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The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted
­institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a
people, transformed the social life of half the country, and
wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that
the influence cannot be measured short of two or three
generations.
—Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner,
The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day (1873)
 C ON T E N T S

preface xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Gathering of the Forces 6

Chapter 2 Black Ordeal, Black Freedom 23

Chapter 3 The New Frontier of American Liberalism 48

Chapter 4 Why Did the United States Fight in Vietnam? 69

Chapter 5 1963 87

Chapter 6 The Rise of the Great Society 109

Chapter 7 1965 135

Chapter 8 The Making of a Youth Culture 155

Chapter 9 The New Left 179

Chapter 10 The Fall of the Great Society 203

Chapter 11 The Conservative Revival 221

Chapter 12 1968 239

ix
x CONTENTS

Chapter 13 Many Faiths: The ’60s Reformation 261

Chapter 14 “No Cease-Fire” 281

Conclusion: Everything Changed 319

Critical Events during the Long 1960s 327
Bibliographical Essay 335
Notes 345
Credits 377
Index 379
 P R E FAC E

H
“ istory,” a great scholar once declared, “is what the present wants to know
about the past.” We have written this book to make sense of a period that,
a half-century later, continues to stir debate, recriminations, and reminiscence in
the United States and around the world. The meaning of the ’60s depends, ulti-
mately, upon which aspects of that time seem most significant to the retrospec-
tive observer. We have chosen to tell a story about the intertwined conflicts—over
ideology and race, gender and war, popular culture and faith—that transformed
the United States in irrevocable ways. The narrative does not remain within the
borders of a single decade; like most historians, we view “the ’60s” as defined by
movements and issues that arose soon after the end of World War II and were only
partially resolved by the time Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency.
Our own friendship is a creation of the long 1960s and its continuing after-
math. We met in 1970 in Portland, Oregon—two young college students who
cared as much about changing history as we did about studying it. For a while,
we lived in the same “revolutionary youth collective” and wrote for the same
underground paper—signing only our first names to articles as an emblem of
informality. We then left to attend graduate school on different coasts and found
teaching jobs at different schools. But a passion for understanding and telling the
story of the ’60s brought us together as writers. In the late ’80s, we coauthored an
article on the failure and successes of the New Left and began to consider writing
a study of the period as a whole.
That shared past animates our story but does not determine how we’ve told
it. While still sharing a vision of democratic Left, we certainly do not endorse
all that radicals like ourselves were doing in the 1960s. And, unlike some earlier
scholars and memoirists, we no longer view the narrative of the Left—old, new,
or liberal—as the pivot of the 1960s around which other events inevitably revolve.
What occurred during those years was too important and too provocative to be
reduced to the rise and fall of a political persuasion. We intend this to be a book
xii P R E FAC E

for people who were not alive in the ’60s as well as for those who may remember
more than they can explain about that time in their life and in world history.
A number of people were indispensable to the making of this book, from the
first edition in 2000 to the current one. Nancy Lane convinced us to embark on it,
and Gioia Stevens inherited the task and handled the manuscript and its authors
with intelligence and grace. The skill of Charles Cavaliere, Anna Russell, Katie
Tunkavige, Patricia Berube, and Joseph Matson made revising the book a smooth
and creative process. We are grateful to all the people who read and critiqued
earlier editions, pointing out errors and places where our arguments could be
strengthened and amplified.
We thank our families for continuing to persevere through yet another ’60s
story. We dedicate this book to our children. Now it’s their turn.

NEW TO THE SIXTH EDITION

For this edition, we have made a number of changes and additions reflecting new
scholarship on the decade of the 1960s and its legacies for our own time. The
sixth edition:
• Considers how changes in immigration laws in the 1960s sowed the seeds
of future conflicts over “illegal” immigrants.
• Provides an expanded discussion of the Black Panther Party’s history.
• Offers insight into the changes in American politics that would bring such
disparate figures as Barack Obama and Donald Trump into the White
House.
• Offers and expanded and up to date bibliography.
• Includes a discussion of Andy Warhol’s impact on American culture.
America Divided

•
 •
Introduction
We have not yet achieved justice. We have not yet created a
union which is, in the deepest sense, a community. We have
not yet resolved our deep dubieties or self-deceptions. In other
words, we are sadly human, and in our contemplation of the
Civil War we see a dramatization of our humanity; one appeal
of the War is that it holds in suspension, beyond all schematic
readings and claims to total interpretation, so many of the
issues and tragic ironies—somehow essential yet
­incommensurable—which we yet live.
—Robert Penn Warren,
The Legacy of the Civil War, 1961 1

A s the 1950s drew to a close, the organizers of the official centennial obser-
vances for the Civil War were determined not to allow their project, sched-
uled to begin in the spring of 1961 and to run through the spring of 1965, to become
bogged down in any outmoded animosities. Among other considerations, much
was at stake in a successful centennial for the tourism, publishing, and souvenir in-
dustries; as Karl S. Betts of the federal Civil War Centennial Commission predicted
expansively on the eve of the celebration, “It will be a shot in the arm for the whole
American economy.”2 Naturally, the shot in the arm would work better if other
kinds of shots—those dispensed from musketry and artillery that caused the death
and dismemberment of hundreds of thousands of Americans between 1861 and
1865—were not excessively dwelt upon. The Centennial Commission preferred to
present the Civil War as, in essence, a kind of colorful and good-natured regional
athletic rivalry between two groups of freedom-loving white Americans. Thus, the
commission’s brochure “Facts about the Civil War” described the respective mili-
tary forces of the Union and the Confederacy in 1861 as “the Starting Line-ups.”3
Nor did it seem necessary to remind Americans in the 1960s of the messy
political issues that had divided their ancestors into warring camps a century ear-
lier. “Facts about the Civil War” included neither the word “Negro” nor the word
“slavery.” When a journalist inquired in 1959 if any special observances were
planned for the anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation three years
hence, Centennial Commission director Betts hastened to respond, “We’re not

1
2 A M E R IC A D I V I D E D

emphasizing Emancipation.” There was, he insisted, “a bigger theme” involved in

the four-year celebration than the parochial interests of this or that group, and
that was “the beginning of a new America” ushered in by the Civil War. While
memories of emancipation—the forced confiscation by the federal government of
southern property in the form of four million freed slaves—were divisive, other
memories of the era, properly selected and packaged, could help bring Americans
together in a sense of common cause and identity. As Betts explained:
The story of the devotion and loyalty of Southern Negroes is one of the out-
standing things of the Civil War. A lot of fine Negro people loved life as it was
in the old South. There’s a wonderful story there—a story of great devotion that
is inspiring to all people, white, black or yellow.4

