There is little more to tell. My story is like a web of knitting, and now the point is reached where the stitches have to be cast off, and the work left. It has been no more than a tale of apprenticeship, and Hugh’s man’s life was but just beginning. Yet those years are enough to tell us what the rest was likely to be.
For months he toiled at the second corbel, and in these months passed out of his apprenticeship and became journeyman. Master Gervase was wont to say that the lad was in a fair way to be spoilt, for the story of that Lammas Day got abroad, as stories did in those days, carried back by the Pomeroy retainers to Biry, and by the Raleghs to Street Ralegh, and caught at by the wandering minstrels and story-tellers, who were the great bearers of news about the country, and ever on the watch for some gossip which they might retail at fair or castle, where it travelled from the buttery hatch to my lady’s closet, and lost naught in the telling. The town had been crowded by these strangers at the time of the corbel incident, the annual fair being held on Lammas Day, so that there was fine opportunity for spreading of news; and when the families from the great houses in the county came into the city, they must needs go to the Cathedral to see the carving which had caused so much stir, and those who had work of their own going on would have had Hugh Bassett to carry it out. But nothing would draw him from the corbel.
“I marvel at the lad,” said John Hamlyn one day to his fellow-warden; “he seems to care little for the over-praise he gets. ’Twould turn my Ralph’s head.”
“His father’s training has borne fruit,” answered Elyas. “Hugh gave up his own fancies, and held by what he had learnt to be duty; now he yet thinks of the duty, and not of the glory to himself. He is as good to me as any son could be.”
“And may be thy son in good earnest?”
“With all my heart,” said Gervase cheerfully. “But that must bide awhile.”
Hamlyn looked him up and down.
“Thou art as hale, goodman, as ever thou wert before thy sickness.”
“Ay, thank God! When the spring comes and the cold of winter is over I shall fall to work upon the surs.”
“Best make speed, for the old master can hardly last much longer, and it will not become thy dignity to be seen on a ladder when thou art in his place.”