A TRYING DAY IN MEDIÆVAL TIMES.
The public torturer hurried home in an irritable frame of mind. The day had been for him one long round of annoyances. When he commenced his duties that morning, already exasperated by the thought that if the drought continued the produce of his tiny patch of ground would be completely ruined, he was aggrieved to find that far more than his fair share of a recently arrived batch of heretics had been allotted to him. During the midday break for refreshments his dreamy assistant had allowed the furnace to go out, bringing upon the torturer's own head a severe censure for the consequent delay. In the afternoon, glancing occasionally through the narrow window, he was mortified to see that the promising rain-clouds, which might yet have saved his cabbages, were dispersing; and then, to crown all, just as he was finishing for the day he had caught hold of a pair of pincers a trifle too near the white-hot end and seared his hand.
As he approached the cottage which was enshrined in his heart by a thousand sacred associations as home, the torturer strove to rise superior to his worries. He whistled bravely as he crossed the threshold and caressed his wife with his usual tenderness. Intuitively she divined the bitterness of the mood which lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of the meal—prepared by her in the way the torturer loved so well—she diverted him with her lively prattle. And at length, when she trod on the dog and caused it to give out a long-drawn howl, she made such a neat allusion to the Chamber and heretics that the torturer laughed till the tears streamed down his cheeks.
After the table was cleared the torturer's little blue-eyed girl came toddling up to him for her usual half-hour's cuddle. It made a beautiful picture—the little mite with her father's merry eyes and her mother's rosebud mouth, sitting on the torturer's knee, her golden hair mingling with his beard. And how her silvery laugh brightened the place as she played her favourite game of stretching her rag doll on a toy model of a rack.
The sound of rain outside brought the torturer and his wife to the door. As they stood side by side watching the downpour the last vestige of the torturer's ill-humour passed away. This rain would mean a record year for his cabbages, and would do wonders for his beans, which were already a long way more forward than those of the executioner.
He realised now that he had allowed the mishaps of the day to worry him unduly. After all, his hand had suffered little more than a scorch and no longer pained him, and, although the censure he had received in the Chamber and the possible consequences had been very disquieting, yet he was now able to assure himself and his wife that if henceforth he kept his assistant from wool-gathering all would be well.
Suddenly he fell back trembling from the threshold, his face blanched with terror. A large rain-drop had splashed on his forehead, reminding him abruptly that before coming home that evening he had neglected to fill the water-dripping apparatus, which might be required at dawn for the more obstinate of the heretics.