To explain all this we must retrograde a step. This very morning then, Margaret Brandt had met Jorian Ketel near her own door. He passed her with a scowl. This struck her, and she remembered him.
"Stay," said she. "Yes! it is the good man who saved him. Oh! why have you not been near me since? And why have you not come for the parchments? Was it not true about the hundred crowns?"
Jorian gave a snort: but, seeing her face that looked so candid, began to think there might be some mistake. He told her he had come, and how he had been received.
"Alas!" said she, "I knew nought of this. I lay at death's door." She then invited him to follow her, and took him into the garden and showed him the spot where the parchments were buried. "Martin was for taking them up, but I would not let him. He put them there: and I said none should move them but you, who had earned them so well of him and me."
"Give me a spade!" cried Jorian, eagerly. "But stay! No; he is a suspicious man. You are sure they are there still?"
"I will openly take the blame if human hand hath touched them."
"Then keep them but two hours more, I prithee, good Margaret," said Jorian, and ran off to the Stadthouse of Tergou a joyful man.
The burgomaster jogged along towards Sevenbergen, with Jorian striding beside him, giving him assurance that in an hour's time the missing parchments would be in his hand.
"Ah, master!" said he, "lucky for us it wasn't a thief that took them."
"Not a thief? not a thief? what call you him, then?"