









                         Chapter XVI

                 The Widow Gibberty's Trial


The following day, with all the masquerading that the Law
delights in, Master Nathaniel was pronounced in the Senate
to be dead.  His robes of office were taken off him, and
they were donned by Master Polydore Vigil, the new Mayor. 
As for Master Nathaniel -- was wrapped in a shroud, laid on
a bier and carried to his home by four of the Senators, the
populace lining the streets and greeting the mock obsequies
with catcalls and shouts of triumph.
   But the ceremony over, when Master Ambrose, boiling with
indignation at the outrage, came to visit his friend, he
found a very cheerful corpse who greeted him with a smack on
the back and a cry of "Never say die, Brosie!  I've
something here that should interest you," and he thrust into
his hand an open in-folio.
   "What's this?" asked the bewildered Master Ambrose.
   There was a certain solemnity in Master Nathaniel's voice
as he replied, "It's the Law, Ambrose -- the homoeopathic
antidote that our forefathers discovered to delusion.  Sit
down this very minute and read that trial through."
   As Master Ambrose knew well, it was useless trying to
talk to Nat about one thing when his mind was filled with
another.  Besides, his curiosity was aroused, for he had
come to realize that Nat's butterfly whims were sometimes
the disguise of shrewd and useful intuitions.  So, through
force of long habit, growling out a protest about this being
no time for tomfoolery and rubbish, he settled down to read
the volume at the place where Master Nathaniel had opened
it, namely, at the account of the trial of the widow
Gibberty for the murder of her husband.
   The plaintiff, as we have seen, was a labourer, Diggory
Carp by name, who had been in the employ of the late
farmer.  He said he had been suddenly dismissed by the
defendant just after harvest, when it was not easy to find
another job.
   No reason was given for his dismissal, so Diggory went to
the farmer himself, who, he said, had always been a kind and
just master, to beg that he might be kept on.  The farmer
practically admitted that there was no reason for his
dismissal except that the mistress had taken a dislike to
him.  "Women are kittle cattle, Diggory," he had said, with
an apologetic laugh, "and it's best humouring them.  Though
it's hard on the folks they get their knife into.  So I fear
it will be best for every one concerned that you should
leave my service, Diggory." 
   But he gave him a handful of florins over and above his
wages, and told him he might take a sack of lentils from the
granary -- if he were careful that the mistress did not get
wind of it.
   Now, Diggory had a shrewd suspicion as to why the
defendant wanted to get rid of him.  Though she was little
more than a girl -- she was the farmer's second wife and
more like his daughter's elder sister than her stepdame --
she had the reputation of being as staid and sensible as a
woman of forty.  But Diggory knew better.  He had discovered
that she had a lover.  One evening he had come on her in the
orchard, lying in the arms of a young foreigner, called
Christopher Pugwalker, a herbalist, who had first appeared
in the neighbourhood just before the great drought.
   "And from that time on," said Diggory, "she had got her
knife into me, and everything I did was wrong.  And I
believe she hadn't a moment's peace till she'd got rid of
me.  Though, if she'd only known, I was no blab, and not one
for blaming young blood and a wife half the age of her
husband."
   So he and his wife and his children were turned out on
the world.
   The first night they camped out in a field, and when they
had lighted a fire Diggory opened the sack that, with the
farmer's permission, he had taken from the granary, in order
that his wife might make them some lentil soup for supper. 
But lo and behold! instead of lentils the sack contained
fruit -- fruit that Diggory Carp, as a west countryman, born
and bred near the Elfin Marches, recognised at the first
glance to be of a kind that he would not dream of touching
himself or of allowing his wife and children to touch... the
sack, in fact, contained fairy fruit.  So they buried it in
the field, for, as Diggory said, "Though the stuff be poison
for men, they do say as how it's a mighty fine manure for
the crops."
   For a week or so they tramped the country, living from
hand to mouth.  Sometimes Diggory would earn a little by
doing odd jobs for the farmers, or by playing the fiddle at
village weddings, for Diggory, it would seem, was a noted
fiddler.
   But with the coming of winter they began to feel the
pinch of poverty, and his wife bethought her of the trade of
basket-making she had learned in her youth; and, as they
were were camping at the time at the place where grew the
best osiers for the purpose, she determined to see if her
fingers had retained their old cunning.  As the sap of these
particular osiers was a deadly poison, she would not allow
the children to help her to gather them.
