"Well," he said finally, "everything you have told me has been very interesting—very interesting indeed. But whether it will lead to anything definite is another matter. All the evidence is purely circumstantial. However, I'm very grateful to you for having spoken to me as freely as you've done. And if I find out anything further I'll let you know. I shall be leaving Lud shortly, but I shall keep in touch with you. And, under the circumstances, perhaps it would be prudent to agree on some word or token by which you would recognize a messenger as really coming from me, for the fellow you knew as Pugwalker has not grown less cunning with advancing years—he's full of guile, and let him once get wind of what we're after, he'd be up to all sorts of tricks to make our plans miscarry. What shall the token be?"
Then his eyes began to twinkle: "I've got it!" he cried. "Just to give you a little lesson in swearing, which you say you dislike so much, we'll make it a good round oath. You'll know a messenger comes from me if he greets you with the words, By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
And he rubbed his hands in delight, and shouted with laughter. Master Nathaniel was a born tease.
"For shame, you saucy fellow!" dimpled Mistress Ivy. "You're as bad as my poor Peppercorn. He used always...."
But even Master Nathaniel had had his fill of reminiscences. So he cut her short with a hearty good-bye, and renewed thanks for all she had told him.
But he turned back from the door to hold up his finger and say with mock solemnity, "Remember, it's to be By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!"
CHAPTER XIX
THE BERRIES OF MERCIFUL DEATH
Late into that night Master Nathaniel paced the floor of his pipe-room, trying to pierce through the intervening medium of the dry words of the Law and the vivider though less reliable one of Mistress Ivy's memory, and reach that old rustic tragedy, as it had been before the vultures of Time had left nothing of it but dry bones.