“My wife’s grandmother was Scotch,” said Edrupt absently. He was trying to remember where he had heard the name Sebastian Garland. He set Richard down after asking him where he lived, and took his own way home with Barbara, his wife of a year. He told Barbara that the town was well rid of a rascal, but she knew by his silence thereafter that he was thinking out a plan.
“Some day,” he spoke out that evening, “there’ll be a law in the land to punish these dusty-footed knaves. They go from market to market cheating poor folk, and we have no hold on them because we cannot leave our work. But about this lad Richard Garland, Barbara, I’ve been a-thinking. What if we let him and his mother live in the little cottage beyond the sheepfold? The boy could help in tending the sheep. If they’ve had sheep o’ their own they’ll know how to make ’emselves useful, I dare say. And then, when these foreign fleeces come into the market, the dame could have dyes and so on, and we should see what kind o’ cloth they make.”
This was the first change in the fortunes of Richard Garland and his mother. A little more than a year later Sebastian Garland, now captain of Master Gay’s ship, the Rose-in-June, of London, came into port and met Robert Edrupt. On inquiry Edrupt learned that the captain had lost his wife and son many years before in a town which had been swept by the plague. When he heard of the Highland-born woman living in the Longley cottage, he journeyed post-haste to find her, and discovered that she was indeed his wife, and Richard his son. By the time that Richard was old enough to become a trader, a court known as the Court of Pied-poudre or Dusty Feet had been established by the King at every fair. Its purpose was to prevent peddlers and wandering merchants from cheating the folk. The common people got the name “Pie-powder Court,” but that made it none the less powerful. King Henry also appointed itinerant justices—traveling judges—to go about from place to place and judge according to the King’s law, with the aid of the sheriffs of the neighborhood who knew the customs of the people. The general instructions of these courts were that when the case was between a rich man and a poor man, the judges were to favor the poor man until and unless there was reason to do otherwise. The Norman barons, coming from a country in which they had been used to be petty kings each in his own estate, did not like this much, but little the King cared for that. Merchants like young Richard Garland found it most convenient to have one law throughout the land for all honest men. Remembering his own hard boyhood, Richard never failed to be both just and generous to a boy.
PERFUMER’S SONG
The rule of the world is heavy and hard,
Taketh of every life a share,
Strive as it may to cherish and guard
The dawning hope that was all so fair,
And yet, so sure as the night-wind blows,
Memory dwells in her place apart,
And the savor of rue or the breath of a rose
Brings peace out of trouble, dear heart, dear heart!
There was never a joy that the world can kill
So long as there lives a dream of the past,
For the alchemist in his fragrant still
Keeps fresh the dream to the very last.
So sure as the wind of the morning blows
To heal the trouble, to cool the smart,
The breath of lavender, thyme and rose
Will bring to thee comfort, dear heart, dear heart!