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Updated: June 18, 2025
"There is always Master Courage," suggested Hymn-of-Praise, with a movement of the left eyelid which in the case of any one less saintly might have been described as a sly wink. "That there is not," interrupted the lad decisively; "my stomach rebels against comfits, and sack-posset could never be laid to my door."
Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy, too, though unwilling to see a corpse, thought it his duty to help the law in investigating this mysterious crime. He had oft seen the foreigner of nights in the park, and never doubted for a moment that the body which lay across the elm chairs in the smith's forge was indeed that of the stranger.
Undoubtedly even in these days of more than primitive simplicity and of sober habiliments Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy, butler at Acol Court in the county of Kent, and his henchman, Master Courage Toogood, would have been conspicuous for the shabbiness and poverty of the livery which they wore. The hour was three in the afternoon.
Master Hymn-of-Praise leaned thoughtfully against the ivy-covered wall. His eyes, roaming, searching, restless, pried all around him. "Footprints!" he mused, "footprints which of a surety must mean that human foot hath lately trod this moss. Footprints moreover, which lead up the steps to the door of that pavilion, wherein to my certain knowledge, no one hath had access of late."
"Have you been scouring the chimney, good master?" queried Master Courage, with some diffidence, for the saintly man looked somewhat out of humor. "No!" replied Hymn-of-Praise solemnly, "I have not. But I tell ye both that my hour hath come. I knew that something was happening in this house, and I climbed up that chimney in order to find out what it was."
He had long, lanky hair of a pale straw-color, a thin face and high cheek-bones, and was dressed as was also Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy in a dark purple doublet and knee breeches, all looking very much the worse for wear; the brown tags and buttons with which these garments had originally been roughly adorned were conspicuous in a great many places by their absence, whilst all those that remained were mere skeletons of their former selves.
"Firstly," he began solemnly, "there's an heiress! secondly our master poor as a church mouse thirdly a young scholar secretary, they call him, though he writes no letters, and is all day absorbed in his studies ... Well, mistress," he concluded, turning a triumphant gaze on her, "tell me, prithee, what happens?" "What happens, Master Hymn-of-Praise? ... I do not understand. What does happen?"
Pardonable curiosity caused Mistress Charity to venture a little nearer to the soot-covered figure of her adorer. "And did you hear anything, Master Busy?" she asked eagerly. "I did see Sir Marmaduke and the mistress in close conversation here this morning." "So they thought," said Master Hymn-of-Praise with weird significance. "Well? ... And what happened, good master?"
Hardly had Master Hymn-of-Praise finished speaking when he turned very sharply round and looked with renewed sternness wholly untempered by a twinkle this time in the direction whence he thought a suppressed giggle had just come to his ears.
Hymn-of-Praise had his full meed of pleasure that evening, and the next day, too, for Sir Marmaduke seemed never tired of hearing him recount all the gossip which obtained at Acol and at St.
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