But contemporary history sometimes has an inconvenient way of intruding

upon historical memory. As things turned out, at the very first of the scheduled
observances, the commemoration of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the
well-laid plans of the publicists began to go awry. The Centennial Commission
had called a national assembly of delegates from participating state civil war cen-
tennial commissions to meet in Charleston. When a black delegate from New
Jersey complained that she was denied a room at the headquarters hotel because of
South Carolina’s segregationist laws, four northern states announced they would
boycott the Charleston affair. In the interests of restoring harmony, newly inau-
gurated president John F. Kennedy suggested that the state commissions’ busi-
ness meetings be shifted to the nonsegregated precincts of the Charleston Naval
Yard. But that, in turn, provoked the South Carolina Centennial Commission to
secede from the federal commission. In the end, two separate observances were
held: an integrated one on federal property and a segregated one in downtown
Charleston. In the aftermath of the Charleston fiasco, Centennial director Betts
was forced to resign his position. The centennial observances, Newsweek maga-
zine commented, “seemed to be headed into as much shellfire as was hurled in
the bombardment of Fort Sumter.”5
In the dozen or so years that followed, Americans of all regions and political
persuasions were to invoke imagery of the Civil War—to illustrate what divided
rather than united the nation. “Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis
stood, and took an oath to my people,” Alabama governor George Wallace de-
clared from the steps of the statehouse in Montgomery in his inaugural address
in January 1963. From “this Cradle of the Confederacy . . . I draw the line in the
dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation
now . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever!”6
Six months later, in response to civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham,
Alabama, President Kennedy declared in a nationally televised address: “One
 I N T R O D U C T IO N 3

Mock confederates fire on mock Union soldiers during the centennial reenactment of
the Battle of Bull Run, July 1961.

hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves. . . .
[T]his Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its
citizens are free.”7 Two years later, in May 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on
the same statehouse steps in Montgomery where Governor Wallace had thrown
down the gauntlet of segregation. There, before an audience of twenty-five thou-
sand supporters of voting rights, King ended his speech with the exaltedly defiant
words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vin-
tage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of
his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. . . .
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!8

To its northern and southern supporters, the civil rights movement was a
“second Civil War,” or a “second Reconstruction.” To its southern opponents,
it was a second “war of northern aggression.” Civil rights demonstrators in the
4 A M E R IC A D I V I D E D

South carried the stars and stripes on their marches; counterdemonstrators

waved the Confederate stars and bars.
The resurrection of the battle cries of 1861–1865 was not restricted to those
who fought on one or another side of the civil rights struggle. In the course of the
1960s, many Americans came to regard groups of fellow countrymen as enemies
with whom they were engaged in a struggle for the nation’s very soul. Whites
versus blacks, liberals versus conservatives (as well as liberals versus radicals),
young versus old, men versus women, hawks versus doves, rich versus poor, tax-
payers versus welfare recipients, the religious versus the secular, the hip versus
the straight, the gay versus the straight—everywhere one looked, new battalions
took to the field, in a spirit ranging from that of redemptive sacrifice to vengeful
defiance. When liberal delegates to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago
lost an impassioned floor debate over a proposed antiwar plank in the party
platform, they left their seats to march around the convention hall singing the
“Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Out in the streets, meanwhile, watching the battle
between Chicago police and young antiwar demonstrators, the middle-aged
­novelist Norman Mailer admired the emergence of “a generation with an appe-
tite for the heroic.” It pleased him to think that “if it came to civil war, there was
a side he could join.”9 New York Times political columnist James Reston would
muse in the early 1970s that over the past decade the United States had witnessed
“the longest and most divisive conflict since the War between the States.”10
Contemporary history continues to influence historical memory. And a­ lthough
as the authors of America Divided we have tried to avoid political and generational
partisanship in our interpretation of the 1960s, we realize how unlikely it is that
any single history of the decade will satisfy every reader. We offer this revised edi-
tion of America Divided in the midst of the half-century observances of the great
events of the Nixon Presidency, and Americans remain as divided as ever over
their meaning. Perhaps by the time centennial observances roll around for John
Kennedy’s inauguration, the Selma voting rights march, the Tet Offensive, the 1968
Chicago Democratic convention, and the Watergate crisis, Americans will have
achieved consensus in their interpretation of the causes, events, and legacies of the
1960s. But well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, there seems little
likelihood of such agreement emerging any time in the near future. For some five
decades now, the United States has been in the midst of an ongoing “culture war,”
fought over issues of political philosophy, race relations, gender roles, and personal
morality left unresolved since the end of the 1960s.
We make no claim to be offering a “total interpretation” of the 1960s in
America Divided. We do, however, wish to suggest some larger interpretive guide-
lines for understanding the decade. We recognize, first of all, that the American
1960s were part of what historians now call the “global sixties,” and that political
 I N T R O D U C T IO N 5

events, cultural trends, and social developments in the United States were linked
to those occurring in other countries in those years. At the same time, we believe
the 1960s are best understood not as an aberration, but as an integral part of
American history. It was a time of intense conflict and millennial expectations,
similar in many respects to the one Americans endured a century earlier—with
results as mixed, ambiguous, and frustrating as those produced by the Civil War.
Liberalism was not as powerful in the 1960s as is often assumed; nor, equally,
was conservatism as much on the defensive. The insurgent political and social
movements of the decade—including civil rights and black power, the New Left,
environmentalism, and feminism—drew upon even as they sought to transform
values and beliefs deeply rooted in American political culture. The youthful
adherents of the counterculture had more in common with the loyalists of the
dominant culture than either would have acknowledged at the time. And the
most profound and lasting effects of the 1960s are to be found in the realm of “the
personal” rather than “the political.”
Living through a period of intense historical change has its costs, as the dis-
tinguished essayist, poet, and novelist Robert Penn Warren observed in 1961.
Until the 1860s, Penn Warren argued, Americans “had no history in the deepest
and most inward sense.” The “dream of freedom incarnated in a more perfect
union” bequeathed to Americans by the founding fathers had yet to be “submit-
ted to the test of history”:
There was little awareness of the cost of having a history. The anguished scru-
tiny of the meaning of the vision in experience had not become a national real-
ity. It became a reality, and we became a nation, only with the Civil War.11

In the 1960s, Americans were plunged back into “anguished scrutiny” of the
meaning of their most fundamental beliefs and institutions in a renewed test of
history. They reacted with varying degrees of wisdom and folly, optimism and
despair, selflessness and pettiness—all those things that taken together make us,
in any decade, but particularly so in times of civil warfare, sadly (and occasion-
ally grandly) human. It is our hope that, above all else, readers will take from this
book some sense of how the 1960s, like the 1860s, served for Americans as the
“dramatization of our humanity.”
 C HA P T E R 1

•
Gathering of the Forces
We have entered a period of accelerating bigness in all aspects
of American life.
—Eric Johnston,
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1957 1

S even years after it ended, World War II elected Dwight David Eisenhower
president. As supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe, “Ike” had pro-
jected a handsome, confident presence that symbolized the nation’s resolve to
defeat its enemies. After the war, both major parties wooed the retired general
before he revealed that he had always been a Republican.
In many ways, the country Eisenhower governed during the 1950s was still
living in the aftermath of its triumph in history’s bloodiest conflict. Millions of
veterans and their families basked in the glow of a healthy economy—defying
predictions that peace would bring on another depression. Years of prosperity
allowed many Americans to dream that, for the first time in history, the problem
of scarcity—which bred poverty, joblessness, and desperation—might soon be
solved. But they also feared that a new and even more devastating world war—
fought with nuclear weapons—could break out at any time. Affluence might
suddenly give way to annihilation. The backdrop to the ’60s was thus a society
perched between great optimism and great fear.
As he prepared to leave the White House in the early days of January 1961,
Ike was reasonably content with his own record in office. His final State of the
Union address, read to Congress by a lowly clerk, boasted of an economy that had
grown 25 percent since he entered the White House in January 1953. A recession
that began in 1958 had hung on too long; over 6 percent of American wage earn-
ers still could not find a job. But, with unemployment insurance being extended
for millions of workers, there seemed no danger of a return to the bread lines and
homelessness of the 1930s.
Moreover, Eisenhower could claim, with some justification, that his ad-
ministration had improved the lives of most Americans. During his tenure, real
wages had increased by one-fifth, the system of interstate highways was rapidly
expanded, and new schools and houses seemed to sprout up in every middle-
class community. To counter the Soviet Union, Congress had found it necessary

6
 C ha p ter 1 • Gathering of the Forces 7

to boost defense spending and create what Eisenhower, a few days later, called
a “military-industrial complex” whose “unwarranted influence” citizens should
check. Nevertheless, the budget of the federal government was in balance.
America’s best-loved modern general had become one of its favorite presidents.
Ike left office with a popularity rating of nearly 60 percent.
Dwight Eisenhower’s America held sway over a Western world that, since the
late 1940s, had been undergoing a golden age of economic growth and political
stability in which the lives of ordinary people had become easier than they had
ever been before in world history.2 U.S. political and corporate leaders dominated
the non-Communist world through military alliances, technologically advanced
weaponry, democratic ideals, and consumer products that nearly everyone de-
sired—from Coca-Cola to Cadillacs to cowboy movies. At home, American
workers in the heavily unionized manufacturing and construction industries
enjoyed a degree of job security and a standard of living that usually included
an automobile, a television, a refrigerator, a washing machine and a dryer, and
long-playing records. A generation earlier, none of these fabulous goods—except,
perhaps, the car—would have been owned by their working-class parents. TVs
and LPs were not even on the market until the 1940s.
Most economists minimized the impact of the late-’50s recession and pre-
dicted that all Americans would soon share in the benefits of affluence. In 1962,
after completing a long-term study of U.S. incomes, a team of social scientists from
the University of Michigan announced, “The elimination of poverty is well within
the means of Federal, state, and local governments.”3 Some commentators even
fretted that prosperity was sapping the moral will Americans needed to challenge
the appeal of Communism in the third world. In 1960, the New York Times asked,
“How can a nation drowning in a sea of luxury and mesmerized by the trivialities
of the television screen have the faintest prospect of comprehending the plight of
hundreds of millions in this world for whom a full stomach is a rare experience?”4
Only the omnipresent Cold War tarnished the golden age for the comfort-
able majority. Beginning a few months after the end of the Second World War,
the United States and the Soviet Union had employed both the force of arms and
ideological conviction to persuade the vast majority of nations and their citizens
to choose sides. The two superpowers fought with sophisticated propaganda,
exports of arms and military advisers, and huge spy services—an ever-growing
arsenal that burdened the poorer countries of the Soviet bloc more than the pros-
perous, industrial nations in the West. Since 1949, when the USSR exploded its
first atomic bomb, the specter of nuclear Armageddon loomed over the conflict.
In preparing for that ultimate war, the overarmed combatants exacted a
terrible price. The United States and the USSR tested nuclear weapons in the
open air, exposing tens of thousands of their soldiers and untold numbers of
8 A M E R IC A D I V I D E D

Germans peering over the Berlin Wall during its construction, 1961.

civilians to dangerous doses of radiation from fallout. Both powers helped quash
internal revolts within their own virtual empire—the Caribbean region for the
United States, Eastern Europe for the Soviets. In Guatemala and Hungary, the
Dominican Republic and Poland, local tyrants received military assistance and
economic favors as long as they remained servile. For the U.S. State Department,
any sincere land reformer was an incipient Communist; while, on the other side,
any critic of Soviet domination was branded an agent of imperialism. The two
blocs were not morally equivalent: in the United States, the harassment of left-
wing dissenters, many of whom lost their jobs after being branded “subversive,”
violated the nation’s cherished value of free speech and assembly, while in the
USSR, the routine silencing and jailing of political opponents conformed with
Communist doctrine.
By the late ’50s, the death of Joseph Stalin and the end of the Korean War
had diminished the possibility of a new world war. But anxiety still ran high. The
United States, a commission funded by the Rockefeller brothers reported in 1958,
was “in grave danger, threatened by the rulers of one-third of mankind.” Two
years later, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy warned, “The
enemy is the communist system itself—implacable, insatiable, unceasing in its
drive for world domination. . . . [This] is a struggle for supremacy between two
conflicting ideologies: freedom under God versus ruthless, godless tyranny.”5
Western European countries were rapidly shedding their colonies in Africa and
Asia, and American leaders feared that native pro-Communist l­eaders would
fill the gap.
 C ha p ter 1 • Gathering of the Forces 9

By the end of the decade, the most immediate threat to the United States
seemed to come from an island located only ninety miles off the coast of Florida.
Since gaining its independence from Spain in 1898, Cuba had been an informal
American colony; U.S. investors owned 40 percent of its sugar and 90 percent
of its mining wealth and a major American naval base sat on Guantanamo Bay,
at the eastern tip of the island. On New Year’s Day, 1959, this arrangement was
disrupted: a rebel army led by Fidel Castro overthrew the sitting Cuban govern-
ment, a corrupt and brutal regime that had lost the support of its people. At first,
the new rulers of Cuba were the toast of the region. The bearded young leader—
handsome, well-educated, eloquent, and witty—embarked on a speaking tour of
the United States, where he met for three hours with Vice President Nixon.
But Fidel Castro was bent on a more fundamental revolution than American
officials could accept. His government soon began executing officials of the old
regime and confiscating $1 billion of land and other property owned by U.S.
“­imperialists.” When the Eisenhower administration protested, Castro signed a
trade agreement with the USSR and began to construct a state socialist economy.
Anti-Communist Cubans, including most of the upper class, began to flee the
island. By the time Ike left office, a Cuban exile army was training under American
auspices to topple the only pro-Soviet government in the Western Hemisphere.
At the time, most Americans viewed Communism as a dynamic, if sinis-
ter, force. Since the end of the world war, its adherents had steadily gained new
territory, weapons, and followers. U.S. officials were also concerned over reports
that the Soviet economy was growing at double the rate of the American system.
The other side was still far behind, but the idea that the USSR and its allies in
Cuba, China, and elsewhere might capture the future was profoundly disturb-
ing. Another high-level commission announced that the Soviets had more nuclear
missiles than did the West. And, in 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, a tiny un-
manned satellite that seemed to give them a huge edge in the race to conquer
space. All this threatened the confidence of Americans in their technological
prowess, as well as their security. The year before Sputnik, Soviet premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev had boasted, “We shall bury you.” It certainly didn’t seem impossible.
Responding to the perception of a grave Communist threat, Congress did
not question the accuracy of the missile reports (which later proved to be false)
or the solidity of the alliance between Moscow and Beijing (which was already
coming apart). Lawmakers kept the armed services supplied with young d ­ raftees
and the latest weapons, both nuclear and conventional (which also meant good
jobs for their districts). The space program received lavish funding, mostly
through the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and
positive coverage in the media. Billions also flowed into the coffers of American
intelligence agencies. In the third world, any stalwart nationalist who sought to
10 A M E R IC A D I V I D E D

control foreign investment or questioned the value of U.S. bases was fair game for
the Central Intelligence Agency’s repertoire of “covert actions.”
The Cold War also chilled political debate at home. Liberals learned to avoid
making proposals that smacked of “socialism,” such as national health insur-
ance, which their Western European allies had already adopted. To question the
morality of the Cold War sounded downright “un-American.” The need for a
common front against the enemy made ideological diversity seem outmoded if
not subversive.
But not all Americans at the dawn of the decade shared a worldview steeped
in abundance at home and perpetual tension about the Cold War abroad. “The
American equation of success with the big time reveals an awful disrespect for
human life and human achievement,” remarked black writer James Baldwin in
1960.6 Emerging in the postwar era was an alternative nation—peopled by orga-
nizers for civil rights for blacks and women, by radical intellectuals and artists,
and by icons of a new popular culture. These voices did not speak in unison, but,
however inchoately, they articulated a set of values different from those of the
men who ruled from the White House, corporate headquarters, and the offices of
metropolitan newspapers.
The dissenters advocated pacifism instead of Cold War, racial and class
equality instead of a hierarchy of wealth and status, a politics that prized direct
democracy over the clash of interest groups, a frankness toward sex instead of
a rigid split between the public and the intimate, and a boredom with cultural
institutions—from schools to supermarkets—that taught Americans to praise
their country, work hard, and consume joyfully. Dissenters did not agree that
an expanding economy was the best measure of human happiness and tried to
empathize with the minority of their fellow citizens who had little to celebrate.
To understand the turbulent events of the 1960s, one should appreciate the
contradictory nature of the society of 180 million people that was variously ad-
mired and detested, imitated and feared throughout the globe. We set out a few
material facts, benchmarks of what had been achieved and what was lacking in
American society. Of course, the meaning of any particular fact depends upon
where one stands and with what views and resources one engages the world.
A massive baby boom was under way. It began in 1946, right after victory in
World War II, and was ebbing only slightly by the end of the ’50s. In that decade,
an average of over four million births per year was recorded. Teenaged wives and
husbands in their early twenties were responsible for much of this unprecedented
surge. The baby boom, which also occurred in Canada and Australia, resulted
from postwar optimism as well as prosperity. None of these English-speaking
nations had been damaged in the global conflict, and most of their citizens could
smile about their prospects. Western Europe, in contrast, was devastated by the
Another random document with
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"Answer my question. I'm not chaffing you, I'm in deadly earnest.
Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey?"
Master Ambrose moved uneasily in his chair. He was far from proud
of that vision of his. "Well," he said, gruffly, "I suppose one might call
it that. It was at the Academy—the day that wretched girl of mine ran
away. And I was so upset that there was some excuse for what you
call visions."
"And did you tell anyone about it?"
"Not I!" said Master Ambrose emphatically; then he caught himself
up and added, "Oh! yes I believe I did though. I mentioned it to that
spiteful little quack, Endymion Leer. I'm sure I wish I hadn't. Toasted
Cheese! What's the matter now, Nat?"
For Master Nathaniel was actually cutting a caper of triumph and
glee.
"I was right! I was right!" he cried joyfully, so elated by his own
acumen that for the moment his anxiety was forgotten.
"Read that, Ambrose," and he eagerly thrust into his hands Luke
Hempen's letter.
"Humph!" said Master Ambrose when he had finished it. "Well, what
are you so pleased about?"
"Don't you see, Ambrose!" cried Master Nathaniel impatiently. "That
mysterious fellow in the cloak must be Endymion Leer ... nobody
else knows about your vision."
"Oh, yes, Nat, blunt though my wits may be I see that. But I fail to
see how the knowledge helps us in any way." Then Master Nathaniel
told him about Dame Marigold's theories and discoveries.
Master Ambrose hummed and hawed, and talked about women's
reasoning, and rash conclusions. But perhaps he was more
impressed, really, than he chose to let Master Nathaniel see. At any
rate he grudgingly agreed to go with him by night to the Guildhall and
investigate the hollow panel. And, from Master Ambrose, this was a
great concession; for it was not the sort of escapade that suited his
dignity.
"Hurrah, Ambrose!" shouted Master Nathaniel. "And I'm ready to bet
a Moongrass cheese against a flask of your best flower-in-amber
that we'll find that rascally quack at the bottom of it all!"
"You'd always a wonderful eye for a bargain, Nat," said Master
Ambrose with a grim chuckle. "Do you remember, when we were
youngsters, how you got my pedigree pup out of me for a stuffed
pheasant, so moth-eaten that it had scarcely a feather to its name,
and, let me see, what else? I think there was a half a packet of
mouldy sugar-candy...."
"And I threw in a broken musical-box whose works used to go queer
in the middle of 'To War, Bold Sons of Dorimare,' and burr and buzz
like a drunk cockchafer," put in Master Nathaniel proudly. "It was
quite fair—quantity for quality."
 CHAPTER XIII
WHAT MASTER NATHANIEL AND MASTER
AMBROSE FOUND IN THE GUILDHALL
Master Nathaniel was much too restless and anxious to explore the
Guildhall until the groom returned whom he had sent with the letter
to Luke Hempen.
But he must have taken the order to ride night and day literally—in
so short a time was he back again in Lud. Master Nathaniel was, of
course, enchanted by his despatch, though he was unable to elicit
from him any detailed answers to his eager questions about
Ranulph. But it was everything to know that the boy was well and
happy, and it was but natural that the fellow should be bashful and
tongue-tied in the presence of his master.
But the groom had not, as a matter of fact, come within twenty miles
of the widow Gibberty's farm.
In a road-side tavern he had fallen in with a red-haired youth, who
had treated him to glass upon glass of an extremely intoxicating
wine; and, in consequence, he had spent the night and a
considerable portion of the following morning sound asleep on the
floor of the tavern.
When he awoke, he was horrified to discover how much time he had
wasted. But his mind was set at rest on the innkeeper's giving him a
letter from the red-haired youth, to say that he deeply regretted
having been the indirect cause of delaying a messenger sent on
pressing business by the High Seneschal (in his cup the groom had
boasted of the importance of his errand), and had, in consequence,
ventured to possess himself of the letter, which he guaranteed to
deliver at the address on the wrapper as soon, or sooner, as the
messenger could have done himself.
The groom was greatly relieved. He had not been long in Master
Nathaniel's service. It was after Yule-tide he had entered it.

So it was with a heart relieved from all fears for Ranulph and free to
throb like a schoolboy's with the lust of adventure that Master
Nathaniel met Master Ambrose on the night of the full moon at the
splendid carved doors of the Guildhall.
"I say, Ambrose," he whispered, "I feel as if we were lads again, and
off to rob an orchard!"
Master Ambrose snorted. He was determined, at all costs, to do his
duty, but it annoyed him that his duty should be regarded in the light
of a boyish escapade.
The great doors creaked back on their hinges. Shutting them as
quietly as they could, they tip-toed up the spiral staircase and along
the corridor described by Dame Marigold: whenever a board creaked
under their heavy steps, one inwardly cursing the other for daring to
be so stout and unwieldy.
All round them was darkness, except for the little trickles of light cast
before them by their two lanthorns.
A house with old furniture has no need of guests to be haunted. As
we have seen, Master Nathaniel was very sensitive to the silent
things—stars, houses, trees; and often in his pipe-room, after the
candles had been lit, he would sit staring at the bookshelves, the
chairs, his father's portrait—even at his red umbrella standing up in
the corner, with as great a sense of awe as if he had been a star-
gazer.
But that night, the brooding invisible presences of the carved panels,
the storied tapestries, affected even the hard-headed Master
Ambrose. It was as if that silent population was drawing him, by an
irresistible magnetism, into the zone of its influence.
If only they would speak, or begin to move about—those silent
rooted things! It was like walking through a wood by moonlight.
Then Master Nathaniel stood still.
"This, I think, must roughly be the spot where Marigold found the
hollow panel," he whispered, and began tapping cautiously along the
wainscotting.
A few minutes later, he said in an excited whisper, "Ambrose!
Ambrose! I've got it. Hark! You can hear, can't you? It's as hollow as
a drum."
"Suffering Cats! I believe you're right," whispered back Master
Ambrose, beginning, in spite of himself, to be a little infected with
Nat's absurd excitement.
And then, yielding to pressure, the panel slid back, and by the light of
their lanthorns they could see a twisting staircase.
For a few seconds they gazed at each other in silent triumph. Then
Master Nathaniel chuckled, and said, "Well, here goes—down with
our buckets into the well! And may we draw up something better
than an old shoe or a rotten walnut!" and straightway he began to
descend the stairs, Master Ambrose valiantly following him.
The stairs went twisting down, down—into the very bowels of the
earth, it seemed. But at long last they found themselves in what
looked like a long tunnel.
"Tally ho! Tally ho!" whispered Master Nathaniel, laughing for sheer
joy of adventure, "take it at a gallop, Brosie; it may lead to an open
glade ... and the deer at bay!"
And digging him in the ribs, he added, "Better sport than moth
hunting, eh?" which showed the completeness of their reconciliation.
Nevertheless, it was very slowly, and feeling each step, that they
groped their way along the tunnel.
After what seemed a very long time Master Nathaniel halted, and
whispered over his shoulder, "Here we are. There's a door ... oh,
thunder and confusion on it for ever! It's locked."
And, beside himself with irritation at this unlooked-for obstacle, he
began to batter and kick at the door, like one demented.
He paused a minute for breath, and from the inside could be heard a
shrill female voice demanding the pass-word.
"Pass-word?" bellowed back Master Nathaniel, "by the Sun, Moon
and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West, what...."
But before he could finish his sentence, the door was opened from
the other side, and they marched into a low, square room, which was
lit by one lamp swinging by a chain from the ceiling—for which there
seemed but little need, for a light more brilliant than that of any lamp,
and yet as soft as moonlight, seemed to issue from the marvelous
tapestries that hung on the walls.
They were dumb with amazement. This was as different from all the
other tapestry they had ever seen as is an apple-tree in full blossom
against a turquoise sky in May to the same tree in November, when
only a few red leaves still cling to its branches, and the sky is leaden.
Oh, those blues, and pinks, and brilliant greens! In what miraculous
dyes had the silks been dipped?
As to the subjects, they were those familiar to every Dorimarite—
hunting scenes, fugitives chased by the moon, shepherds and
shepherdesses tending their azure sheep. But, depicted in these
brilliant hues, they were like the ashes of the past, suddenly, under
one's very eyes, breaking into flame. Heigh-presto! The men and
women of a vanished age, noisy, gaudy, dominant, are flooding the
streets, and driving the living before them like dead leaves.
And what was this lying in heaps on the floor? Pearls and sapphires,
and monstrous rubies? Or windfalls of fruit, marvellous fruit, fallen
from the trees depicted on the tapestry?
Then, as their eyes grew accustomed to all the brilliance, the two
friends began to get their bearings; there could be no doubt as to the
nature of that fruit lying on the floor. It was fairy fruit, or their names
were not respectively Chanticleer and Honeysuckle.
And, to their amazement, the guardian of this strange treasure was
none other than their old acquaintance Mother Tibbs.
Her clear, child-like eyes that shone like lamps out of her seared
weather-beaten face, were gazing at them in a sort of mild surprise.
"If it isn't Master Hyacinth and Master Josiah!" she exclaimed,
adding, with her gay, young laugh, "to think of their knowing the
pass-word!"
Then she peered anxiously into their faces: "Are your stockings
wearing well yonder? The last pair I washed for you didn't take the
soap as they should. Marching down the Milky Way, and tripping it
beyond the moon, is hard on stockings."
Clearly she took them for their own fathers.
Meanwhile, Master Ambrose was drawing in his breath, with a noise
as if he were eating soup, and creasing his double chins—sure
signs, to anyone who had seen him on the Bench, that he was
getting ready to hector.
But Master Nathaniel gave him a little warning nudge, and said
cordially to their hostess, "Why, our stockings, and boots too, are
doing very nicely, thank you. So you didn't expect us to know the
pass-word, eh? Well, well, perhaps we know more than you think,"
then, under his breath to Master Ambrose, "By my Great-aunt's
Rump, Ambrose, what was the pass-word?"
Then turning again to Mother Tibbs, who was slightly swaying from
her hips, as if in time to some jig, which she alone could hear, he
said, "You've got some fine tapestry. I don't believe I've ever seen
finer!"
She smiled, and then coming close up to him, said in a low voice,
"Does your Worship know what makes it so fine? No? Why, it's the
fairy fruit!" and she nodded her head mysteriously, several times.
Master Ambrose gave a sort of low growl of rage, but again Master
Nathaniel shot him a warning look, and said in a voice of polite
interest, "Indeed! Indeed! And where, may I ask, does the ... er ...
fruit come from?"
She laughed merrily, "Why, the gentlemen bring it! All the pretty
gentlemen, dressed in green, with their knots of ribands, crowding
down in the sunrise from their ships with the scarlet sails to suck the
golden apricocks, when all in Lud are fast asleep! And then the cock
says Cockadoodledoo! Cockadoodledooooo!" and her voice trailed
off, far-away and lonely, suggesting, somehow, the first glimmer of
dawn on ghostly hayricks.
"And I'll tell you something, Master Nat Cock o' the Roost," she went
on, smiling mysteriously, and coming close up to him, "you'll soon be
dead!"
Then she stepped back, smiling and nodding encouragingly, as if to
say, "There's a pretty present I've given you! Take care of it."
"And as for Mother Tibbs," she went on triumphantly, "she'll soon be
a fine lady, like the wives of the Senators, dancing all night under the
moon! The gentlemen have promised."
Master Ambrose gave a snort of impatience, but Master Nathaniel
said with a good-humoured laugh, "So that's how you think the wives
of the Senators spend their time, eh? I'm afraid they've other things
to do. And as to yourself, aren't you getting too old for dancing?"
A slight shadow passed across her clear eyes. Then she tossed her
head with the noble gesture of a wild creature, and cried, "No! No!
As long as my heart dances my feet will too. And nobody will grow
old when the Duke comes back."
But Master Ambrose could contain himself no longer. He knew only
too well Nat's love of listening to long rambling talk—especially when
there happened to be some serious business on hand.
"Come, come," he cried in a stern voice, "in spite of being crack-
brained, my good woman, you may soon find yourself dancing to
another tune. Unless you tell us in double quick time who exactly
these gentlemen are, and who it was that put you on guard here, and
who brings that filthy fruit, and who takes it away, we will ... why, we
will cut the fiddle strings that you dance to!"
This threat was a subconscious echo of the last words he had heard
spoken by Moonlove. Its effect was instantaneous.
"Cut the fiddle strings! Cut the fiddle strings!" she wailed; adding
coaxingly, "No, no, pretty master, you would never do that! Would he
now?" and she turned appealingly to Master Nathaniel. "It would be
like taking away the poor man's strawberries. The Senator has
peaches and roasted swans and peacock's hearts, and a fine coach
to drive in, and a feather bed to lie late in of a morning. And the poor
man has black bread and baked haws, and work ... but in the
summer he has strawberries and tunes to dance to. No, no, you
would never cut the fiddle strings!"
Master Nathaniel felt a lump in his throat. But Master Ambrose was
inexorable: "Yes, of course I would!" he blustered; "I'd cut the strings
of every fiddle in Lud. And I will, too, unless you tell us what we want
to know. Come, Mother Tibbs, speak out—I'm a man of my word."
She gazed at him beseechingly, and then a look of innocent cunning
crept into her candid eyes and she placed a finger on her lips, then
nodded her head several times and said in a mysterious whisper, "If
you'll promise not to cut the fiddle strings I'll show you the prettiest
sight in the world—the sturdy dead lads in the Fields of Grammary
hoisting their own coffins on their shoulders, and tripping it over the
daisies. Come!" and she darted to the side of the wall, drew aside
the tapestry and revealed to them another secret door. She pressed
some spring, it flew open disclosing another dark tunnel.
"Follow me, pretty masters," she cried.
"There's nothing to be done," whispered Master Nathaniel, "but to
humour her. She may have something of real value to show us."
Master Ambrose muttered something about a couple of lunatics and
not having left his fireside to waste the night in indulging their
fantasies; but all the same he followed Master Nathaniel, and the
second secret door shut behind them with a sharp click.
"Phew!" said Master Nathaniel: "Phew!" puffed Master Ambrose, as
they pounded laboriously along the passage behind their light-footed
guide.
Then they began to ascend a flight of stairs, which seemed
interminable, and finally fell forward with a lurch on to their knees,
and again there was a click of something shutting behind them.
They groaned and cursed and rubbed their knees and demanded
angrily to what unholy place she had been pleased to lead them.
But she clapped her hands gleefully, "Don't you know, pretty
masters? Why, you're where the dead cocks roost! You've come
back to your own snug cottage, Master Josiah Chanticleer. Take your
lanthorn and look round you."
This Master Nathaniel proceeded to do, and slowly it dawned on him
where they were.
"By the Golden Apples of the West, Ambrose!" he exclaimed, "if
we're not in my own chapel!"
And, sure enough, the rays of the lanthorn revealed the shelves lined
with porphyry coffins, the richly wrought marble ceiling, and the
mosaic floor of the home of the dead Chanticleers.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose in amazement.
"It must have two doors, though I never knew it," said Master
Nathaniel. "A secret door opening on to that hidden flight of steps.
There are evidently people who know more about my chapel than I
do myself," and suddenly he remembered how the other day he had
found its door ajar.
Mother Tibbs laughed gleefully at their surprise, and then, placing
one finger on her lips, she beckoned them to follow her; and they tip-
toed after her out into the moonlit Fields of Grammary, where she
signed to them to hide themselves from view behind the big trunk of
a sycamore.
The dew, like lunar daisies, lay thickly on the grassy graves. The
marble statues of the departed seemed to flicker into smiles under
the rays of the full moon; and, not far from the sycamore, two men
were digging up a newly-made grave. One of them was a brawny
fellow with the gold rings in his ears worn by sailors, the other was—
Endymion Leer.
Master Nathaniel shot a look of triumph at Master Ambrose, and
whispered, "A cask of flower-in-amber, Brosie!"
For some time the two men dug on in silence, and then they pulled
out three large coffins and laid them on the grass.
"We'd better have a peep, Sebastian," said Endymion Leer, "to see
that the goods have been delivered all right. We're dealing with tricky
customers."
The young man, addressed as Sebastian, grinned, and taking a
clasp knife from his belt, began to prise open one of the coffins.
As he inserted the blade into the lid, our two friends behind the
sycamore could not help shuddering; nor was their horror lessened
by the demeanor of Mother Tibbs, for she half closed her eyes, and
drew the air in sharply through her nostrils, as if in expectation of
some delicious perfume.
But when the lid was finally opened and the contents of the coffin
exposed to view, they proved not to be cere cloths and hideousness,
but—closely packed fairy fruit.
"Toasted Cheese!" muttered Master Ambrose; "Busty Bridget!"
muttered Master Nathaniel.
"Yes, that's the goods all right," said Endymion Leer, "and we'll take
the other two on trust. Shut it up again, and help to hoist it on to my
shoulder, and do you follow with the other two—we'll take them right
away to the tapestry-room. We're having a council there at midnight,
and it's getting on for that now."
Choosing a moment when the backs of the two smugglers were
turned, Mother Tibbs darted out from behind the sycamore, and shot
back into the chapel, evidently afraid of not being found at her post.
And she was shortly followed by Endymion Leer and his companion.
At first, the sensations of Master Nathaniel and Master Ambrose
were too complicated to be expressed in words, and they merely
stared at each other, with round eyes. Then a slow smile broke over
Master Nathaniel's face, "No Moongrass cheese for you this time,
Brosie," he said. "Who was right, you or me?"
"By the Milky Way, it was you, Nat!" cried Master Ambrose, for once,
in a voice of real excitement. "The rascal! The unmitigated rogue! So
it's him, is it, we parents have to thank for what has happened! But
he'll hang for it, he'll hang for it—though we have to change the
whole constitution of Dorimare! The blackguard!"
"Into the town probably as a hearse," Master Nathaniel was saying
thoughtfully, "then buried here, then down through my chapel into the
secret room in the Guildhall, whence, I suppose, they distribute it by
degrees. It's quite clear now how the stuff gets into Lud. All that
remains to clear up is how it gets past our Yeomen on the border ...
but what's taken you, Ambrose?"
For Master Ambrose was simply shaking with laughter; and he did
not laugh easily.
"Do the dead bleed?" he was repeating between his guffaws; "why,
Nat, it's the best joke I've heard these twenty years!"
And when he had sufficiently recovered he told Master Nathaniel
about the red juice oozing out of the coffin, which he had taken for
blood, and how he had frightened Endymion Leer out of his wits by
asking him about it.
"When, of course, it was a bogus funeral, and what I had seen was
the juice of that damned fruit!" and again he was seized with
paroxysms of laughter.
But Master Nathaniel merely gave an absent smile; there was
something vaguely reminiscent in that idea of the dead bleeding—
something he had recently read or heard; but, for the moment, he
could not remember where.
In the meantime, Master Ambrose had recovered his gravity. "Come,
come," he cried briskly, "we've not a moment to lose. We must be off
at once to Mumchance, rouse him and a couple of his men, and be
back in a twinkling to that tapestry-room, to take them red-handed."
"You're right, Ambrose! You're right!" cried Master Nathaniel. And off
they went at a sharp jog trot, out at the gate, down the hill, and into
the sleeping town.
They had no difficulty in rousing Mumchance and in firing him with
their own enthusiasm. As they told him in a few hurried words what
they had discovered, his respect for the Senate went up in leaps and
bounds—though he could scarcely credit his ears when he learned
of the part played in the evening's transactions by Endymion Leer.
"To think of that! To think of that!" he kept repeating, "and me who's
always been so friendly with the Doctor, too!"
As a matter of fact, Endymion Leer had for some months been the
recipient of Mumchance's complaints with regard to the slackness
and inefficiency of the Senate; and, in his turn, had succeeded in
infecting the good Captain's mind with sinister suspicions against
Master Nathaniel. And there was a twinge of conscience for
disloyalty to his master, the Mayor, behind the respectful heartiness
of his tones as he cried, "Very good, your Worship. It's Green and
Juniper what are on duty tonight. I'll go and fetch them from the
guard-room, and we should be able to settle the rascals nicely."
As the clocks in Lud-in-the-Mist were striking midnight the five of
them were stepping cautiously along the corridors of the Guildhall.
They had no difficulty in finding the hollow panel, and having pressed
the spring, they made their way along the secret passage.
"Ambrose!" whispered Master Nathaniel flurriedly, "what was it
exactly that I said that turned out to be the pass-word? What with the
excitement and all I've clean forgotten it."
Master Ambrose shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea," he
whispered back. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't make out what she
meant about your having used a pass-word. All I can remember your
saying was 'Toasted Cheese!' or 'Busty Bridget!'—or something
equally elegant."
Now they had got to the door, locked from the inside as before.
"Look here, Mumchance," said Master Nathaniel, ruefully, "we can't
remember the pass-word, and they won't open without it."
Mumchance smiled indulgently, "Your Worship need not worry about
the pass-word," he said. "I expect we'll be able to find another that
will do as well ... eh, Green and Juniper? But perhaps first—just to
be in order—your Worship would knock and command them to
open."
Master Nathaniel felt absurdly disappointed. For one thing, it
shocked his sense of dramatic economy that they should have to
resort to violence when the same result could have been obtained by
a minimum expenditure of energy. Besides, he had so looked
forward to showing off his new little trick!
So it was with a rueful sigh that he gave a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the
door, calling out, "Open in the name of the Law!"
These words, of course, produced no response, and Mumchance,
with the help of the other four, proceeded to put into effect his own
pass-word, which was to shove with all their might against the door,
two of the hinges of which he had noticed looked rusty.
It began to creak, and then to crack, and finally they burst into ... an
empty room. No strange fruit lay heaped on the floor; nothing hung
on the walls but a few pieces of faded moth-eaten tapestry. It looked
like a room that had not been entered for centuries.
When they had recovered from their first surprise, Master Nathaniel
cried fiercely, "They must have got wind that we were after them, and
given us the slip, taking their loads of filthy fruits with them, I'll...."
"There's been no fruit here, your Worship," said Mumchance in a
voice that he was trying hard to keep respectful; "it always leaves
stains, and there ain't any stains here."
And he couldn't resist adding, with a wink to Juniper and Green, "I
daresay it's your Worship's having forgotten the pass-word that's
done it!" And Juniper and Green grinned from ear to ear.
Master Nathaniel was too chagrined to heed this insolence; but
Master Ambrose—ever the champion of dignity in distress—gave
Mumchance such a look that he hung his head and humbly hoped
that his Worship would forgive his little joke.
 CHAPTER XIV
DEAD IN THE EYE OF THE LAW
The following morning Master Nathaniel woke late, and got up on the
wrong side of his bed, which, in view of the humiliation and
disappointment of the previous night, was, perhaps, pardonable.
His temper was not improved by Dame Marigold's coming in while
he was dressing to complain of his having smoked green shag
elsewhere than in the pipe-room: "And you know how it always
upsets me, Nat. I'm feeling quite squeamish this morning, the whole
house reeks of it ... Nat! you know you are an old blackguard!" and
she dimpled and shook her finger at him, as an emollient to the slight
shrewishness of her tone.
"Well, you're wrong for once," snapped Master Nathaniel; "I haven't
smoked shag even in the pipe-room for at least a week—so there!
Upon my word, Marigold, your nose is a nuisance—you should keep
it in a bag, like a horse!"
But though Master Nathaniel might be in a bad temper he was far
from being daunted by what had happened the night before.
He shut himself into the pipe-room and wrote busily for about a
quarter of an hour; then he paced up and down committing what he
had written to memory. Then he set out for the daily meeting of the
Senate. And so absorbed was he with the speech he had been
preparing that he was impervious, in the Senators' tiring-room, to the
peculiar glances cast at him by his colleagues.
Once the Senators had donned their robes of office and taken their
places in the magnificent room reserved for their councils, their
whole personality was wont suddenly to alter, and they would cease
to be genial, easy-going merchants who had known each other all
their lives and become grave, formal—even hierophantic, in manner;
while abandoning the careless colloquial diction of every day, they
would adopt the language of their forefathers, forged in more
