Then the tall man smiled a strange, three-cornered smile, for his chin was long and protruding, and strained his lips that way.
"Ay," he confessed, "they go off, but they do no hurt;" then he paid his penny toll and went unmolested in. The porter stood long, with arms akimbo, and looked after him.
"'Tis some fool," said the porter, and went back to his mug of ale.
The sad-hued man went on through the narrow streets that let in only a strip of the sky's blue, and anon he came to the open market-place, where little was doing that day, for the flowers were wilted, and the vegetables for the most part gone; only the lambs that were left bleated piteously now and then. The stranger sprang upon a counter where wheat had been sold, and he struck his little bags together, so that they rattled merrily as he called aloud:—
"Come, hear, hear, hear! Come, hear the words of wisdom I shall say, the greatest words that shall ever meet your ears. Come, hear, hear, hear! To-day I speak, and to-morrow I may not: 'tis the chance of a lifetime, and not to be overlooked. Come, hear, hear, hear!"
Now with the rattling of the bags, and the rattling of the man's voice, many people came running hither: squire and 'prentice and count, marchioness and merchant's lady, and the cook from the castle, all hurrying toward the empty sound. Soon a great crowd was gathered, of men and of maidens, of women with white wimples and folded kerchiefs, and of little girls with yellow hair.
"Come, hear, hear, hear!" repeated the man, in slow singsong, watching the people with his narrow blue eyes which were rimmed with red; then, so swiftly that none could see, he bent his head and touched his lips to the transparent bags. He spoke, and lo! a miracle, for out of his mouth came a beautiful, iridescent mist of words that floated and floated and broke against the gray fog, and rested across the eyes of an elderly woman who stood buxom and comely, and fell like a halo upon the fair hair of a young girl standing bareheaded in the sun, and flashed like an opal, flickered like a flame, so that at last the whole market-place was full of floating color; yet all that the man had said was, "Be good and you will be happy," with variations.
"A necromancer!" said the red-faced butcher under his breath.
"A prophet!" cried the countess, as a floating bit of the colored mist lighted on her lips.
"I never heard such truth," said the fair-haired maiden, with a bar of iridescent cloud across her eyes.