But whose was that shrill voice? Probably that of some cheapjack whose patter or whose wares, to judge from the closely-packed throng hiding him from view, had some particularly attractive quality. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and, his curiosity aroused, Master Nathaniel joined the crowd of spectators.
He could discern nothing but the top of a red head, but the patter was audible: "Now's your chance, gentlemen! Beauty doesn't keep, but rots like apples. Apple-shies! Four points if you hit her on the breast, six if you hit her on the mouth, and he who first gets twenty points wins the maid. Don't fight shy of the apple-shies! Apples and beauty do not keep—there's a worm in both. Step up, step up, gentlemen!"
Yes, he had heard that voice before. He began to shoulder his way through the crowd. It proved curiously yielding, and he had no difficulty in reaching the centre of attraction, a wooden platform on which gesticulated, grimaced and pirouetted ... who but his rascally groom Willy Wisp, dressed as a harlequin. But Willy Wisp was not the strangest part of the spectacle. Out of the platform grew an apple tree, and tied to it was his own daughter, Prunella, while grouped around her in various attitudes of woe were the other Crabapple Blossoms.
Suddenly Master Nathaniel felt convinced that this was not merely a story he was inventing himself, but, as well, it was a dream—a grotesque, illogical, synthesis of scraps of reality, to which he could add what elements he chose.
"What's happening?" he asked his neighbour.
But he knew the answer—Willy Wisp was selling the girls to the highest bidder, to labour in the fields of gillyflowers.
"But you have no right to do this!" he cried out in a loud angry voice, "no right whatever. This is not Fairyland—it is only the Elfin Marches. They cannot be sold until they have crossed over into Fairyland—I say they cannot be sold."
All round him he heard awed whispers, "It is Chanticleer—Chanticleer the dreamer, who has never tasted fruit." Then he found himself giving a learned dissertation on the law of property, as observed in the Elfin Marches. The crowd listened to him in respectful silence. Even Willy Wisp was listening, and the Crabapple Blossoms gazed at him with inexpressible gratitude.
With what seemed to him a superbly eloquent peroration he brought his discourse to an end. Prunella stretched out her arms to him, crying, "Father, you have saved us! You and the Law."
"You and the Law! You and the Law!" echoed the other Crabapple Blossoms.