My daughter coaxed him to tell her what was the matter, but he made no answer; instead, he pulled off the ruined robe and flung it in the mud, and standing in his shirt and breeches stamped upon it and burst into tears again, and cried, “I won’t wear it! I want to be poor! I want to be like the others! Oh, the wicked Eyebrow! Why can’t he be good like the others? Oh, if I could only cut off the Eyebrow and make him poor and good like the others!”
My daughter took his hand and begged him to tell her his trouble, but all he would say was, “He’s wicked, and I want him to be good like the others! And to-night he’s going to give the Blind Bowler to Goolk the Spider, and I can’t stop him, I can’t stop him!” And he broke into a fresh storm of sobbing.
My daughter shook her head at me pityingly.
“We are very sorry, my lad,” said I, “and I ask you to trust us. We are going into the city, and perhaps when you know us better you will tell us all about it. We should like to help you. Will you come with us?”
“What can a peddler do against the Eyebrow?” said the boy,—but he dried his tears, and allowed my daughter to lead him forth by the hand into the road.
We could make nothing of the boy’s wild talk, but we went onward without questioning him further, and drew near to the city in silence. Beside the city gate, under the wall, a crowd of idle people were gathered, and from the center of the group we could hear voices singing together hoarsely. In a few minutes we were in the midst of the crowd, and saw what it was the idlers were looking at.
The Three Blind Ballad Singers
Three blind men were singing a comic ballad in loud voices, and prancing up and down in time, with such antics that the crowd roared with delight. Each of the three held in his hand a sheaf of papers,—ballads, undoubtedly, intended for sale to the onlookers. Suddenly they stopped, each with a hand at his ear, and looked up at the sky as if listening.
“Is there a stranger here?” cried one of them.
“A peddler and a maid!” shouted one of the crowd. “All tattered and torn!”