed barns, and supported,
heraldically, on either side by two magnificent plane-trees,
with dappled trunks of tremendous girth.
   They were greeted by the barking of five or six dogs, and
this brought the widow hurrying out accompanied by a pretty
girl of about seventeen whom she introduced as her
granddaughter Hazel.
   Though she must have been at least sixty by then, the
widow Gibberty was still a strikingly handsome woman --
tall, imposing-looking, and with hair that must once have
had as many shades of red and brown as a bed of wallflowers
smouldering in the sun.
   Then a couple of men came up and led away the horses, and
the travellers were taken up to their rooms.
   As befitted the son of the High Seneschal, the one given
to Ranulph was evidently the best.  It was large and
beautifully proportioned, and in spite of its homely
chintzes and the plain furniture of a farmhouse, in spite
even of the dried rushes laid on the floor instead of a
carpet, it bore unmistakable traces of the ancient
magnificence when the house had belonged to nobles instead
of farmers. 
   For instance, the ceiling was a fine specimen of the flat
enamelled ceilings that belonged to the Duke Aubrey period
in domestic architecture.  There was just such a ceiling in
Dame Marigold's bedroom in Lud.  She had stared up at it
when in travail with Ranulph -- just as all the mothers of
the Chanticleers had done in the same circumstances -- and
its colours and pattern had become inextricably confused
with her pain and delirium.
   Endymion Leer was put next to Ranulph, and Luke was given
a large pleasant room in the attic.
    Ranulph was not in the least tired by his long ride, he
said.  His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and when
the widow had left him alone with Luke, he gave two or three
skips of glee, and cried, "I do *love* this place, Luke."
   At six o'clock a loud bell was rung outside the house,
presumably to summon the labourers to supper; and, as the
widow had told them it would be in the kitchen, Ranulph and
Luke, both feeling very hungry, went hurrying down.
   It was an enormous kitchen, running the whole length of
the house; in the olden days it had been the banqueting
hall.  It was solidly stone-vaulted, and the great chimney
place was also of stone, and decorated in high-relief with
the skulls and flowers and arabesques of leaves ubiquitous
in the art of Dorimare.  It was flanked by giant fire-dogs
of copper.  The floor was tiled with a mosaic of brown and
red and grey-blue flag-stones.
   Down the centre of the room ran a long narrow table laid
with pewter plates and mugs, for the labourers and maid
servants who came flocking in, their faces shining from
recent soap and scrubbing, and stood about in groups at the
lower end of the room, grinning and bashful from the
presence of company.  According to the good old yeoman
custom they had their meals with their masters.
   It was a most delicious supper -- a great ham with the
aromatic flavour of wood-smoke, eaten with pickled cowslips;
brawn; a red-deer pie, and, in honour of the distinguished
guests, a fat roast swan.  The wine was from the widow's own
grapes and was flavoured with honey and blackberries.
   Most of the talking was done by the widow and Endymion
Leer.  He was asking her if many trout had been caught that
summer in the Dapple, and what were their markings.  And she
told him that a salmon had recently been landed weighing ten
pounds.
   Ranulph, who had been munching away in silence, suddenly
looked up at them, with that little smile of his that people
always found a trifle disconcerting.
   "That isn't *real* talk," he said.  "That isn't the way
you really talk to each other.  That's only pretence talk."
   The widow looked very surprised and very much annoyed. 
But Endymion Leer laughed heartily and asked him what he
meant by "*real* talk;" Ranulph, however, would not be
drawn.
   But Luke Hempen, in a dim inarticulate way, understood
what he meant.  The conversation between the widow and the
doctor had *not* rung true; it was almost as if their words
had a double meaning known only to themselves. 
   A few minutes later, a wizened old man with very bright
eyes came into the room and sat down at the lower end of the
table.  And then Ranulph really did give everyone a fright,
for he stopped eating, and for a few seconds stared at him
in silence.  Then he gave a piercing scream.
