Sharing with Writers and Artists: Networking Opportunity

Sharing with Writers and Artists: Networking Opportuntiy from Paul@AMPS

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• PREFACE
  
  THE ungentle laws and customs touched upon in
  this tale are historical, and the episodes which are
  used to illustrate them are also historical. It is
  not pretended that these laws and customs existed in
  England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended
  that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other
  civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that
  it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to
  have been in practice in that day also. One is quite
  justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or
  customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was
  competently filled by a worse one.
  
  The question as to whether there is such a thing as
  divine right of kings is not settled in this book. It
  was found too difficult. That the executive head of a
  nation should be a person of lofty character and
  extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable;
  that none but the Deity could select that head unerr-
  ingly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the
  Deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise
  manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does
  make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I
  mean, until the author of this book encountered the
  Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other
  executive heads of that kind; these were found so
  difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged
  better to take the other tack in this book (which must
  be issued this fall), and then go into training and
  settle the question in another book. It is, of course,
  a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going
  to have anything particular to do next winter anyway.
  
                                        MARK TWAIN.
  
  
               A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING
                      ARTHUR'S COURT
  
  
  A WORD OF EXPLANATION
  
  IT was in Warwick Castle that I came across the
  curious stranger whom I am going to talk about.
  He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity,
  his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the
  restfulness of his company -- for he did all the talking.
  We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of
  the herd that was being shown through, and he at once
  began to say things which interested me. As he
  talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed
  to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time,
  and into some remote era and old forgotten country;
  and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I
  seemed to move among the specters and shadows and
  dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with
  a relic of it! Exactly as I would speak of my nearest
  personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar
  neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de
  Ganis, Sir Launcelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all
  the other great names of the Table Round -- and how
  old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and
  musty and ancient he came to look as he went on!
  Presently he turned to me and said, just as one might
  speak of the weather, or any other common matter --
  
  "You know about transmigration of souls; do you
  know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?"
  
  I said I had not heard of it. He was so little inter-
  ested -- just as when people speak of the weather --
  that he did not notice whether I made him any answer
  or not. There was half a moment of silence, imme-
  diately interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried
  cicerone:
  
  "Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time
  of King Arthur and the Round Table; said to have
  belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor le Desirous; ob-
  serve the round hole through the chain-mail in the left
  breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been
  done with a bullet since invention of firearms -- per-
  haps maliciously by Cromwell's soldiers."
  
  My acquaintance smiled -- not a modern smile, but
  one that must have gone out of general use many, many
  centuries ago -- and muttered apparently to himself:
  
  "Wit ye well, I SAW IT DONE." Then, after a pause,
  added: "I did it myself."
  
  By the time I had recovered from the electric sur-
  prise of this remark, he was gone.
  
  All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick
  Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the
  rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about
  the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped
  into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and
  fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures,
  breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and
  dreamed again. Midnight being come at length, I read
  another tale, for a nightcap -- this which here follows,
  to wit:
  
     HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A
                      CASTLE FREE
  
     Anon withal came there upon him two great giants,
     well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible
     clubs in their hands. Sir Launcelot put his shield
     afore him, and put the stroke away of the one
     giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder.
     When his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were
     wood [* demented], for fear of the horrible strokes,
     and Sir Launcelot after him with all his might,
     and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to
     the middle. Then Sir Launcelot went into the hall,
     and there came afore him three score ladies and
     damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked
     God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said
     they, the most part of us have been here this
     seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all
     manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all
     great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time,
     knight, that ever thou wert born;for thou hast
     done the most worship that ever did knight in the
     world, that will we bear record, and we all pray
     you to tell us your name, that we may tell our
     friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair 
     damsels, he said, my name is Sir Launcelot du
     Lake. And so he departed from them and betaught
     them unto God. And then he mounted upon his
     horse, and rode into many strange and wild
     countries, and through many waters and valleys,
     and evil was he lodged. And at the last by
     fortune him happened against a night to come to
     a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old
     gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will,
     and there he had good cheer for him and his horse.
     And when time was, his host brought him into a
     fair garret over the gate to his bed. There
     Sir Launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness
     by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on
     sleep. So, soon after there came one on
     horseback, and knocked at the gate in great
     haste. And when Sir Launcelot heard this he rose
     up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the
     moonlight three knights come riding after that
     one man, and all three lashed on him at once
     with swords, and that one knight turned on them
     knightly again and defended him. Truly, said
     Sir Launcelot, yonder one knight shall I help,
     for it were shame for me to see three knights
     on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his
     death. And therewith he took his harness and
     went out at a window by a sheet down to the four
     knights, and then Sir Launcelot said on high,
     Turn you knights unto me, and leave your
     fighting with that knight. And then they all
     three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Launcelot,
     and there began great battle, for they alight
     all three, and strake many strokes at Sir
     Launcelot, and assailed him on every side. Then
     Sir Kay dressed him for to have holpen Sir
     Launcelot. Nay, sir, said he, I will none of
     your help, therefore as ye will have my help
     let me alone with them. Sir Kay for the pleasure
     of the knight suffered him for to do his will,
     and so stood aside. And then anon within six
     strokes Sir Launcelot had stricken them to the
     earth.
  
     And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we
     yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As
     to that, said Sir Launcelot, I will not take
     your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield
     you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant
     I will save your lives and else not. Fair knight,
     said they, that were we loath to do; for as for
     Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome
     him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto
     him it were no reason. Well, as to that, said
     Sir Launcelot, advise you well, for ye may
     choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be
     yielden, it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair knight,
     then they said, in saving our lives we will do
     as thou commandest us. Then shall ye, said Sir
     Launcelot, on Whitsunday next coming go unto the
     court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield
     you unto Queen Guenever, and put you all three
     in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay
     sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morn
     Sir Launcelot arose early, and left Sir Kay
     sleeping; and Sir Launcelot took Sir Kay's armor
     and his shield and armed him, and so he went to
     the stable and took his horse, and took his leave
     of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after
     arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Launcelot; and
     then he espied that he had his armor and his
     horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will
     grieve some of the court of King Arthur; for on
     him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I,
     and that will beguile them; and because of his
     armor and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace.
     And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and
     thanked his host.
  
  As I laid the book down there was a knock at the
  door, and my stranger came in. I gave him a pipe
  and a chair, and made him welcome. I also comforted
  him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him another one;
  then still another -- hoping always for his story. After
  a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite
  simple and natural way:
  
  
  THE STRANGER'S HISTORY
  
  I am an American. I was born and reared in Hart-
  ford, in the State of Connecticut -- anyway, just over
  the river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the
  Yankees -- and practical; yes, and nearly barren of
  sentiment, I suppose -- or poetry, in other words. My
  father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor,
  and I was both, along at first. Then I went over to
  the great arms factory and learned my real trade;
  learned all there was to it; learned to make every-
  thing: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all
  sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make
  anything a body wanted -- anything in the world, it
  didn't make any difference what; and if there wasn't
  any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, I could
  invent one -- and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I
  became head superintendent; had a couple of thou-
  sand men under me.
  
  Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight --
  that goes without saying. With a couple of thousand
  rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of
  amusement. I had, anyway. At last I met my match,
  and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding
  conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call
  Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside
  the head that made everything crack, and seemed to
  spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its
  neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and
  I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything
  at all -- at least for a while.
  
  When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak
  tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad
  country landscape all to myself -- nearly. Not en-
  tirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down
  at me -- a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was
  in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a
  helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits
  in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a pro-
  digious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a
  steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous
  red and green silk trappings that hung down all around
  him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground.
  
  "Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.
  
  "Will I which?"
  
  "Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or
  for --"
  
  "What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along
  back to your circus, or I'll report you."
  
  Now what does this man do but fall back a couple
  of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard
  as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to
  his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight
  ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree
  when he arrived.
  
  He allowed that I was his property, the captive of
  his spear. There was argument on his side -- and the
  bulk of the advantage -- so I judged it best to humor
  him. We fixed up an agreement whereby I was to go
  with him and he was not to hurt me. I came down,
  and we started away, I walking by the side of his
  horse. We marched comfortably along, through glades
  and over brooks which I could not remember to have
  seen before -- which puzzled me and made me wonder
  -- and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of
  a circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and con-
  cluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to
  an asylum -- so I was up a stump, as you may say. I
  asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said
  he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a
  lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an
  hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a
  winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray
  fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever
  seen out of a picture.
  
  "Bridgeport?" said I, pointing.
  
  "Camelot," said he.
  
  My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness.
  He caught himself nodding, now, and smiled one of
  those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his, and said:
  
  "I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got
  it all written out, and you can read it if you like."
  
  In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal;
  then by and by, after years, I took the journal and
  turned it into a book. How long ago that was!"
  
  He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the
  place where I should begin:
  
  "Begin here -- I've already told you what goes be-
  fore." He was steeped in drowsiness by this time.
  As I went out at his door I heard him murmur sleep-
  ily: "Give you good den, fair sir."
  
  I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure.
  The first part of it -- the great bulk of it -- was parch-
  ment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particu-
  larly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old
  dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of
  a penmanship which was older and dimmer still --
  Latin words and sentences: fragments from old monk-
  ish legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated
  by my stranger and began to read -- as follows:
  
  
  
  THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND.
  
  
  CHAPTER I.
  CAMELOT
  
  "CAMELOT -- Camelot," said I to myself. "I
  don't seem to remember hearing of it before.
  Name of the asylum, likely."
  
  It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely
  as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was
  full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects,
  and the twittering of birds, and there were no people,
  no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.
  The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints
  in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on
  either side in the grass -- wheels that apparently had a
  tire as broad as one's hand.
  
  Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old,
  with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her
  shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a
  hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit
  as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked indo-
  lently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in
  her innocent face. The circus man paid no attention
  to her; didn't even seem to see her. And she -- she
  was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if
  she was used to his like every day of her life. She
  was going by as indifferently as she might have gone
  by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice
  me, THEN there was a change! Up went her hands,
  and she was turned to stone; her mouth dropped
  open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was
  the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear.
  And there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied
  fascination, till we turned a corner of the wood and
  were lost to her view. That she should be startled at
  me instead of at the other man, was too many for me;
  I couldn't make head or tail of it . And that she
  should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally
  overlook her own merits in that respect, was another
  puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity, too,
  that was surprising in one so young. There was food
  for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream.
  
  As we approached the town, signs of life began to
  appear. At intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with
  a thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden
  patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. There
  were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, un-
  combed hair that hung down over their faces and made
  them look like animals. They and the women, as a
  rule, wore a coarse tow-linen robe that came well below
  the knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore
  an iron collar. The small boys and girls were always
  naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of these
  people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts
  and fetched out their families to gape at me; but no-
  body ever noticed that other fellow, except to make
  him humble salutation and get no response for their
  pains.
  
  In the town were some substantial windowless houses
  of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched
  cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and un-
  paved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the
  sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted
  contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking
  wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and
  suckled her family. Presently there was a distant blare
  of military music; it came nearer, still nearer, and
  soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with
  plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners
  and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spear-
  heads; and through the muck and swine, and naked
  brats, and joyous dogs, and shabby huts, it took its
  gallant way, and in its wake we followed. Followed
  through one winding alley and then another, -- and
  climbing, always climbing -- till at last we gained the
  breezy height where the huge castle stood. There was
  an exchange of bugle blasts; then a parley from the
  walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and morion,
  marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder
  under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon
  displayed upon them; and then the great gates were
  flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head
  of the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning
  arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in a
  great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching
  up into the blue air on all the four sides; and all about
  us the dismount was going on, and much greeting and
  ceremony, and running to and fro, and a gay display
  of moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether
  pleasant stir and noise and confusion.
  
  
  CHAPTER II.
  KING ARTHUR'S COURT
  
  THE moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately
  and touched an ancient common looking man on
  the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential
  way:
  
  "Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the
  asylum, or are you just on a visit or something
  like that?"
  
  He looked me over stupidly, and said:
  
  "Marry, fair sir, me seemeth --"
  
  "That will do," I said; "I reckon you are a
  patient."
  
  I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time
  keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his
  right mind that might come along and give me some
  light. I judged I had found one, presently; so I
  drew him aside and said in his ear:
  
  "If I could see the head keeper a minute -- only
  just a minute --"
  
  "Prithee do not let me."
  
  "Let you WHAT?"
  
  "HINDER me, then, if the word please thee better.
  Then he went on to say he was an under-cook and
  could not stop to gossip, though he would like it
  another time; for it would comfort his very liver to
  know where I got my clothes. As he started away he
  pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough
  for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no
  doubt. This was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored
  tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the
  rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and
  ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a
  plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his
  ear. By his look, he was good-natured; by his gait,
  he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough
  to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling
  and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and
  informed me that he was a page.
  
  "Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a para-
  graph."
  
  It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However,
  it never phazed him; he didn't appear to know he was
  hurt. He began to talk and laugh, in happy, thought-
  less, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made
  himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts
  of questions about myself and about my clothes, but
  never waited for an answer -- always chattered straight
  ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question
  and wasn't expecting any reply, until at last he hap-
  pened to mention that he was born in the beginning of
  the year 513.
  
  It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped
  and said, a little faintly:
  
  "Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again
  -- and say it slow. What year was it?"
  
  "513."
  
  "513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am
  a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable
  with me. Are you in your right mind?"
  
  He said he was.
  
  "Are these other people in their right minds?"
  
  He said they were.
  
  "And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place
  where they cure crazy people?"
  
  He said it wasn't.
  
  "Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or
  something just as awful has happened. Now tell me,
  honest and true, where am I?"
  
  "IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT."
  
  I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way
  home, and then said:
  
  "And according to your notions, what year is it now?"
  
  "528 -- nineteenth of June."
  
  I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered:
  "I shall never see my friends again -- never, never
  again. They will not be born for more than thirteen
  hundred years yet."
  
