258
XXIII THE CONNECTING WALL 268
XXIV BEHIND THE PANEL 280
XXV THE EMPTY ROOM 291

IN THE MAYOR'S PARLOUR

CHAPTER I

THE MAYOR'S PARLOUR

Hathelsborough market-place lies in the middle of the town--a long,
somewhat narrow parallelogram, enclosed on its longer side by old gabled
houses; shut in on its western end by the massive bulk of the great
parish church of St. Hathelswide, Virgin and Martyr, and at its eastern
by the ancient walls and high roofs of its mediaeval Moot Hall. The inner
surface of this space is paved with cobble-stones, worn smooth by
centuries of usage: it is only of late years that the conservative
spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern
requirements as to provide foot-paths in front of the shops and houses.
But there that same spirit has stopped; the utilitarian of to-day would
sweep away, as being serious hindrances to wheeled traffic, the two
picturesque fifteenth-century erections which stand in this
market-place; these, High Cross and Low Cross, one at the east end, in
front of the Moot Hall, the other at the west, facing the chancel of the
church, remain, to the delight of the archaeologist, as instances of the
fashion in which our forefathers built gathering places in the very
midst of narrow thoroughfares.

Under the graceful cupola and the flying buttresses of High Cross the
countryfolk still expose for sale on market-days their butter and their
eggs; around the base of the slender shaft called Low Cross they still
offer their poultry and rabbits; on other than market-days High Cross
and Low Cross alike make central, open-air clubs, for the patriarchs of
the place, who there assemble in the lazy afternoons and still lazier
eventides, to gossip over the latest items of local news; conscious that
as they are doing so their ancestors have done for many a generation,
and that old as they may be themselves, in their septuagenarian or
octogenarian states, they are as infants in comparison with the age of
the stones and bricks and timbers about them, grey and fragrant with the
antiquity of at least three hundred years.

Of all this mass of venerable material, still sound and uncrumbled, the
great tall-towered church at one end of the market-place, and the
square, heavily fashioned Moot Hall at the other, go farthest back