“You take,” said the horseman with a glance at the gibbet, “a merry signpost to rest beneath!”
“It is neither merry nor dismal,” said Aderhold, “but a subject for thought. That which swung there swings there now—though shrunken and dark and answering to no lust of the eye. But that which never swung there swings there now neither. I trouble it not. It is away from here.”
The other swung himself from his saddle. “I had rather philosophize than eat, drink, or go hawking—and philosophers are most rare in this region!” He took his seat upon a heap of stones, while his horse beside him fell to grazing. “Come, sit and talk, travelling scholar!—That fellow on the gibbet—that small, cognized part of him that was hanged, as you would say. Being hungry, he slew a deer for his own use, then violently resisted and wounded those sent to his hut to take him, and finally, in court he miserably defamed and maligned the laws of the land and the judge in his chair. So there he swings for an example to stealers of deer and resisters of constables, to say naught of blasphemers of procedure and churls to magistrates!... What is your opinion, travelling scholar, of Authority?”
“Nay,” said Aderhold, “what is yours?”
The other laughed. “Mine, Sir Prudence?—Well, at times I have thought this and at times that. Once or twice a head like Roger Bacon’s has spoken. ‘The swollen stream forgets its source, and the overweening son turns and with his knotted and sinewy hands chokes his mother that bore him.’”
“It is a good parable,” said Aderhold. “I trust that your worship, being obviously of those in authority, will often listen to that brazen head!”
“Ah!” answered the other. “I am of that camp and not of it. My brazen head will yet get me into trouble!” He sat regarding the mound opposite, the tall upright and arm, the creaking chain, and the shapeless thing, now small, for most of the bones had fallen, which swung and dangled. “And, friend, what do you think of this matter of the Golden Age, man’s perfection, Paradise, the friendship of angels and all wisdom and happiness lying, in the history of this orb, behind us?”
“If it were so,” said Aderhold, “then were it well to walk backwards.”
“So saith my brazen head!—Hark!”
It was a horn winding at no great distance. There came a sound of approaching horsemen, of voices and laughter. The waiting cavalier rose to his feet, caught his horse by the bridle and mounted. Aderhold gave him back the falcon. The earl and his train, a dozen in all, gentlemen, falconers, and grooms, coming across the fields, leaped the hedge and crowded into the road, gathering into their number the rider with the hawk. Aderhold heard him named as “Sir Richard.” He waved his hand to the physician—all rode away with a flash of colour and a blare of sound. A few moments, and there was only the bare highway, the little rise of ground, and the gibbet with its outstretched arm against the blue and serene sky.