u are fair. You will maybe get more
out of him than I could."

The conjecture was a reasonable one.

Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian's
door just before sunset. "Come in," said a sturdy voice. She entered,
and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted,
and burst out of the house. "Is that for me, wife?" inquired Margaret,
turning very red.

"You must excuse him," replied Joan, rather coldly; "he lays it to your
door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about
a piece of parchment, There was one amissing, and he got nought from the
burgomaster all along of that one."

"Alas! Gerard took it."

"Likely, But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged
to him to keep them all safe. And sooth to Say, I blame not my Jorian
for being wroth, 'Tis hard for a poor man to be so near fortune and lose
it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story. Says
I, 'Folk that are out o' trouble like you and me didn't ought to be too
hard on folk that are in trouble; and she has plenty. Going already?
What is all your hurry, mistress?"

"Oh, it is not for me to drive the goodman out of his own house."

"Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault anyway,
poor innocent."

Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not
confide even to Catherine.

After six weeks' stay that good woman returned home.

On the child's birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no
work; but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and
went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard's safe
return.

That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for
Margaret's departed soul in the minster church at Basle.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

Some blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, "A lie is not
like a blow with a curtal axe."

True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke
with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of
the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation.

Often in the everyday world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or
three.

And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one
heartless falsehood!

Yet the tellers reaped little from it.

The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for
their father's property, saw little Gerard