Again, with all the courage and composure of an innocent man, and indeed with more than what an innocent man ought to possess in the presence of a magistrate, the youngster said, pointing toward Master Silas, —

“The first moment he ventureth to lift up his visage from the table, hath Providence marked him miraculously.  I have heard of black malice.  How many of our words have more in them than we think of!  Give a countryman a plough of silver, and he will plough with it all the season, and never know its substance.  ’T is thus with our daily speech.  What riches lie hidden in the vulgar tongue of the poorest and most ignorant!  What flowers of Paradise lie under our feet, with their beauties and parts undistinguished and undiscerned, from having been daily trodden on!  O, sir, look you!—­but let me cover my eyes!  Look at his lips!  Gracious Heaven! they were not thus when he entered.  They are blacker now than Harry Tewe’s bull-bitch’s!”

Master Silas did lift up his eyes in astonishment and wrath; and his worship, Sir Thomas, did open his wider and wider, and cried by fits and starts:-

“Gramercy! true enough! nay, afore God, too true by half!  I never saw the like!  Who would believe it?  I wish I were fairly rid of this examination,—­my hands washed clean thereof!  Another time,—­ anon!  We have our quarterly sessions; we are many together.  At present I remand—­”

And now, indeed, unless Sir Silas had taken his worship by the sleeve, he would may-hap have remanded the lad.  But Sir Silas, still holding the sleeve and shaking it, said, hurriedly, —

“Let me entreat your worship to ponder.  What black does the fellow talk of?  My blood and bile rose up against the rogue; but surely I did not turn black in the face, or in the mouth, as the fellow calls it?”

Whether Master Silas had some suspicion and inkling of the cause or not, he rubbed his right hand along his face and lips, and, looking upon it, cried aloud, —

“Ho, ho! is it off?  There is some upon my finger’s end, I find.  Now I have it,—­ay, there it is.  That large splash upon the centre of the table is tallow, by my salvation!  The profligates sat up until the candle burned out, and the last of it ran through the socket upon the board.  We knew it before.  I did convey into my mouth both fat and smut!”

“Many of your cloth and kidney do that, good Master Silas, and make no wry faces about it,” quoth the youngster, with indiscreet merriment, although short of laughter, as became him who had already stepped too far and reached the mire.

To save paper and time, I shall now, for the most part, write only what they all said, not saying that they said it, and just copying out in my clearest hand what fell respectively from their mouths.

Sir Silas.

“I did indeed spit it forth, and emunge my lips, as who should not?”

William Shakspeare.