  I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why.
  SOMETHING in me seemed to believe him -- my con-
  sciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't.
  My reason straightway began to clamor; that was
  natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it,
  because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't
  serve -- my reason would say they were lunatics, and
  throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stum-
  bled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the
  only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the
  sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A. D. 528,
  O.S., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also
  knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what
  to ME was the present year -- i.e., 1879. So, if I
  could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the
  heart out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then
  find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the
  truth or not.
  
  Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now
  shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its
  appointed day and hour should come, in order that I
  might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the
  present moment, and be alert and ready to make the
  most out of them that could be made. One thing at a
  time, is my motto -- and just play that thing for all it
  is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. I made
  up my mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth
  century and I was among lunatics and couldn't get
  away, I would presently boss that asylum or know the
  reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really
  the sixth century, all right, I didn't want any softer
  thing: I would boss the whole country inside of three
  months; for I judged I would have the start of the
  best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter of
  thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man
  to waste time after my mind's made up and there's
  work on hand; so I said to the page:
  
  "Now, Clarence, my boy -- if that might happen to
  be your name -- I'll get you to post me up a little if
  you don't mind. What is the name of that apparition
  that brought me here?"
  
  "My master and thine? That is the good knight
  and great lord Sir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to
  our liege the king."
  
  "Very good; go on, tell me everything."
  
  He made a long story of it; but the part that had
  immediate interest for me was this: He said I was Sir
  Kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of custom
  I would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant
  commons until my friends ransomed me -- unless I
  chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had
  the best show, but I didn't waste any bother about
  that; time was too precious. The page said, further,
  that dinner was about ended in the great hall by this
  time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy
  drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and
  exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious
  knights seated at the Table Round, and would brag
  about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably
  exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good
  form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either;
  and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the
  dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come
  and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and
  help me get word to my friends.
  
  Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't
  do less; and about this time a lackey came to say I
  was wanted; so Clarence led me in and took me off to
  one side and sat down by me.
  
  Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interest-
  ing. It was an immense place, and rather naked --
  yes, and full of loud contrasts. It was very, very
  lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the
  arched beams and girders away up there floated in a
  sort of twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at
  each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and
  women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. The
  floor was of big stone flags laid in black and white
  squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing
  repair. As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly
  speaking; though on the walls hung some huge tapes-
  tries which were probably taxed as works of art;
  battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like those
  which children cut out of paper or create in ginger-
  bread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales
  are represented by round holes -- so that the man's
  coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit-punch.
  There was a fireplace big enough to camp in; and its
  projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared
  stonework, had the look of a cathedral door. Along
  the walls stood men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion,
  with halberds for their only weapon -- rigid as statues;
  and that is what they looked like.
  
  In the middle of this groined and vaulted public
  square was an oaken table which they called the Table
  Round. It was as large as a circus ring; and around
  it sat a great company of men dressed in such various
  and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at
  them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, ex-
  cept that whenever one addressed himself directly to
  the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was begin-
  ning his remark.
  
  Mainly they were drinking -- from entire ox horns;
  but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef
  bones. There was about an average of two dogs to
  one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a
  spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for
  it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there
  ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultu-
  ous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing
  tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened
  all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for
  the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the
  men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet
  on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched them-
  selves out over their balusters with the same object;
  and all broke into delighted ejaculations from time to
  time. In the end, the winning dog stretched himself
  out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and
  proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease
  the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing;
  and the rest of the court resumed their previous indus-
  tries and entertainments.
  
  As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people
  were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they
  were good and serious listeners when anybody was tell-
  ing anything -- I mean in a dog-fightless interval. And
  plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot;
  telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle
  and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to
  anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to
  associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and
  yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a
  guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder.
  
  I was not the only prisoner present. There were
  twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were
  maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and their
  hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black
  and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffer-
  ing sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and
  hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had
  given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor
  charity of a lotion for their wounds; yet you never
  heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show
  any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to com-
  plain. The thought was forced upon me: "The ras-
  cals -- THEY have served other people so in their day;
  it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting
  any better treatment than this; so their philosophical
  bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellec-
  tual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training;
  they are white Indians."
  
  
  CHAPTER III.
  KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND
  
  MAINLY the Round Table talk was monologues --
  narrative accounts of the adventures in which
  these prisoners were captured and their friends and
  backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor.
  As a general thing -- as far as I could make out --
  these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken
  to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden
  fallings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels be-
  tween strangers -- duels between people who had never
  even been introduced to each other, and between
  whom existed no cause of offense whatever. Many a
  time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by
  chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you," and
  go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until
  now that that sort of thing belonged to children only,
  and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were
  these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it
  clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was some-
  thing very engaging about these great simple-hearted
  creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did
  not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so
  to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem
  to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that
  brains were not needed in a society like that, and in-
  deed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its sym-
  metry -- perhaps rendered its existence impossible.
  
  There was a fine manliness observable in almost every
  face; and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that
  rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. A
  most noble benignity and purity reposed in the counte-
  nance of him they called Sir Galahad, and likewise in the
  king's also; and there was majesty and greatness in
  the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Launcelot of
  the Lake.
  
  There was presently an incident which centered the
  general interest upon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign
  from a sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the
  prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt
  on the floor and lifted up their hands toward the ladies'
  gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen.
  The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed
  flower-bed of feminine show and finery inclined her
  head by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the
  prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her
  hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as
  she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he
  said, he was doing by command of Sir Kay the Senes-
  chal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished
  them by his single might and prowess in sturdy conflict
  in the field.
  
  Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face
  all over the house; the queen's gratified smile faded
  out at the name of Sir Kay, and she looked disap-
  pointed; and the page whispered in my ear with an
  accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision --
  
  "Sir KAY, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dear-
  est, call me a marine! In twice a thousand years shall
  the unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the
  fellow to this majestic lie!"
  
  Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir
  Kay. But he was equal to the occasion. He got up
  and played his hand like a major -- and took every
  trick. He said he would state the case exactly accord-
  ing to the facts; he would tell the simple straightfor-
  ward tale, without comment of his own; "and then,"
  said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give
  it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that
  ever bare shield or strake with sword in the ranks of
  Christian battle -- even him that sitteth there!" and he
  pointed to Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetched them; it
  was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told
  how Sir Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time
  gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword,
  and set a hundred and forty-two captive maidens free;
  and then went further, still seeking adventures, and
  found him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperate fight against
  nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle
  solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and
  that night Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him
  in Sir Kay's armor and took Sir Kay's horse and gat
  him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen
  knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four in another;
  and all these and the former nine he made to swear
  that about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's
  court and yield them to Queen Guenever's hands as
  captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal, spoil of his knightly
  prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the
  rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of
  their desperate wounds.
  
  Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and
  smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling fur-
  tive glances at Sir Launcelot that would have got him
  shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty.
  
  Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir
  Launcelot; and as for me, I was perfectly amazed,
  that one man, all by himself, should have been able to
  beat down and capture such battalions of practiced
  fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mock-
  ing featherhead only said:
  
  "An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of
  sour wine into him, ye had seen the accompt doubled."
  
  I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw
  the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his counte-
  nance. I followed the direction of his eye, and saw that
  a very old and white-bearded man, clothed in a flowing
  black gown, had risen and was standing at the table
  upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient
  head and surveying the company with his watery and
  wandering eye. The same suffering look that was in
  the page's face was observable in all the faces around
  -- the look of dumb creatures who know that they must
  endure and make no moan.
  
  "Marry, we shall have it a again," sighed the boy;
  "that same old weary tale that he hath told a
  thousand times in the same words, and that he WILL tell
  till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his barrel full
  and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. Would
  God I had died or I saw this day!"
  
  "Who is it?"
  
  "Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition
  singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one
  tale! But that men fear him for that he hath the
  storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in
  hell at his beck and call, they would have dug his en-
  trails out these many years ago to get at that tale and
  squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person,
  making believe he is too modest to glorify himself --
  maledictions light upon him, misfortune be his dole!
  Good friend, prithee call me for evensong."
  
  The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pre-
  tended to go to sleep. The old man began his tale;
  and presently the lad was asleep in reality; so also were
  the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of
  men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a soft
  snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep
  and subdued accompaniment of wind instruments.
  Some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay
  back with open mouths that issued unconscious music;
  the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed
  softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about,
  and made themselves at home everywhere; and one of
  them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head and held
  a bit of cheese in its hands and nibbled it, and dribbled
  the crumbs in the king's face with naive and impudent
  irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and restful to the
  weary eye and the jaded spirit.
  
  This was the old man's tale. He said:
  
  "Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went
  until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech.
  So the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him
  good salves; so the king was there three days, and then
  were his wounds well amended that he might ride and
  go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said,
  I have no sword. No force *,  said Merlin, hereby is a
  [* Footnote from M.T.: No matter.]
  sword that shall be yours and I may. So they rode till
  they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and
  broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of
  an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword
  in that hand. Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword
  that I spake of. With that they saw a damsel going
  upon the lake. What damsel is that? said Arthur.
  That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within
  that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any
  on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come
  to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will
  give you that sword. Anon withal came the damsel
  unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her again.
  Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder
  the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were
  mine, for I have no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the
  damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift
  when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said
  Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well,
  said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row your-
  self to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with
  you, and I will ask my gift when I see my time. So
  Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and tied their horses to
  two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when
  they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur
  took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And
  the arm and the hand went under the water; and so
  they came unto the land and rode forth. And then Sir
  Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What signifieth yonder
  pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said Merlin,
  that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is
  out, he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of
  yours, that hight Egglame, and they have fought
  together, but at the last Egglame fled, and else he had
  been dead, and he hath chased him even to Carlion,
  and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. That
  is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will
  I wage battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir,
  ye shall not so, said Merlin, for the knight is weary of
  fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have no worship
  to have ado with him; also, he will not lightly be
  matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my
  counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service
  in short time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye
  shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad
  to give him your sister to wed. When I see him, I will
  do as ye advise me, said Arthur. Then Sir Arthur
  looked on the sword, and liked it passing well.
  Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or
  the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur.
  Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is
  worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard
  upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so
  sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always
  with you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way
  they met with Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such
  a craft that Pellinore saw not Arthur, and he passed by
  without any words. I marvel, said Arthur, that the
  knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw you
  not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly de-
  parted. So they came unto Carlion, whereof his
  knights were passing glad. And when they heard of
  his adventures they marveled that he would jeopard his
  person so alone. But all men of worship said it was
  merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his
  person in adventure as other poor knights did."
  
  
  CHAPTER IV.
  SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
  
  IT seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply
  and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only
  once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to
  the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
  
  Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and
  he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a suffi-
  ciently poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a
  dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and
  around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other
  dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing
  against everything that came in their way and making
  altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening
  din and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the
  multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell
  out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy.
  It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so
  proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling
  over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
  idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with
  humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after
  everybody else had got through. He was so set up
  that he concluded to make a speech -- of course a
  humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
  played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was
  worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the
  circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen
  hundred years before I was born, and listen again to
  poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry
  gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years after-
  wards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such
  thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at
  these antiquities -- but then they always do; I had
  noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the
  scoffer didn't laugh -- I mean the boy. No, he scoffed;
  there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
  the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest
  were petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I be-
  lieved, myself, that the only right way to classify the
  majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic
  periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank
  place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. However,
  I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate
  the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is
  no use to throw a good thing away merely because the
  market isn't ripe yet.
  
  Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his his-
  tory-mill with me for fuel. It was time for me to feel
  serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had en-
  countered me in a far land of barbarians, who all wore
  the same ridiculous garb that I did -- a garb that was a
  work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer
  secure from hurt by human hands. However he had
  nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and
  had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle,
  and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so
  strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the
  wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He
  spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this
  prodigious giant," and "this horrible sky-towering
  monster," and "this tusked and taloned man-devour-
  ing ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the
  naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
  there was any discrepancy between these watered statis-
  tics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him
  I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high
  at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the
  size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my
  bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court
  for sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at
  noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it
  that he stopped to yawn before he named the date.
  
  I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was
  hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a
  dispute that sprung up as to how I had better be killed,
  the possibility of the killing being doubted by some,
  because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet it
  was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-
  shops. Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail,
  to wit: many of the terms used in the most matter-of-
  fact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and
  gentlemen in the land would have made a Comanche
  blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the
  idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Rod-
  erick Random," and other books of that kind, and
  knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in
  England had remained little or no cleaner in their talk,
  and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies,
  clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our
  own nineteenth century -- in which century, broadly
  speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real
  gentleman discoverable in English history -- or in
  European history, for that matter -- may be said to
  have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, in-
  stead of putting the conversations into the mouths of
  his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for
  themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca
  and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena which would
  embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the uncon-
  sciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Ar-
  thur's people were not aware that they were indecent
  and I had presence of mind enough not to mention it.
  
  They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes
  that they were mightily relieved, at last, when old
  Merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a com-
  mon-sense hint. He asked them why they were so dull
  -- why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a
  minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear,
  dear, to think of it: I was the only embarrassed person
  there. Everybody discussed me; and did it as uncon-
  cernedly as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guenever
  was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had
  never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It
  was the only compliment I got -- if it was a compliment.
  
  Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my
  perilous clothes in another. I was shoved into a dark
  and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants
  for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end
  of rats for company.
  
  
  CHAPTER V.
  AN INSPIRATION
  
  I WAS so tired that even my fears were not able to
  keep me awake long.
  
  When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been
  asleep a very long time. My first thought was, "Well,
  what an astonishing dream I've had! I reckon I've
  waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or
  drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap
  again till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to
  the arms factory and have it out with Hercules."
  
  But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains
  and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly,
  Clarence, stood before me! I gasped with surprise;
  my breath almost got away from me.
  
