The next morning, as he did not come for his usual early roll and glass of home-made cordial, the two girls peeped into his room, and found that his bed had not been slept in; and lying neglected on the floor was the neat black wig. Nor did he ever come back to claim it. And when they timidly asked their father what had happened to him, he sternly forbade them ever again to mention his name, adding, with a mysterious shake of the head, "For some time I have had my suspicions that he was not what he appeared." And then he sighed regretfully, and murmured, "But never before have I had an apprentice with such wonderfully skillful fingers." As for Master Nathaniel--while he was being burned in effigy in the market-place, he was sitting comfortably in his pipe-room, deep in an in-folio. He had suddenly remembered that it was something in the widow Gibberty's trial that was connected in his mind with Master Ambrose's joke about the dead bleeding. And he was re-reading that trial--this time with absorption. As he read, the colours of his mental landscape were gradually modified, as the colours of a real landscape are modified according to the position of the sun. But if a white road cuts through the landscape it still gleams white--even when the moon has taken the place of the sun. And a straight road still gleamed white across the landscape of Master Nathaniel's mind. 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."