   All eyes turned toward him in amazement.  But he sat as
if petrified, his eyes round and staring, pointing at the
old man.
   "Come, come, young fellow!" cried Endymion Leer, sharply;
"what's the meaning of this?"
   "What ails you, little master?" cried the widow.
   But he continued pointing in silence at the old man, who
was leering and smirking and ogling, in evident delight at
being the centre of attention.
   "He's scared by Portunus, the weaver," tittered the
maids.
   And the words "Portunus," "old Portunus the weaver," were
bandied from mouth to mouth down the two sides of the table.
   "Yes, Portunus, the weaver," cried the widow, in a loud
voice, a hint of menace in her eye.  "And who, I should like
to know, does not love Portunus, the weaver?"
   The maids hung their heads, the men sniggered
deprecatingly.
   "Well?" challenged the widow.
   Silence.
   "And who," she continued indignantly, "is the handiest
most obliging fellow to be found within twenty miles?"
   She glared down the table, and then repeated her
question.
   As if compelled by her eye, the company murmured
"Portunus."
   "And if the cheeses won't curdle, or the butter won't
come, or the wine in the vats won't get a good head, who
comes to the rescue?"
   "Portunus," murmured the company.
   "And who is always ready to lend a helping hand to the
maids -- to break or bolt hemp, to dress flax, or to spin? 
And when their work is over to play them tunes on his
fiddle?"
   "Portunus," murmured the company.
   Suddenly Hazel raised her eyes from her plate and they
were sparkling with defiance and anger.
   "And who," she cried shrilly, "sits by the fire when he
thinks no one is watching him roasting little live frogs and
eating them?  Portunus."
    With each word her voice rose higher, like a soaring
bird.  But at the last word it was as if the bird when it
had reached the ceiling suddenly fell down dead.  And Luke
saw her flinch under the cold indignant stare of the widow.
   And he had noticed something else as well.
   It was the custom in Dorimare, in the houses of the
yeomanry and the peasantry, to hang a bunch of dried fennel
over the door of every room; for fennel was supposed to have
the power of keeping the Fairies.  And when Ranulph had
given his eerie scream, Luke had, as instinctively as in
similar circumstances a mediaeval papist would have made the
sign of the Cross, glanced towards the door to catch a
reassuring glimpse of the familiar herb. 
   But there was no fennel hanging over the door of the
widow Gibberty.
   The men grinned, the maids tittered at Hazel's outburst;
and then there was an awkward silence.
   In the meantime, Ranulph seemed to have recovered from
his fright and was going on stolidly with his supper, while
the widow was saying to him reassuringly, "Mark my words,
little master, you'll get to love Portunus as much as we all
do.  Trust Portunus for knowing where the trout rise and
where all the birds' nests are to be found... eh, Portunus?"
   And Portunus chuckled with delight and his bright eyes
twinkled.
   "Why," the widow continued, "I have known him these
twenty years.  He's the weaver in these parts, and goes the
round from farm to farm, and the room with the loom is
always called `Portunus' Parlour.'  And there isn't a
wedding or a merrymaking within twenty miles where he
doesn't play the fiddle."
   Luke, whose perceptions owing to the fright he had just
had were unusually alert, noticed that Endymion Leer was
very silent, and that his face as he watched Ranulph was
puzzled and a little anxious.
   When supper was over the maids and labourers vanished,
and so did Portunus; but the three guests sat on, listening
to the pleasant whirr of the widow's and Hazel's
spinning-wheels, saying but little, for the long day in the
open air had made all three of them sleepy.
   At eight o'clock a little scrabbling noise was heard at
the door.  "That's the children," said Hazel, and she went
and opened it, upon which three or four little boys came
bashfully in from the dusk.
   "Good evening, my lads," said the widow, genially.  "Come
for your bread and cheese... eh?"
   The children grinned and hung their heads, abashed by the
sight of three strangers.
   "The little lads of the village, Master Chanticleer, take
it in turn to watch our cattle all night," said the widow to
Ranulph.  "We keep them some miles away along the valley
where there is good pasturage, and the herdsman likes to
come back to his own home at night."
