"And school girls being one quarter boy and three quarters bird," he added with his dry chuckle, "they cannot help being orchard thieves ... and if there isn't an orchard to rob, why, they'll rob the loft where the apples are kept. And if the apples turn out not to be apples--why, then, no one is to blame!" Nevertheless, Miss Primrose was locked up in the room in the Guildhall reserved for prisoners of the better class, pending her trial on a charge of receiving contraband goods in the form of woven silk--the only charge, owing to the willful blindness of the law, on which she could be tried. In the meantime a couple of the Yeomen, who had been scouring the country for Moonlove Honeysuckle, returned with the news that they had chased her as far as the Debatable Hills, and had last seen her scrambling like a goat up their sides. And no Dorimarite could be expected to follow her further. A couple of days later the Yeomen sent to search for the other Crabapple Blossoms returned with similar news. All along the West Road they had heard rumours of a band of melancholy maidens flitting past to the sound of sad wild ditties. And, finally, they had come upon a goatherd who had seen them disappearing, like Moonlove, among the folds of the terrible hills. So there was nothing further to be done. The Crabapple Blossoms had by now surely perished in the Elfin Marches, or else vanished for ever into Fairyland. These were sad days in Lud-in-the-Mist--all the big houses with their shutters down, the dancing halls and other places of amusement closed, sad, frightened faces in the streets--and, as if in sympathy with human things, the days shortening, the trees yellowing, and beginning to shed their leaves. Endymion Leer was much in request--especially in the houses that had hitherto been closed to him. Now, he was in and out of them all day long, exhorting, comforting, advising. And wherever he went he managed to leave the impression that somehow or other Master Nathaniel Chanticleer was to blame for the whole business. There was no doubt about it, Master Nathaniel, these days, was the most unpopular man in Lud-in-the-Mist. In the Senate he got nothing but sour looks from his colleagues; threats and insults were muttered behind him as he walked down the High Street; and one day, pausing at a street corner where a puppet-show was being exhibited, he found that he himself was the villain of the piece. For when the time-honoured climax was reached and the hero was belabouring the villain's wooden head with his cudgel, the falsetto voice of the concealed showman punctuated the blows with such comments as: "There, Nat Cock o' the Roost, is a black eye to you for small loaves ... and there's another for sour wine ... and there's a bloody nose to you for being too fond of papples and ares."