  "What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with
  the rest of the dream! scatter!"
  
  But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and
  fell to making fun of my sorry plight.
  
  "All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go
  on; I'm in no hurry."
  
  "Prithee what dream?"
  
  "What dream? Why, the dream that I am in
  Arthur's court -- a person who never existed; and that
  I am talking to you, who are nothing but a work of the
  imagination."
  
  "Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be
  burned to-morrow? Ho-ho -- answer me that!"
  
  The shock that went through me was distressing. I
  now began to reason that my situation was in the last
  degree serious, dream or no dream; for I knew by past
  experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams, that to
  be burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far
  from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by
  any means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I
  said beseechingly:
  
  "Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got, --
  for you ARE my friend, aren't you? -- don't fail me; help
  me to devise some way of escaping from this place!"
  
  "Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man,
  the corridors are in guard and keep of men-at-arms."
  
  "No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence?
  Not many, I hope?"
  
  "Full a score. One may not hope to escape."
  After a pause -- hesitatingly: "and there be other rea-
  sons -- and weightier."
  
  "Other ones? What are they?"
  
  "Well, they say -- oh, but I daren't, indeed
  daren't!"
  
  "Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you
  blench? Why do you tremble so?"
  
  "Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you,
  but --"
  
  "Come, come, be brave, be a man -- speak out,
  there's a good lad!"
  
  He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other
  way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out,
  listening; and finally crept close to me and put his
  mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a
  whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension of one
  who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of
  things whose very mention might be freighted with
  death.
  
  "Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this
  dungeon, and there bides not the man in these king-
  doms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross
  its lines with you! Now God pity me, I have told it!
  Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who
  means thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"
  
  I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had
  for some time; and shouted:
  
  "Merlin has wrought a spell! MERLIN, forsooth!
  That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass?
  Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why,
  it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic,
  chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that
  ev -- oh, damn Merlin!"
  
  But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had
  half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind
  with fright.
  
  "Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any
  moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say
  such things. Oh call them back before it is too late!"
  
  Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and
  set me to thinking. If everybody about here was so
  honestly and sincerely afraid of Merlin's pretended
  magic as Clarence was, certainly a superior man like
  me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way
  to take advantage of such a state of things. I went
  on thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:
  
  "Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the
  eye. Do you know why I laughed?"
  
  "No -- but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no
  more."
  
  "Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a
  magician myself."
  
  "Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his
  breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden; but the
  aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. I
  took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug
  didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum; people
  stood ready to take him at his word, without that. I
  resumed.
  
  "I've know Merlin seven hundred years, and he --"
  
  "Seven hun --"
  
  "Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive
  again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name
  every time: Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters,
  Haskins, Merlin -- a new alias every time he turns up.
  I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago; I knew
  him in India five hundred years ago -- he is always
  blethering around in my way, everywhere I go; he
  makes me tired. He don't amount to shucks, as a
  magician; knows some of the old common tricks,
  but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never
  will. He is well enough for the provinces-- one-night
  stands and that sort of thing, you know -- but dear me,
  HE oughtn't to set up for an expert -- anyway not
  where there's a real artist. Now look here, Clarence,
  I am going to stand your friend, right along, and in re-
  turn you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor.
  I want you to get word to the king that I am a magician
  myself -- and the Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck-
  amuck and head of the tribe, at that; and I want him
  to be made to understand that I am just quietly arrang-
  ing a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these
  realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm
  comes to me. Will you get that to the king for me?"
  
  The poor boy was in such a state that he could
  hardly answer me. It was pitiful to see a creature so
  terrified, so unnerved, so demoralized. But he prom-
  ised everything; and on my side he made me promise
  over and over again that I would remain his friend, and
  never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon
  him. Then he worked his way out, staying himself
  with his hand along the wall, like a sick person.
  
  Presently this thought occurred to me: how heed-
  less I have been! When the boy gets calm, he will
  wonder why a great magician like me should have
  begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place;
  he will put this and that together, and will see that I
  am a humbug.
  
  I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour,
  and called myself a great many hard names, meantime.
  But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these
  animals didn't reason; that THEY never put this and
  that together; that all their talk showed that they
  didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at
  rest, then.
  
  But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes
  on something else to worry about. It occurred to me
  that I had made another blunder: I had sent the boy
  off to alarm his betters with a threat -- I intending to
  invent a calamity at my leisure; now the people who are
  the readiest and eagerest and willingest to swallow
  miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you
  perform them; suppose I should be called on for a
  sample? Suppose I should be asked to name my
  calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder; I ought to
  have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?
  what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble
  again; in the deepest kind of trouble:...
  "There's a footstep! -- they're coming. If I had only
  just a moment to think.... Good, I've got it.
  I'm all right."
  
  You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind
  in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one
  of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump
  once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could
  play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism,
  either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand
  years ahead of those parties.
  
  Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said:
  
  "I hasted the message to our liege the king, and
  straightway he had me to his presence. He was
  frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give
  order for your instant enlargement, and that you be
  clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so
  great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he
  persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not
  whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolish-
  ness and idle vaporing. They disputed long, but in the
  end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore hath he not
  NAMED his brave calamity? Verily it is because he can-
  not.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the
  king's mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the
  argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you
  the discourtesy, he yet prayeth you to consider his per-
  plexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name
  the calamity -- if so be you have determined the nature
  of it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay
  not; to delay at such a time were to double and treble
  the perils that already compass thee about. Oh, be
  thou wise -- name the calamity!"
  
  I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my im-
  pressiveness together, and then said:
  
  "How long have I been shut up in this hole?"
  
  "Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent
  It is 9 of the morning now."
  
  "No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine
  in the morning now! And yet it is the very complex-
  ion of midnight, to a shade. This is the 20th, then?"
  
  "The 20th -- yes."
  
  "And I am to be burned alive to-morrow." The
  boy shuddered.
  
  "At what hour?"
  
  "At high noon."
  
  "Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused,
  and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in
  awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured,
  charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically
  graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered
  in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a
  thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at
  that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead
  blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he
  shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall
  rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the
  earth shall famish and die, to the last man!"
  
  I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such
  a collapse. I handed him over to the soldiers, and
  went back.
  
  
  CHAPTER VI.
  THE ECLIPSE
  
  IN the stillness and the darkness, realization soon
  began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowl-
  edge of a fact is pale; but when you come to REALIZE
  your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference be-
  tween hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and
  seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the
  knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself
  deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something
  which was realization crept inch by inch through my
  veins and turned me cold.
  
  But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times
  like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to
  a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies.
  Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and
  then he is in good shape to do something for himself,
  if anything can be done. When my rally came, it
  came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse
  would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest
  man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my
  mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solici-
  tudes all vanished. I was as happy a man as there
  was in the world. I was even impatient for to-
  morrow to come, I so wanted to gather in that great
  triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder
  and reverence. Besides, in a business way it would be
  the making of me; I knew that.
  
  Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed
  into the background of my mind. That was the half-
  conviction that when the nature of my proposed
  calamity should be reported to those superstitious
  people, it would have such an effect that they would
  want to compromise. So, by and by when I heard
  footsteps coming, that thought was recalled to me, and
  I said to myself, "As sure as anything, it's the com-
  promise. Well, if it is good, all right, I will accept;
  but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play my
  hand for all it is worth."
  
  The door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared.
  The leader said:
  
  "The stake is ready. Come!"
  
  The stake! The strength went out of me, and I
  almost fell down. It is hard to get one's breath at
  such a time, such lumps come into one's throat, and
  such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said:
  
  "But this is a mistake -- the execution is to-
  morrow."
  
  "Order changed; been set forward a day. Haste
  thee!"
  
  I was lost. There was no help for me. I was
  dazed, stupefied; I had no command over myself, I
  only wandered purposely about, like one out of his
  mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me
  along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of
  underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare
  of daylight and the upper world. As we stepped into
  the vast enclosed court of the castle I got a shock;
  for the first thing I saw was the stake, standing in the
  center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. On
  all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose
  rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were
  rich with color. The king and the queen sat in their
  thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course.
  
  To note all this, occupied but a second. The next
  second Clarence had slipped from some place of con-
  cealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes
  beaming with triumph and gladness. He said:
  
  "'Tis through ME the change was wrought! And
  main hard have I worked to do it, too. But when I
  revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how
  mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I also
  that this was the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently
  pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that
  your power against the sun could not reach its full
  until the morrow; and so if any would save the sun
  and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your
  enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency.
  Odsbodikins, it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent
  invention, but you should have seen them seize it and
  swallow it, in the frenzy of their fright, as it were sal-
  vation sent from heaven; and all the while was I
  laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so
  cheaply deceived, and glorifying God the next, that
  He was content to let the meanest of His creatures be
  His instrument to the saving of thy life. Ah how
  happy has the matter sped! You will not need to do
  the sun a REAL hurt -- ah, forget not that, on your soul
  forget it not! Only make a little darkness -- only the
  littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. It
  will be sufficient. They will see that I spoke falsely, --
  being ignorant, as they will fancy -- and with the fall-
  ing of the first shadow of that darkness you shall see
  them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and
  make you great! Go to thy triumph, now! But re-
  member -- ah, good friend, I implore thee remember
  my supplication, and do the blessed sun no hurt. For
  MY sake, thy true friend."
  
  I choked out some words through my grief and
  misery; as much as to say I would spare the sun; for
  which the lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and
  loving gratitude that I had not the heart to tell him his
  good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me
  to my death.
  
  As the soldiers assisted me across the court the still-
  ness was so profound that if I had been blindfold I
  should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of
  walled in by four thousand people. There was not a
  movement perceptible in those masses of humanity;
  they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and
  dread sat upon every countenance. This hush con-
  tinued while I was being chained to the stake; it still
  continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously
  piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body.
  Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible,
  and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch;
  the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting
  slightly from their seats without knowing it; the monk
  raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward
  the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in this
  attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then
  stopped. I waited two or three moments; then looked
  up; he was standing there petrified. With a common
  impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into
  the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there
  was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling
  through my veins; I was a new man! The rim of
  black spread slowly into the sun's disk, my heart beat
  higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the
  priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that
  this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it
  was, l was ready. I was in one of the most grand
  attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up
  pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You
  could SEE the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.
  Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the
  other:
  
  "Apply the torch!"
  
  "I forbid it!"
  
  The one was from Merlin, the other from the king.
  Merlin started from his place -- to apply the torch
  himself, I judged. I said:
  
  "Stay where you are. If any man moves -- even
  the king -- before I give him leave, I will blast him
  with thunder, I will consume him with lightnings!"
  
  The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was
  just expecting they would. Merlin hesitated a moment
  or two, and I was on pins and needles during that little
  while. Then he sat down, and I took a good breath;
  for I knew I was master of the situation now. The
  king said:
  
  "Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this
  perilous matter, lest disaster follow. It was reported
  to us that your powers could not attain unto their full
  strength until the morrow; but --"
  
  "Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a
  lie? It WAS a lie."
  
  That made an immense effect; up went appealing
  hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a
  storm of supplications that I might be bought off at
  any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was
  eager to comply. He said:
  
  "Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving
  of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the
  sun!"
  
  My fortune was made. I would have taken him up
  in a minute, but I couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing
  was out of the question. So I asked time to consider.
  The king said:
  
  "How long -- ah, how long, good sir? Be merci-
  ful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment.
  Prithee how long?"
  
  "Not long. Half an hour -- maybe an hour."
  
  There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I
  couldn't shorten up any, for I couldn't remember
  how long a total eclipse lasts. I was in a puzzled con-
  dition, anyway, and wanted to think. Something was
  wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very un-
  settling. If this wasn't the one I was after, how was
  I to tell whether this was the sixth century, or nothing
  but a dream? Dear me, if I could only prove it was
  the latter! Here was a glad new hope. If the boy
  was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th,
  it WASN'T the sixth century. I reached for the monk's
  sleeve, in considerable excitement, and asked him what
  day of the month it was.
  
  Hang him, he said it was the TWENTY-FIRST! It made
  me turn cold to hear him. I begged him not to make
  any mistake about it; but he was sure; he knew it
  was the 21st. So, that feather-headed boy had botched
  things again! The time of the day was right for the
  eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning,
  by the dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King
  Arthur's court, and I might as well make the most out
  of it I could.
  
  The darkness was steadily growing, the people be-
  coming more and more distressed. I now said:
  
  "I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will
  let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the
  world; but whether I blot out the sun for good, or
  restore it, shall rest with you. These are the terms, to
  wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions,
  and receive all the glories and honors that belong to
  the kingship; but you shall appoint me your perpetual
  minister and executive, and give me for my services
  one per cent. of such actual increase of revenue over
  and above its present amount as I may succeed in
  creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I sha'n't
  ask anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?"
  
  There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of
  the midst of it the king's voice rose, saying:
  
  "Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do
  him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is
  become the king's right hand, is clothed with power
  and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of
  the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and
  bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may
  bless thee."
  
  But I said:
  
  "That a common man should be shamed before
  the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the KING
  if any that saw his minister naked should not also see
  him delivered from his shame. If I might ask that my
  clothes be brought again --"
  
  "They are not meet," the king broke in. "Fetch
  raiment of another sort; clothe him like a prince!"
  
  My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they
  were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be
  trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of
  course I couldn't do it. Sending for the clothes
  gained some delay, but not enough. So I had to
  make another excuse. I said it would be but natural
  if the king should change his mind and repent to some
  extent of what he had done under excitement; there-
  fore I would let the darkness grow a while, and if at
  the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his
  mind the same, the darkness should be dismissed.
  Neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with
  that arrangement, but I had to stick to my point.
  
  It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker,
  while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century
  clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the
  multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny
  night breezes fan through the place and see the stars
  come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse
  was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody
  else was in misery; which was quite natural. I said:
  
  "The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms."
  Then I lifted up my hands -- stood just so a moment --
  then I said, with the most awful solemnity: "Let the
  enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!"
  