   "And these little boys are going to be out *all night*?"
asked Ranulph in an awed voice.
   "That they are!  And a fine time they'll have of it too. 
They build themselves little huts out of branches and light
fires in them.  Oh, they enjoy themselves."
   The children grinned from ear to ear; and when Hazel had
provided each of them with some bread and cheese they
scuttled off into the gathering dusk.
   "I'd like to go some night, too," said Ranulph.
   The widow was beginning to expostulate against the idea
of young Master Chanticleer's spending the night out of
doors with cows and village children, when Endymion Leer
said, decidedly, "That's all nonsense!  I don't want my
patient coddled... eh! Ranulph?  I see no reason why he
shouldn't go some night if it amuses him.  But wait till the
nights are warmer." 
   He paused just a second, and added, "towards *Midsummer,*
let us say."
   They sat on a little longer; saying but little, yawning a
great deal.  And then the widow suggested that they should
all go off to bed.
   There were home-made tallow candles provided for
everyone, except Ranulph, whose social importance was
emphasised by a wax one from Lud.
   Endymion Leer lit it for him, and then held it at arm's
length and contemplated its flame, his head on one side,
eyes twinkling.
   "Thrice blessed little herb!" he began in a whimsical
voice.  "Herb o' *grease,* with thy waxen stem and blossom
of flame!  Thou art more potent against spells and terrors
and the invisible menace than fennel or dittany or rue. 
Hail! antidote to the deadly nightshade!  Blossoming in the
darkness, thy virtues are heartease and quiet sleep.  Sick
people bless thee, and women in travail, and people with
haunted minds, and all children."
   "Don't be a buffoon, Leer," said the widow roughly; in
quite a different voice from the one of bluff courtesy in
which she had hitherto addressed him.  To an acute observer
it would have suggested that they were in reality more
intimate than they cared to show.
   
   For the first time in his life Luke Hempen had difficulty
in getting off to sleep.
   His great-aunt had dinned into him for the past week,
with many a menacing shake of her old fist, that should
anything happen to Master Ranulph she would hold him, Luke,
responsible, and even before leaving Lud the honest, but by
no means heroic, lad, had been in somewhat of a panic; and
the various odd little incidents that had taken place that
evening were not of a nature to reassure him.
   Finally he could stand it no longer.  So up he got, lit
his candle, and crept down the attic stairs and along the
corridor to Ranulph's room.
   Ranulph, too, was wide awake.  He had not put out his
candle, and was lying staring up at the fantastic ceiling.
   "What do you want, Luke?" he cried peevishly.  "Why won't
anyone ever leave me alone?"
   "I was just wondering if you were all right, sir," said
Luke apologetically.
   "Of course I am.  Why shouldn't I be?" and Ranulph gave
an impatient little plunge in his bed.
   "Well, I was just wondering, you know."
   Luke paused; and then said imploringly, "Please, Master
Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper
time when that doitered old weaver came in.  You gave me
quite a turn, screaming like that."
   "Ah, Luke!  Wouldn't you like to know!" teased Ranulph.
   Finally he admitted that when he had been a small child
he had frequently seen Portunus in his dreams, "And that's
rather frightening, you know, Luke."
   Luke, much relieved, admitted that he supposed it was. 
He himself was not given to dreaming; nor did he take
seriously the dreams of others. 
   Ranulph noticed his relief; and rather an impish
expression stole into his eyes.
   "But there's something else, Luke," he said.  "Old
Portunus, you know, is a dead man."
   This time Luke was really alarmed.  Was his charge going
off his head?
   "Get along with you, Master Ranulph!" he cried, in a
voice that he tried to make jocose.
   "All right, Luke, you needn't believe it unless you
like," said Ranulph.  "Good night, I'm off to sleep."
   And he blew out his candle and turned his back on Luke,
who, thus dismissed, must needs return to his own bed, where
he soon fell fast asleep.
