The man in black

by Stanley John Weyman

But when the showman, who was trembling with delight and anticipation, made them understand that he would give a crown for the boy as he was in his clothes--"and that is more than the fence will give you," he added--they began to see reason. True, they stood out for a while for a higher price; but the bargain was eventually struck at a crown and a livre, and the boy handed over.

Master Crafty Eyes' hand shook as he laid it on the child's collar and turned him round so that he might see his face the better. Bec de Lièvre discerned the man's excitement, and looked at him curiously. "You must be very fond of the lad," he said.

The showman's eyes glittered ferociously. "So fond of him," he said, in a mocking tone, "that when I get him home I shall--oh, I shall not hurt his fine clothes, or his face, or his little brown hands, for those all show, and they are worth money to me. But I shall--I shall put a poker in the fire, and then Master Jehan will take off his new clothes so that they may not be singed, and--I shall teach him several new tricks with the poker."

"You are a queer one," the other answered. "I'll be shot if you don't look like a man with a good dinner before him."

"That is the man I am," the showman answered, a hideous smile distorting his face. "I have gone without dinner or supper many a day because my little friend here chose to run away one fine night, when he was on the point of making my fortune. But I am going to dine now. I am going to feed--on him!"

"Well, every man to his liking," the hare-lipped beggar answered indifferently. "You have paid for your dinner, and may cook it as you please, for me."

"I am going to," the showman answered, with an ugly look. He plucked the boy almost off his feet as he spoke, and while the men cried after him "Bon appétit!" and jeered, dragged him away across the open part of the market; finally disappearing with him in one of the noisome alleys which then led out of the Halles on the east side.

His way lay through a rabbit-warren of beetling passages and narrow lanes, where the boy, once loose, could have dodged him a hundred ways and escaped; and he held him with the utmost precaution, expecting him every moment to make a desperate attempt at it. But Jehan was not the old Jehan who had turned and twisted, walked and frolicked on the rope, and in the utmost depths of ill-treatment had still kept teeth to bite and spirit to use them. He was benumbed body and soul. He had had no food for nearly twenty hours. He had passed the night exposed to the cold. He had gone through intense excitement, horror, despair. So he stumbled along, with Vidoche's dying cries in his ears, and, famished, frozen, bemused, met the showman's threats with a face of fixed, impassive apathy. He was within a very little of madness.

For a time Crafty Eyes did not heed this strange impassiveness. The showman's fancy was busy with the punishment he would inflict when he got the boy home to his miserable room. He gloated in anticipation over the tortures he would contrive, and the care he would take that they should not maim or disfigure the boy. When he had him tied down, and the door locked, and the poker heated--ah! how he would enjoy himself! The ruffian licked his lips. His eyes sparkled with pleasure. He jerked the boy along in his hideous impatience.

But after a time the child's bearing began to annoy him. He stopped and, holding him with one hand, beat him brutally on the head with the other, until the boy fell and hung in his grasp. Then he dragged him up roughly and hauled him on with volleys of oaths; still scowling at him from time to time, as if, somehow, he found this little foretaste of vengeance less satisfying than he had expected.