The Broad Highway, Jeffery Farnol [best ebook reader under 100 txt] 📗

the room beyond, I beheld an old man who sat bowed down at a table, with his white head pillowed upon his arms, sitting so very still that he might have been asleep but for the fierce grip of his twitching hands. Now, upon the table, at no great distance from him, between the guttering candles, lay a hat—a very ill-used, battered-looking object —which I thought I recognized; wherefore, looking about, I presently espied its owner leaning against the mantel. He was powdered with dust from head to foot, and his worn garments looked more ragged than ever; and, as he stood there, in the droop of his head and the listless set of his shoulders, there was an air of the most utter dejection and hopelessness, while upon his thin cheek I saw the glisten of a great, solitary tear. But, as I looked, the window was burst suddenly open:

“Perry!”

Love, surprise, joy, pity—all were summed up in that one short word—yet deeper than all was love. And, at that cry, the white head was raised, raised in time to see a vision of loveliness caught up in two ragged arms.

“Father!”

And now the three heads—the white, the golden, and the black —were drawn down together, drawn, and held close in an embrace that was indeed reunion.

Then, seeing my presence was become wholly unnecessary, I turned away, and was soon once more deep among the trees. Yet, as I went, I suddenly heard voices that called upon my name, but I kept on, and, in due season, came out upon the broad highway.

And, in a little, as I went, very full of thought, the sun rose up. So I walked along through a world all glorious with morning.

CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH I MEET WITH A LITERARY TINKER

Even in that drowsy, semi-conscious state, that most delightful borderland which lies midway between sleeping and waking, I knew it could not be the woodpecker who, as I judged from sundry manifest signs, lodged in the tree above me. No woodpecker that ever pecked could originate such sounds as these—two quick, light strokes, followed by another, and heavier, thus: Tap, tap—TAP; a pause, and then, tap, tap—TAP again, and so on.

Whatever doubts I may have yet harbored on the subject, however, were presently dispelled by a fragrance sweeter, to the nostrils of a hungry man, than the breath of flowers, the spices of the East, or all the vaunted perfumes of Arabia—in a word, the odor of frying bacon.

Hereupon, I suddenly realized how exceedingly keen was my appetite, and sighed, bethinking me that I must first find a tavern before I could satisfy my craving, when a voice reached me from no great distance, a full, rich, sonorous voice, singing a song. And the words of the song were these:

“A tinker I am, O a tinker am I, A tinker I’ll live, and a tinker I’ll die; If the King in his crown would change places wi’ me I’d laugh so I would, and I’d say unto he: ‘A tinker I am, O a tinker am I. A tinker I’ll live, and a tinker I’ll die.’”

It was a quaint air, with a shake at the end of the first two and last two lines, which, altogether, I thought very pleasing. I advanced, guided by the voice, until I came out into a grassy lane. Seated upon an artfully-contrived folding stool, was a man. He was a very small man despite his great voice, who held a kettle between his knees, and a light hammer in his hand, while a little to one side of him there blazed a crackling fire of twigs upon which a hissing frying-pan was balanced. But what chiefly drew and held my attention was the man’s face; narrow and peaked, with little, round, twinkling eyes set deep in his head, close black hair, grizzled at the temples, and a long, blue chin.

And presently, as I stood staring at him, he finished his song, and chancing to raise his eyes stared back at me.

“Good morning!” said he at last, with a bright nod.

“So then you didn’t cut your throat in the Hollow Oak, after all?” said I.

“Nor likely to either, master,” he answered, shaking his head. “Lord love your eyes and limbs, no!”

“But,” said I, “some day or so ago I met a man—”

“Ah!” nodded the Tinker, “to be sure you did.”

“A pedler of brooms, and ribands—”

“‘Gabbing’ Dick!” nodded the Tinker.

“Who told me very seriously—”

“That I’d been found in the big holler oak wi’ my throat cut,” nodded the Tinker.

“But what did he mean by it?”

“Why, y’ see,” explained the Tinker, leaning over to turn a frizzling bacon-rasher very dexterously with the blade of a jack-knife, “y’ see, ‘Gabbing’ Dick is oncommon fond of murders, hangings, sooicides, and such like—it’s just a way he’s got.”

“A very unpleasant way!” said I.

“But very harmless when all’s done and said,” added the Tinker.