   So she set to and make wicker urns in which the farmers'
wives could keep their grain in winter, and baskets of fancy
shapes for lads to give to their sweethearts to hold their
ribbands and fal-lals.  The children peddled them about the
countryside, and thus they managed to keep the pot boiling.
   The following summer, shortly before harvest, Diggory's
eldest girl went to try and sell some baskets in the village
of Swan.  There she met the defendant, whom she asked to 
look at her wares, relying on not being recognised as a
daughter of Diggory's, through having been in service at
another farm when her father was working at the Gibbertys'.
   The defendant seemed pleased with the baskets, bought two
or three, and got into talk with the girl about the
basket-making industry, in the course of which she learned
that the best osiers for the purpose were very poisonous. 
Finally she asked the girl to bring her a bundle of the
osiers in question, as making baskets, she said, would make
a pleasant variety, of an evening, from the eternal
spinning; and in the course of a few days the girl brought
her, as requested, a bundle of the osiers, and was well paid
for them.
   Not long afterwards came the news that the farmer
Gibberty had died suddenly in the night, and with it was
wafted the rumour of foul play.  There was an old custom in
that part of the country that whenever there was a death in
the house all the inmates should march in procession past
the corpse.  It was really a sort of primitive inquest, for
it was believed that in the case of foul play the corpse
would bleed at the nose as the murderer passed it.  This
custom, said Diggory, was universally observed in that part
of the country, even in cases as free from all suspicion as
those of women dying in child-bed.  And in all the taverns
and farmhouses of the neighbourhood it was being whispered
that the corpse of the farmer Gibberty, on the defendant's
walking past it, had bled copiously, and when Christopher
Pugwalker's turn had come to pass it, it had bled a second
time.
   And knowing what he did, Diggory Carp came to feel that
it was his duty to lodge an accusation against the widow.
   His two reasons, then, for thinking her guilty were that
the corpse had bled when she passed it, and that she had
bought from his daughter osiers the sap of which was
poisonous.  The motive for the crime he found in her having
a young lover, whom she wished should stand in her dead
husband's shoes.  It was useless for the defendant to deny
that Pugwalker was her lover -- the fact had for months been
the scandal of the neighbourhood, and she had finally lost
all sense of shame and had actually had him to lodge in the
farm for several months before her husband's death.  This
was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by the witnesses
summoned by Diggory.
   As for the bleeding of the corpse: vulgar superstitions
did not fall within the cognizance of the Law, and the widow
ignored it in her defence.  However, with regard to that
other vulgar superstition to which the plaintiff had
alluded, fairy fruit, she admitted, in passing, that very
much against her wishes her late husband had sometimes used
it as manure -- though she had never discovered how he
procured it.
   As to the osiers -- she allowed that she had bought a
bundle from the plaintiff's daughter; but that it was for no
sinister purpose she was able conclusively to prove.  For
she summoned various witnesses -- among others the midwife
from the village, who was always called in in cases of 
sickness -- who had been present during the last hours of
the farmer, and who had been present during the last hours
of the farmer, and who all of them swore that his death had
been a painless one.  And various physicians, who were
summoned as expert witnesses, all maintained that the victim
of the poisonous sap of osiers always died in agony.
   Then she turned the tables on the plaintiff. She proved
that Diggory's dismissal had been neither sudden nor unjust;
for, owing to his thieving propensities, he had often been
threatened with it by her late husband, and several of the
farm-servants testified to the truth of her words.
   As to the handful of florins and the sack of lentils, all
she could say was that it was not like the farmer to load a
dishonest servant with presents.  But nothing had been said
about two sacks of corn, a pig, and a valuable hen and her
brood, which had disappeared simultaneously with the
departure of the plaintiff.  Her husband, she said, had been
very angry about it, and had wanted to have Diggory pursued
and clapped into gaol; but she had persuaded him to be
merciful.
   The long and the short of it was that the widow left the
court without a stain on her character, and that a ten
years' sentence for theft was passed on Diggory.
   As for Christopher Pugwalker, he had disappeared shortly
before the trial, and the widow denied all knowledge of his
whereabouts.
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