It seemed forever before the door opened and Geilie stepped in, looking cool and unperturbed as usual, a small stick of charcoal in her hand.
"We'll need to filter it after it's boiled," she remarked, as though going on with our previous conversation. "I think we'll run it through charcoal in muslin; that's best."
"Geilie," I said impatiently. "Don't try me. What about the tanner's boy?"
"Oh, that." She lifted a shoulder dismissively, but a mischievous smile lurked about the corners of her lips. She dropped the facade then, and laughed.
"You should have seen me," she said, giggling. "I was awfully good, an' I say it myself. All wifely solicitude and womanly kindness, with a small dab o' maternal pity mixed in. 'Oh, Arthur,' " she dramatized, " 'had our own union been blessed'—not much chance, if I've aught to say about it," she said, dropping the soulful mask for a moment with a tilt of her head toward the herb shelves—" 'why, how would ye feel, my darling, should your own son be taken so? Nae doubt it was but hunger made the lad take to thievery. Oh, Arthur, can ye no find it in your heart to be merciful—and you the soul of justice?' " She dropped onto a stool, laughing and pounding her fist lightly against her leg. "What a pity there's no place for acting here!"
The sound of the crowd outside had changed, and I moved to the window to see what was happening, ignoring Geilie's self-congratulations.
The throng parted, and the tanner's lad came out, walking slowly between priest and judge. Arthur Duncan was swollen with benevolence, bowing and nodding to the more eminent members of the assembly. Father Bain, on the other hand, resembled a sullen potato more than anything else, brown face lumpy with resentment.
The little procession proceeded to the center of the square, where the village locksman, one John MacRae, stepped out of the crowd to meet them. This personage was dressed as befitted his office in the sober elegance of dark breeches and coat and grey velvet hat （removed for the nonce and tenderly sheltered from the rain beneath the tail of his coat）。 He was not, as I had at first assumed, the village jailer, though in a pinch he did perform such office. His duties were primarily those of constable, customs inspector, and when needed, executioner; his title came from the wooden "lock" or scoop that hung from his belt, with which he was entitled to take a percentage of each bag of grain sold in the Thursday market: the remaneration of his office.
I had found all this out from the locksman himself. He had been to the Castle only a few days before to see whether I could treat a persistent felon on his thumb. I had lanced it with a sterile needle and dressed it with poplar-bud salve, finding MacRae a shy and soft-spoken man with a pleasant smile.
There was no trace of a smile now, though; MacRae's face was suitably stern. Reasonable, I thought; no one wants to see a grinning executioner.
The miscreant was brought to stand on the plinth in the center of the square. The lad looked pale and frightened, but did not move as Arthur Duncan, procurator fiscal for the parish of Cranesmuir, drew his plumpness up into an approximation of dignity and prepared to pronounce sentence.
"The ninny had already confessed by the time I came in," said a voice by my ear. Geilie peered interestedly over my shoulder. "I couldna get him freed entirely. I got him off as light as could be, though; only an hour in the pillory and one ear nailed."
"One ear nailed! Nailed to what?"
"Why, the pillory, o' course." She shot me a curious look, but turned back to the window to watch the execution of this light sentence obtained by her merciful intercession.
The crush of bodies around the pillory was so great that little of the miscreant could be seen, but the crowd drew back a bit to allow the locksman free movement for the ear-nailing. The lad, white-faced and small in the jaws of the pillory, had both eyes tight shut and kept them that way, shuddering with fear. He uttered a high, thin scream when the nail was driven in, audible through the closed windows, and I shuddered a bit myself.
We returned to our work, as did most of the spectators in the square, but I could not help rising to glance out from time to time. A few idlers passing by paused to jeer at the victim and throw balls of mud, and now and then a more sober citizen was to be seen, seizing a moment from the round of daily duties to attend to the moral improvement of the delinquent by means of a few well-chosen words of reproval and advice.
It was still an hour to the late spring sunset, and we were drinking tea below in the parlor, when a pounding at the door announced the arrival of a visitor. The day was so dark from the rain that one could hardly tell the level of the sun. The Duncans' house, however, boasted a clock, a magnificent contrivance of walnut panels, brass pendulums, and a face decorated with quiring cherubim, and this instrument pointed to half-past six.