"It looks to be but plain Hugh, the merchant," whispered one to another.
"Hath he undertaken to sell his wares here?" asked one.
"He hath choice pearls," whispered a maiden who was not yet wholly given over to occult thought.
But Hugh had begun to speak, and faces of wonder were lifted to him, for he was strong of lung, and the breath from the magic bags went farther than ever before.
"Our friend the Necromancer is indisposed, and I must take his place," he began. "Like him, I have chosen a theme from the depths of human thought; and now, hear! hear! hear!"
Then eloquence poured forth from the man's lips so fast, so full a stream, that the very welkin was rose-tinted, and a great rainbow seemed to overspread the sky. Gray clouds above the tallest spires broke into tints of opal, and all the air shaded into the violet and purple of exclamation points, and of the pet hiatus, which was hard to work, but came well off. Golden glory haunted carven door and window, and words of flame crept around the tracery of arch and gable. Women sobbed for very joy; others wrote madly on their tablets; maidens gasped with red lips slightly opened; never, during the whole lecture season, had come so big a wind from out the bags, and honest Hugh blushed with mingled shame and triumph when he saw the face of his betrothed, for it wore the look of one who had seen the white vision of naked truth.
Following the fashion of the Necromancer, he had taken a maxim, and had dressed it up so that men knew it not, and so that it came forth as revelation. All that he had said from the first to the last was the truth that he knew best: "Honesty is the best policy;" but this was the way in which he had said it, with constantly shifting color:
"Glory awaits the equable! All-hails are the portion of him, who, unswerving, with eyes upon the path ahead, with lofty head erect, perambulates his chosen path through this world's tangled wilderness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though golden cohorts beckon. The goal is for the upright feet. The crown waits.... What matter if the victor be sobbing and breathless, so that he be conqueror?" (Observe the hiatus.) "So saith golden-tongued Plato; so saith heavy-browed Aristotle of persuasive speech; so saith Aulus Gellius, withdrawn in his inner truth, and his brother, Currant Gellius, whose essence clings; so say the holy fathers, subtle Basil, myriad-minded Chrysostom; so saith the copy-book."
When the speech was over, and the bags hidden away, Hugh bore as best he might the tears and congratulations of the women, their murmured plaudits, and inspired looks.
"'Tis the first time I have ever failed to give honest measure," he said shamefacedly to himself as they flocked about him.