"Your Worship! Your Worship!" she cried, shrilly, "Hang me instead of him! My life for his! Was it not I who gave your daughters fairy fruit, with my eyes open! And I glory in the knowledge that I was made a humble instrument of the same master whom he has served so well. Dear Master Polydore, have mercy on your country, spare your country's benefactor, and if the law must have a victim let it be me--a foolish useless woman, whose only merit was that she believed in loveliness though she had never seen it." Weeping and struggling, her face twisted into a grotesque tragic mask, they dragged her from the hall, amid the laughter and ironical cheers of the public. That afternoon Mumchance came to Master Polydore to inform him that a young maid-servant from the Academy had just been to the guard-room to say that Miss Primrose Crabapple had killed herself. Master Polydore at once hurried off to the scene of the tragedy, and there in the pleasant old garden where so many generations of Crabapple Blossoms had romped, and giggled, and exchanged their naughty little secrets, he found Miss Primrose, hanging stone-dead from one of her own apple-trees. "Well, as the old song has it, Mumchance," said Master Polydore--"'Here hangs a maid who died for love.'" Master Polydore was noted for his dry humour. A gibbet had been set up in the great court of the Guildhall, and the next day, at dawn, Endymion Leer and the widow Gibberty were hanged by the neck till they died. Rumour said that as the Doctor's face was contorted in its last grimace strange silvery peals of laughter were heard proceeding from the room where long ago Duke Aubrey's jester had killed himself. CHAPTER XXVII THE FAIR IN THE ELFIN MARCHES About two hours after he had set out from the farm, Master Nathaniel reached a snug little hollow at the foot of the hills, chosen for their camp by the consignment of the Lud Yeomanry stationed, by his own orders, at the foot of the Debatable Hills. "Halt!" cried the sentry. And then he dropped his musket in amazement. "Well, I'm blessed if it ain't his Worship!" he cried. Some six or seven of his mates, who were lounging about the camp, some playing cards, some lying on their backs and staring up at the sky, came hurrying up at the sound of the challenge, and, speechless with astonishment, they stared at Master Nathaniel. "I have come to look for my son," he said. "I have been told that ... er ... he came this way some two or three nights ago. If so, you must have seen him." The Yeomen shook their heads. "No, your Worship, we've seen no little boy. In fact, all the weeks we've been here we've not seen a living soul. And if there are any folks about they must be as swift as swallows and as silent-footed as cats, and as hard to see--well, as the dead themselves. No, your Worship, little Master Chanticleer has not passed this way."