Supposing this clue should lead to nothing, and the widow discover that they had been imagining? How, in that case, should she dare to face her, to go on living under the same roof with her?
And yet she was certain she had tried to murder their guest that night. How dared she? How dared she?
Hazel clenched her fists, and in a little gasping voice said, "Yes, sir, I'll help you."
"Good!" said Master Nathaniel briskly. "I want to take old Portunus's advice - and dig under that herm in the orchard, this very night. Though, mind you, it's just as likely as not to prove nothing but the ravings of a crazy mind; or else it may concern some buried treasure, or something else that has nothing to do with your grandfather's murder. But, in the case of our finding a valuable bit of evidence, we must have witnesses. And I think we should have the lawman of the district with us; who is he?"
"It's the Swan blacksmith, Peter Pease."
"Is there any servant you trust whom you could send for him? Someone more attached to you than to the widow?"
"I can trust them all, and they all like me best," she answered.
"Good. Go and wake a servant and send him off at once for the blacksmith. Tell him not to bring him up to the house, but to take him straight to the orchard we don't want to wake the widow before need be. And the servant can stay and help us with the job - the more witnesses the better."
Hazel felt as if she was in a strange, rather terrible dream. But she crept up to the attic and aroused one of the unmarried labourers - who, according to the old custom, slept in their master's house - and bade him ride into Swan and bring the blacksmith back with him on important business concerning the law.
Hazel calculated that he should get to Swan and back in less than an hour, and she and Master Nathaniel crept out of the house to wait for them in the orchard, each provided with a spade.
The moon was on the wane, but still sufficiently full to give a good light. She was, indeed, an orchard thief, for no fruit being left to rob, she had robbed the leaves of all their colour.
"Poor old moon!" chuckled Master Nathaniel, who was now in the highest of spirits, "always filching colours with which to paint her own pale face, and all in vain! But just look at your friend, at Master Herm. He does look knowing!"
For in the moonlight the old herm had found his element, and under her rays his stone flickered and glimmered into living silver flesh, while his archaic smile had gained a new significance.
"Excuse, me, sir" said Hazel timidly, "but I couldn't help wondering if the gentleman you suspected was Dr. Leer."
"What makes you think so?" asked Master Nathaniel sharply.
"I don't quite know," faltered Hazel. "I just -wondered."
Before long they were joined by the labourer and the law-man blacksmith - a burly, jovial, red-haired rustic of about fifty.
"Good evening," cried Master Nathaniel briskly, "I am Nathaniel Chanticleer" (he was sure that the news of his deposition could not yet have had time to travel to Swan) "and if my business were not very pressing and secret I would not, you may be sure, have had you roused from your bed at this ungodly hour. I have reason to think that something of great importance may be hidden under this herm, and I wanted you to be there to see that our proceedings are all in order," and he laughed genially. "And here's the guarantee that I'm no masquerader," and he removed his signet ring and held it out to the blacksmith. It was engraved with his well-known crest, and with six chevrons, in token that six of his ancestors had been High Seneschals of Dorimare.
Both the blacksmith and the labourer were at first quite overwhelmed by learning his identity, but he pressed a spade into the hand of each and begged them to begin digging without further delay.
For some time they toiled away in silence, and then one of the spades came against something hard.
It proved to be a small iron box with a key attached to it.
"Out with it! out with it!" cried Master Nathaniel excitedly. "I wonder if it contains a halter! By the Sun, Moon and Stars, I wonder!"
But he was sobered by a glimpse of poor Hazel's scared face.
"Forgive me, my child," he said gently, "my thirst for revenge has made me forget both decency and manners. And, as like as not, there will be nothing in it but a handful of Duke Aubrey crowns - the nest-egg of one of your ancestors."
They unlocked the box and found that it contained nothing but a sealed parchment package, addressed thus:
"To the First Who Finds Me."
"I think, Miss Hazel, it should be you who opens it. Don't you agree, Master Law-man?" said Master Nathaniel. So, with trembling fingers, Hazel broke the seal, tore open the wrapper, and drew out a sheet of writing.
By the light of the blacksmith's lanthorn they read as follows:
I, Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, having ever been a merry man who loved his joke, do herein crack my last, this side of the Debatable Hills, in the hopes that it will not lie so long in the damp earth as to prove but a lame rocket when the time comes to fire it off. And this is my last joke, and may all who hear it hold their sides, and may the tears run down their cheeks. I, Jeremiah Gibberty, was wilfully murdered by my second wife, Clementina, daughter of Ralph Baldbreeches, sailor, and an outlandish woman from the far North. In the which crime she was aided by her lover, Christopher Pugwalker, a foreigner who called himself an herbalist. And I know by sundry itchings of my skin which torment me as I write and by my spotted tongue that I have been given what the folks who know them call death-berries. And they were boiled down to look like mulberry jelly, offered to me by my dear wife, and of which I ate in my innocence. And I bid him who finds this writing to search for a little lad, by name Peter Pease, the son of a tipsy tinker. For this little lad, having an empty stomach and being greedy for pence, came to me but an hour ago with a basket full of these same death-berries and asked me if I should like to buy them. And I, to test him, asked him if he thought there was a blight in my orchard that I should be so hard put to it for fruit. And he said he thought we must like them up at Gibberty's for he had seen the gentleman who lived with us (Christopher Pugwalker) but a week since, gathering them. And if Christopher Pugwalker should leave these parts, then let the law search for a dumpy fellow, with nut-brown hair, a pug-nose freckled like a robin's egg, and one eye brown, the other blue. And in order that my last joke may be a well-built one, I have tested the berries I bought from the little lad, though it wrung my heart to do so, on one of the rabbits of a certain little maid, by name, Marjory Beach, the daughter of my carter. And I have done so because she, being seven years old and a healthy lass, runs a good chance of being still this side of the hills when someone digs up this buried jest. And if she be alive she will not have forgotten how one of her rabbits took to scratching itself, and how its tongue was spotted like a snake, and how she found it lying dead. And I humbly beg her pardon for having played such a cruel trick on a little maid, and I ask my heirs (if so be any of them be still alive) to send her a fine buck rabbit, a ham, and ten gold pieces. And, though I am law-man and could put them under arrest before I die, yet, for a time, I hold my hand. Partly because I have been a hunter all my life, and as the hare and deer are given their chance to escape, so shall they have theirs; and partly because I should like to be very far on my wanderings down the Milky Way before Clementina mounts Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; because I think the sound of her strangling would hurt my ears; and, last of all, because I am very weary. And here I sign my name for the last time.