And hark ye! At the time when winter’s blast doth sound, thee’lt hear the wailing o’ the Lady Marye’s pipes, and know the Stranger bideth o’er the earth.
The two dramatic stories presented here were but a paving of the way for larger work. “The Stranger” had been hardly completed when Patience announced, “Thee’lt sorry at the task I set thee next.” And then she began the construction of a drama that in its delivery consumed the time of the sittings for several weeks, and it contained when finished some 20,000 words. It is divided into six acts, each with a descriptive prologue, and three of the acts have two scenes each, making nine scenes in all. It, like the two shorter sketches, is medieval in scene, and the pictures which it presents of the customs and costumes and manners of the thirteenth or fourteenth century (the period is not definitely indicated) are amazingly vivid. It has a somewhat intricate plot, which is carried forward rapidly and its strands skillfully interwoven until the nature of the fabric is revealed in the sixth act. This play is much more skillfully constructed in respect of stage technique than the two playlets that preceded it, and it could, no doubt, be produced upon the stage with perhaps a little alteration to adapt it to modern conditions. Some idea of its beauty, its sprightliness and its humor may be obtained from the prologue to the first act, which follows:
Wet earth, fresh trod.
Highway cut to wrinkles with cart wheels born in with o’erloading. A flank o’ daisy flowers and stones rolled o’er in blanketing o’ moss. Brown o’ young oak-leaves shows soft amid the green. Adown a steep unto the vale, hedged in by flowering fruit and threaded through with streaming silver o’ the brook, where rushes shiver like to swishing o’ a lady’s silk.
Moss-lipped log doth case the spring who mothereth the brook, and ivy hath climbed it o’er the trunk and leafless branch o’ yonder birch, till she doth stand bedecked as for a folly dance.
Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat!
Rat-a-tat! Sh-h-h-h!
From out the thick where hides the logged and mud-smeared shack.
Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat!