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Gilfillan, un-appalled at this undesirable apparition, cried out manfully, 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon! and, drawing his broadsword, would probably have done as much credit to the good old cause as any of its doughty champions at Drumclog, when, behold! the pedlar, snatching a musket from the person who was next him, bestowed the butt of it with such emphasis on the head of his late instructor in the Cameronian creed, that he was forthwith levelled to the ground.
But those who thought they had said all there was to be said about Bratti when they had called him a pedlar, were a good deal further off the truth than the other side of Pisa. How was it that he could put that ring in a stranger's way?
At a distance Hauptmann perceived one who importunately offered a small object to the sightseers and was as regularly repulsed. Without waiting for the professor, who stood at attention while Fraülein Linda sketched, this beggar or pedlar approached and prayed to be allowed to show a rare and veritable object of antiquity.
"What is the matter, my sweet bird?" said Hulda, for the bird pecked her wrist, and fluttered its wings, and opened its beak as if it were very much frightened. "Let us go, mother, and look about us," said Hulda. So they both got up and wandered all over the gardens; but the pedlar, in the meantime, had walked on toward the town, and they saw nothing of him.
The pedlar fell down at first with fright, but afterwards pretended to be nearly dead from illness; and when Langekniv came up, he said, 'Take my pack and my money, and fetch a doctor; I am dying. Langekniv thought that with a man who could be so easily robbed, it was not necessary to do more than he was asked; but as soon as he turned to go away, the pedlar struck him with his staff a blow on the ankle, that disabled him from running.
She reflected a few minutes, then, looking at me over her knitting-needles, she said: 'Are you a tiler or a plasterer? Now, this was a question that I was quite unprepared for. I had often been set down as a pedlar. I had been suspected of being a travelling musician, and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer.
The pedlar once more sought the kitchen, where he lingered in fact more like a man who seemed fatigued than otherwise, inasmuch as his eyes occasionally closed, and his head nodded, in spite of him. He kept, however, constantly watching and peeping into the yard and lawn from time to time, as if he expected to see somebody.
"Hang him, a mechanical chuff!" said the mercer; "but for shame, it were a good deed to ease him of his wares a set of peddling knaves, who stroll through the land, and hurt the established trader. There are good fellows in Berkshire yet, mine host your pedlar may be met withal on Maiden Castle."
Martyn could no more have chuckled over this depravity than he could have chuckled over the fallen angels; but Saint Teresa could have laughed outright, her wonderful, merry, infectious laugh; and have then proceeded to plead, to scold, to threaten, to persuade, until a chastened and repentant pedlar, money in hand, and some dim promptings to goodness tugging at his heart, would have tramped bravely and soberly home.
"That bird is the chief over again. Don't plug him!" And that was why Donnegan lived. If he had taken the eye of the hardened Rix and the still harder Pedlar, he had stunned the men of The Corner. And breathlessly they waited for his proposal to Jack Landis. He spoke with his hands behind his head again, after he had slowly taken out a handkerchief and wiped his chin.
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