“I mean your worship no offence,” said the fellow; “but I have cause to remember how, to relieve the young maiden's fears, you condescended to point out the mode in which these deceptions were practised, and to baffle the poor juggler by laying bare the mysteries of his art, as ably as if you had been a brother of his order.—She was indeed so fair a maiden that, to win a smile of her, a man might well—”
“Not a word more of her, I charge thee!” said Tressilian. “I do well remember the night you speak of—one of the few happy evenings my life has known.”
“She is gone, then,” said the smith, interpreting after his own fashion the sigh with which Tressilian uttered these words—“she is gone, young, beautiful, and beloved as she was!—I crave your worship's pardon—I should have hammered on another theme. I see I have unwarily driven the nail to the quick.”
This speech was made with a mixture of rude feeling which inclined Tressilian favourably to the poor artisan, of whom before he was inclined to judge very harshly. But nothing can so soon attract the unfortunate as real or seeming sympathy with their sorrows.
“I think,” proceeded Tressilian, after a minute's silence, “thou wert in those days a jovial fellow, who could keep a company merry by song, and tale, and rebeck, as well as by thy juggling tricks—why do I find thee a laborious handicraftsman, plying thy trade in so melancholy a dwelling and under such extraordinary circumstances?”
“My story is not long,” said the artist, “but your honour had better sit while you listen to it.” So saying, he approached to the fire a three-footed stool, and took another himself; while Dickie Sludge, or Flibbertigibbet, as he called the boy, drew a cricket to the smith's feet, and looked up in his face with features which, as illuminated by the glow of the forge, seemed convulsed with intense curiosity. “Thou too,” said the smith to him, “shalt learn, as thou well deservest at my hand, the brief history of my life; and, in troth, it were as well tell it thee as leave thee to ferret it out, since Nature never packed a shrewder wit into a more ungainly casket.—Well, sir, if my poor story may pleasure you, it is at your command, But will you not taste a stoup of liquor? I promise you that even in this poor cell I have some in store.”
“Speak not of it,” said Tressilian, “but go on with thy story, for my leisure is brief.”
“You shall have no cause to rue the delay,” said the smith, “for your horse shall be better fed in the meantime than he hath been this morning, and made fitter for travel.”
With that the artist left the vault, and returned after a few minutes' interval. Here, also, we pause, that the narrative may commence in another chapter.