strenuous and poetic days than the present.
In consequence, the stern look in Master Nathaniel's eye that
morning, when he rose to address his colleagues, the stern tone in
which he said "Senators of Dorimare!" might have heralded nothing
more serious than a suggestion that they should, that year, have
geese instead of turkeys at their public dinner.
But his opening words showed that this was to be no usual speech.
"Senators of Dorimare!" he began, "I am going to ask you this
morning to awake. We have been asleep for many centuries, and the
Law has sung us lullabies. But many of us here have received the
accolade of a very heavy affliction. Has that wakened us? I fear not.
The time has come when it behooves us to look facts in the face—
even if those facts bear a strange likeness to dreams and fancies.
"My friends, the ancient foes of our country are abroad. Tradition
says that the Fairies" (he brought out boldly the horrid word) "fear
iron; and we, the descendants of the merchant-heroes, must still
have left in us some veins of that metal. The time has come to prove
it. We stand to lose everything that makes life pleasant and secure—
laughter, sound sleep, the merriment of fire-sides, the peacefulness
of gardens. And if we cannot bequeath the certainty of these things
to our children, what will boot them their inheritance? It is for us,
then, as fathers as well as citizens, once and for all to uproot this
menace, the roots of which are in the past, the branches of which
cast their shadow on the future.
"I and another of your colleagues have discovered at last who it was
that brought this recent grief and shame upon so many of us. It will
be hard, I fear, to prove his guilt, for he is subtle, stealthy, and
mocking, and, like his invisible allies, his chief weapon is delusion. I
ask you all, then, to parry that weapon with faith and loyalty, which
will make you take the word of old and trusty friends as the only
touchstone of truth. And, after that—I have sometimes thought that
less blame attaches to deluding others than to deluding oneself.
Away, then, with flimsy legal fictions! Let us call things by their
names—not grograine or tuftaffity, but fairy fruit. And if it be proved
that any man has brought such merchandise into Dorimare, let him
hang by his neck till he be dead."
Then Master Nathaniel sat down.
But where was the storm of applause he had expected would greet
his words? Where were the tears, the eager questions, the tokens of
deeply stirred feelings?
Except for Master Ambrose's defiant "Bravos!" his speech was
received in profound silence. The faces all round him were grim and
frigid, with compressed lips and frowning brows—except the portrait
of Duke Aubrey—he, as usual, was faintly smiling.
Then Master Polydore Vigil rose to his feet, and broke the grim
silence.
"Senators of Dorimare!" he began, "the eloquent words we have just
listened to from his Worship the Mayor can, strangely enough, serve
as a prelude—a golden prelude to my poor, leaden words. I, too,
came here this morning resolved to bring your attention to legal
fictions—which, sometimes, it may be, have their uses. But perhaps
before I say my say, his Worship will allow the clerk to read us the
oldest legal fiction in our Code. It is to be found in the first volume of
the Acts of the twenty-fifth year of the Republic, Statute 5, chapter
9."
Master Polydore Vigil sat down, and a slow grim smile circulated
round the hall, and then seemed to vanish and subside in the
mocking eyes of Duke Aubrey's portrait.
Master Nathaniel exchanged puzzled glances with Master Ambrose;
but there was nothing for it but to order the clerk to comply with the
wishes of Master Polydore.
So, in a small, high, expressionless voice, which might have been
the voice of the Law herself, the clerk read as follows:
"Further, we ordain that nothing but death alone shall have power to
dismiss the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist and High Seneschal of
Dorimare before the five years of his term of office shall fully have
expired. But, the dead, being dumb, feeble, treacherous and given to
vanities, if any Mayor at a time of menace to the safety of the
Dorimarites be held by his colleagues to be any of these things, then
let him be accounted dead in the eye of the Law, and let another be
elected in his stead."
 CHAPTER XV
"HO, HO, HOH!"
The clerk shut the great tome, bowed low, and withdrew to his place;
and an ominous silence reigned in the hall.
Master Nathaniel sat watching the scene with an eye so cold and
aloof that the Eye of the Law itself could surely not have been colder.
What power had delusion or legal fictions against the mysterious
impetus propelling him along the straight white road that led he knew
not whither?
But Master Ambrose sprang up and demanded fiercely that the
honourable Senator would oblige them by an explanation of his
offensive insinuations.
Nothing loth, Master Polydore again rose to his feet, and, pointing a
menacing finger at Master Nathaniel, he said: "His worship the
Mayor has told us of a man stealthy, mocking, and subtle, who has
brought this recent grief and shame upon us. That man is none other
than his Worship the Mayor himself."
Master Ambrose again sprung to his feet, and began angrily to
protest, but Master Nathaniel, ex cathedra, sternly ordered him to be
silent and to sit down.
Master Polydore continued: "He has been dumb, when it was the
time to speak, feeble, when it was the time to act, treacherous, as
the desolate homes of his friends can testify, and given to vanities.
Aye, given to vanities, for what," and he smiled ironically, "but vanity
in a man is too great a love for grograines and tuftaffities and other
costly silks? Therefore, I move that in the eye of the Law he be
accounted dead."
A low murmur of approval surged over the hall.
"Will he deny that he is over fond of silk?"
Master Nathaniel bowed, in token that he did deny it.
Master Polydore asked if he would then be willing to have his house
searched; again Master Nathaniel bowed.
There and then?
And Master Nathaniel bowed again.
So the Senate rose and twenty of the Senators, without removing
their robes, filed out of the Guildhall and marched two and two
towards Master Nathaniel's house.
On the way who should tag himself on to the procession but
Endymion Leer. At this, Master Ambrose completely lost his temper.
He would like to know why this double-dyed villain, this shameless
Son of a Fairy, was putting his rancid nose into the private concerns
of the Senate! But Master Nathaniel cried impatiently, "Oh, let him
come, Ambrose, if he wants to. The more the merrier!"
You can picture the consternation of Dame Marigold when, a few
minutes later, her brother—with a crowd of Senators pressing up
behind him—bade her, with a face of grave compassion, to bring him
all the keys of the house.
They proceeded to make a thorough search, ransacking every
cupboard, chest and bureau. But nowhere did they find so much as
an incriminating pip, so much as a stain of dubious colour.
"Well," began Master Polydore, in a voice of mingled relief and
disappointment, "it seems that our search has been a...."
"Fruitless one, eh?" prompted Endymion Leer, rubbing his hands,
and darting his bright eyes over the assembled faces. "Well, perhaps
it has. Perhaps it has."
They were standing in the hall, quite close to the grandfather's clock,
which was ticking away, as innocent and foolish-looking as a newly-
born lamb.
Endymion Leer walked up to it and gazed at it quizzically, with his
head on one side. Then he tapped its mahogany case—making