“You mean?”

“A leetle weak up here,” explained the Tinker, tapping his forehead with the handle of the jack-knife. “His father was murdered the day afore he were born, d’ye see, which druv his poor mother out of her mind, which conditions is apt to make a man a leetle strange.”

“Poor fellow!” said I, while the Tinker began his tap-tapping again.

“Are you hungry?” he inquired suddenly, glancing up at me with his hammer poised.

“Very hungry!” said I. Hereupon he set down his hammer, and, turning to a pack at his side, proceeded to extract therefrom a loaf of bread, a small tin of butter, and a piece of bacon, from which last he cut sundry slices with the jack-knife. He now lifted the hissing rashers from the pan to a tin plate, which he set upon the grass at my feet, together with the bread and the butter; and, having produced a somewhat battered knife and fork, handed them to me with another bright nod.

“You are very kind!” said I.

“Why, I’m a man as is fond o’ company, y’ see—especially of one who can think, and talk, and you have the face of both. I am—as you might say—a literary cove, being fond o’ books, nov-els, and such like.” And in a little while, the bacon being done to his liking, we sat down together, and began to eat.

“That was a strange song of yours,” said I, after a while.

“Did you like it?” he inquired, with a quick tilt of his head.

“Both words and tune,” I answered.

“I made the words myself,” said the Tinker.

“And do you mean it?”

“Mean what?” asked the Tinker.

“That you would rather be a tinker than a king?”

“Why, to be sure I would,” he rejoined. “Bein’ a literary cove I know summat o’ history, and a king’s life weren’t all lavender—not by no manner o’ means, nor yet a bed o’ roses.”

“Yet there’s much to be said for a king.”

“Very little, I think,” said the Tinker.

“A king has great advantages.”

“Which he generally abuses,” said the Tinker.

“There have been some great and noble kings.”

“But a great many more bad ‘uns!” said the Tinker. “And then, look how often they got theirselves pisoned, or stabbed, or ‘ad their ‘eads chopped off! No—if you axes me, I prefer to tinker a kettle under a hedge.”

“Then you are contented?”

“Not quite,” he answered, his face falling; “me being a literary cove (as I think I’ve mentioned afore), it has always been my wish to be a scholar.”

“Far better be a tinker,” said I.

“Young fellow,” said the Tinker, shaking his head reprovingly, “you’re off the mark there—knowledge is power; why, Lord love my eyes and limbs! what’s finer than to be able to read in the Greek and Latin?”

“To possess the capacity of earning an honest livelihood,” said I.

“Why, I tell you,” continued the Tinker, unheeding my remark, “I’d give this here left hand o’ mine to be able to read the very words of such men as Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Xenophon, and all the rest of ‘em.”

“There are numerous translations,” said I.

“Ah, to be sure!” sighed the Tinker, “but then, they are translations.”

“There are good translations as well as bad,” said I.

“Maybe,” returned the Tinker, “maybe, but a translation’s only a echo, after all, however good it be.” As he spoke, he dived into his pack and brought forth a book, which he handed to me. It was a smallish volume in battered leathern covers, and had evidently seen much long and hard service. Opening it at the title-page, I read:

Epictetus his ENCHIRIDION with Simplicius his COMMENT. Made English from the Greek By George Stanhope, late Fellow Of King’s College in Camb. LONDON Printed for Richard Sare at Gray’s Inn Gate in Holborn And Joseph Hindmarsh against the Exchange in Cornhill. 1649.

“You’ve read Epictetus, perhaps?” inquired the Tinker.

“I have.”

“Not in the Greek, of course.”

“Yes,” said I, smiling, “though by dint of much labor.”

The Tinker stopped chewing to stare at me wide-eyed, then swallowed his mouthful at one gulp.

“Lord love me!” he exclaimed, “and you so young, too!”

“No,” said I; “I’m twenty-five.”

“And Latin, now—don’t tell me you can read the Latin.”

“But I can’t make a kettle, or even mend one, for that matter,” said I.

“But you are a scholar, and it’s a fine thing to be a scholar!”

“And I tell you again, it is better to be a tinker,” said I.

“How so?”

“It is a healthier life, in the first place,” said I.

“That, I can believe,” nodded the Tinker.

“It is a happier life, in the second place.”

“That, I doubt,” returned the