  There was no response, for a moment, in that deep
  darkness and that graveyard hush. But when the
  silver rim of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or
  two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout
  and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me
  with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the
  last of the wash, to be sure.
  
  
  CHAPTER VII.
  MERLIN'S TOWER
  
  INASMUCH as I was now the second personage in
  the Kingdom, as far as political power and author-
  ty were concerned, much was made of me. My
  raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold,
  and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfort-
  able. But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes;
  I was aware of that. I was given the choicest suite of
  apartments in the castle, after the king's. They were
  aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone
  floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet,
  and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of
  one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking,
  there weren't any. I mean LITTLE conveniences; it is
  the little conveniences that make the real comfort of
  life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings,
  were well enough, but that was the stopping place.
  There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass -- ex-
  cept a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water.
  And not a chromo. I had been used to chromos for
  years, and I saw now that without my suspecting it a
  passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my
  being, and was become a part of me. It made me
  homesick to look around over this proud and gaudy
  but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house
  in East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't
  go into a room but you would find an insurance-chromo,
  or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home over the
  door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even
  in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in
  the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a
  bedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it had
  darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right
  color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even
  Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more
  formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares
  they call his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons."
  Raphael was a bird. We had several of his chromos;
  one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
  he puts in a miracle of his own -- puts three men into
  a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without up-
  setting. I always admired to study R.'s art, it was so
  fresh and unconventional.
  
  There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the
  castle. I had a great many servants, and those that
  were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when I
  wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.
  There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze
  dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing
  rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was
  regarded as light. A lot of these hung along the walls
  and modified the dark, just toned it down enough to
  make it dismal. If you went out at night, your ser-
  vants carried torches. There were no books, pens,
  paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they be-
  lieved to be windows. It is a little thing -- glass is --
  until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. But
  perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't any
  sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just
  another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited
  island, with no society but some more or less tame
  animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must
  do as he did -- invent, contrive, create, reorganize
  things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them
  busy. Well, that was in my line.
  
  One thing troubled me along at first -- the immense
  interest which people took in me. Apparently the
  whole nation wanted a look at me. It soon transpired
  that the eclipse had scared the British world almost to
  death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one
  end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and
  the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed
  with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought
  the end of the world was come. Then had followed
  the news that the producer of this awful event was a
  stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he
  could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was
  just going to do it when his mercy was purchased, and
  he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now
  recognized and honored as the man who had by his
  unaided might saved the globe from destruction and
  its peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that
  everybody believed that, and not only believed it, but
  never even dreamed of doubting it, you will easily
  understand that there was not a person in all Britain
  that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of
  me. Of course I was all the talk -- all other subjects
  were dropped; even the king became suddenly a per-
  son of minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-
  four hours the delegations began to arrive, and from
  that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming.
  The village was crowded, and all the countryside. I
  had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to
  these reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came
  to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of
  course it was at the same time compensatingly agree-
  able to be so celebrated and such a center of homage.
  It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, which
  was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one
  thing I couldn't understand -- nobody had asked for
  an autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. By
  George! I had to explain to him what it was. Then
  he said nobody in the country could read or write but
  a few dozen priests. Land! think of that.
  
  There was another thing that troubled me a little.
  Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another
  miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back
  to their far homes the boast that they had seen the
  man who could command the sun, riding in the
  heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in
  the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all;
  but to be able to also say they had seen him work a
  miracle themselves -- why, people would come a dis-
  tance to see THEM. The pressure got to be pretty
  strong. There was going to be an eclipse of the
  moon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was too
  far away. Two years. I would have given a good
  deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when
  there was a big market for it. It seemed a great pity
  to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time
  when a body wouldn't have any use for it, as like as
  not. If it had been booked for only a month away, I
  could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, I
  couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me
  any good, so I gave up trying. Next, Clarence found
  that old Merlin was making himself busy on the sly
  among those people. He was spreading a report that
  I was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accom-
  modate the people with a miracle was because I
  couldn't. I saw that I must do something. I pres-
  ently thought out a plan.
  
  By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into
  prison -- the same cell I had occupied myself. Then
  I gave public notice by herald and trumpet that I
  should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but
  about the end of that time I would take a moment's
  leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from
  heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil re-
  ports about me, let him beware. Furthermore, I
  would perform but this one miracle at this time, and
  no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I
  would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them
  useful. Quiet ensued.
  
  I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain
  degree, and we went to work privately. I told him
  that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of
  preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever
  talk about these preparations to anybody. That made
  his mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few
  bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superin-
  tended my armorers while they constructed a lightning-
  rod and some wires. This old stone tower was very
  massive -- and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman,
  and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome,
  after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to
  summit, as with a shirt of scale mail. It stood on a
  lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and
  about half a mile away.
  
  Working by night, we stowed the powder in the
  tower -- dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the
  powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet
  thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in a
  dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of
  London with these charges. When the thirteenth night
  was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in
  one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to
  the other batches. Everybody had shunned that
  locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the
  morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the
  people, through the heralds, to keep clear away -- a
  quarter of a mile away. Then added, by command,
  that at some time during the twenty-four hours I
  would consummate the miracle, but would first give a
  brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the
  daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at
  night.
  
  Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late,
  and I was not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't
  have cared for a delay of a day or two; I should have
  explained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, and
  the people must wait.
  
  Of course, we had a blazing sunny day -- almost the
  first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always
  happen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather.
  Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the
  public excitement was growing and growing all the
  time, and the whole country filling up with human
  masses as far as one could see from the battlements.
  At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared -- in
  the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a
  little while I watched that distant cloud spread and
  blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear.
  I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liber-
  ated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I
  ascended the parapet and there found the king and the
  court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward
  Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy
  that one could not see far; these people and the old
  turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the
  red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made
  a good deal of a picture.
  
  Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:
  
  "You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done
  you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to
  injure my professional reputation. Therefore I am
  going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but
  it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think
  you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires,
  step to the bat, it's your innings."
  
  "I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not."
  
  He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the
  roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up
  a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody
  fell back and began to cross themselves and get un-
  comfortable. Then he began to mutter and make
  passes in the air with his hands. He worked himself
  up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got
  to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a
  windmill. By this time the storm had about reached
  us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and
  making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops
  of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as
  pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. Of course,
  my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, things
  were imminent. So I said:
  
  "You have had time enough. I have given you
  every advantage, and not interfered. It is plain your
  magic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now."
  
  I made about three passes in the air, and then there
  was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the
  sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of
  fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thou-
  sand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in
  a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained
  mortar and masonry the rest of the week. This was
  the report; but probably the facts would have modi-
  fied it.
  
  It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome
  temporary population vanished. There were a good
  many thousand tracks in the mud the next morning,
  but they were all outward bound. If I had advertised
  another miracle I couldn't have raised an audience
  with a sheriff.
  
  Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop
  his wages; he even wanted to banish him, but I inter-
  fered. I said he would be useful to work the weather,
  and attend to small matters like that, and I would give
  him a lift now and then when his poor little parlor-
  magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower
  left, but I had the government rebuild it for him, and
  advised him to take boarders; but he was too high-
  toned for that. And as for being grateful, he never
  even said thank you. He was a rather hard lot, take
  him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly ex-
  pect a man to be sweet that had been set back so.
  
  
  CHAPTER VIII.
  THE BOSS
  
  TO be vested with enormous authority is a fine
  thing; but to have the on-looking world consent
  to it is a finer. The tower episode solidified my
  power, and made it impregnable. If any were per-
  chance disposed to be jealous and critical before that,
  they experienced a change of heart, now. There was
  not any one in the kingdom who would have considered
  it good judgment to meddle with my matters.
  
  I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and cir-
  cumstances. For a time, I used to wake up, mornings,
  and smile at my "dream," and listen for the Colt's
  factory whistle; but that sort of thing played itself
  out, gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize
  that I was actually living in the sixth century, and in
  Arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I
  was just as much at home in that century as I could
  have been in any other; and as for preference, I
  wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at
  the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains,
  pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the
  country. The grandest field that ever was; and all my
  own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby
  to me in acquirements and capacities; whereas, what
  would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should
  be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could
  drag a seine down street any day and catch a hundred
  better men than myself.
  
  What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from
  thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one
  does who has struck oil. There was nothing back of
  me that could approach it, unless it might be Joseph's
  case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal
  it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's
  splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but
  the king, the general public must have regarded him
  with a good deal of disfavor, whereas I had done my
  entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was
  popular by reason of it.
  
  I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance;
  the king himself was the shadow. My power was
  colossal; and it was not a mere name, as such things
  have generally been, it was the genuine article. I
  stood here, at the very spring and source of the second
  great period of the world's history; and could see the
  trickling stream of that history gather and deepen and
  broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far
  centuries; and I could note the upspringing of adven-
  turers like myself in the shelter of its long array of
  thrones: De Montforts, Gavestons, Mortimers, Villier-
  ses; the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of
  France, and Charles the Second's scepter-wielding
  drabs; but nowhere in the procession was my full-
  sized fellow visible. I was a Unique; and glad to
  know that that fact could not be dislodged or chal-
  lenged for thirteen centuries and a half, for sure.
  Yes, in power I was equal to the king. At the same
  time there was another power that was a trifle stronger
  than both of us put together. That was the Church.
  I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't, if I
  wanted to. But never mind about that, now; it will
  show up, in its proper place, later on. It didn't cause
  me any trouble in the beginning -- at least any of
  consequence.
  
  Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest.
  And the people! They were the quaintest and sim-
  plest and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but
  rabbits. It was pitiful for a person born in a whole-
  some free atmosphere to listen to their humble and
  hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and
  Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion
  to love and honor king and Church and noble than a
  slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to
  love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why,
  dear me,ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified,
  ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly
  an insult; but if you are born and brought up under
  that sort of arrangement you probably never find it
  out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody
  else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed
  of his race to think of the sort of froth that has
  always occupied its thrones without shadow of right
  or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always
  figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs
  and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only
  poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their
  own exertions.
  
  The most of King Arthur's British nation were
  slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore
  the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves
  in fact, but without the name; they imagined them-
  selves men and freemen, and called themselves so.
  The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world
  for one object, and one only: to grovel before king
  and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood
  for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they
  might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might
  be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and
  jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from pay-
  ing them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading
  language and postures of adulation that they might
  walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this
  world. And for all this, the thanks they got were
  cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they
  that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.
  
  Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting
  to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his
  people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts
  worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should
  have proposed to divert them by reason and argument
  would have had a long contract on his hands. For
  instance, those people had inherited the idea that all
  men without title and a long pedigree, whether they
  had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't,
  were creatures of no more consideration than so many
  animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the
  idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade
  in the peacock-shams of inherited dignities and un-
  earned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at.
  The way I was looked upon was odd, but it was
  natural. You know how the keeper and the public
  regard the elephant in the menagerie: well, that is the
  idea. They are full of admiration of his vast bulk and
  his prodigious strength; they speak with pride of the
  fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far
  and away beyond their own powers; and they speak
  with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is
  able to drive a thousand men before him. But does
  that make him one of THEM? No; the raggedest
  tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. He couldn't
  comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any
  remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the
  nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves
  and tramps, I was just that kind of an elephant, and
  nothing more. I was admired, also feared; but it
  was as an animal is admired and feared. The animal
  is not reverenced, neither was I; I was not even re-
  spected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so
  in the king's and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the
  people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there
  was no reverence mixed with it; through the force of
  inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of any-
  thing being entitled to that except pedigree and lord-
  ship. There you see the hand of that awful power,
  the Roman Catholic Church. In two or three little
  centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation
  of worms. Before the day of the Church's supremacy
  in the world, men were men, and held their heads up,
  and had a man's pride and spirit and independence;
  and what of greatness and position a person got, he
  got mainly by achievement, not by birth. But then
  the Church came to the front, with an axe to grind;
  and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one
  way to skin a cat -- or a nation; she invented "divine
  right of kings," and propped it all around, brick by
  brick, with the Beatitudes -- wrenching them from
  their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one;
  she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience
  to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached
  (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached
  (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) pa-
  tience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under op-
  pression; and she introduced heritable ranks and
  aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations
  of the earth to bow down to them and worship them.
  Even down to my birth-century that poison was still in
  the blood of Christendom, and the best of English com-
  moners was still content to see his inferiors impudently
  continuing to hold a number of positions, such as lord-
  ships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of
  his country did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he
  was not merely contented with this strange condition
  of things, he was even able to persuade himself that
  he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't
  anything you can't stand, if you are only born and
  bred to it. Of course that taint, that reverence for
  rank and title, had been in our American blood, too --
  I know that; but when I left America it had disap-
  peared -- at least to all intents and purposes. The
  remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses.
  When a disease has worked its way down to that level,
  it may fairly be said to be out of the system.
  
  But to return to my anomalous position in King
  Arthur's kingdom. Here I was, a giant among pig-
  mies, a man among children, a master intelligence
  among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement
  the one and only actually great man in that whole
  British world; and yet there and then, just as in the
  remote England of my birth-time, the sheep-witted
  earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman,
  acquired at second-hand from the slums of London,
  was a better man than I was. Such a personage was
  fawned upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked
  up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were
  as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as
  his lineage. There were times when HE could sit down
  in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I could have
  got a title easily enough, and that would have raised
  me a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the
  king's, the giver of it. But I didn't ask for it; and I
  declined it when it was offered. I couldn't have enjoyed
  such a thing with my notions; and it wouldn't have
  been fair, anyway, because as far back as I could go,
  our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. I
  couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and
  proud and set-up over any title except one that should
  come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source;
  and such an one I hoped to win; and in the course of
  years of honest and honorable endeavor, I did win it
  and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This
  title fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one
  day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought
  and tossed from mouth to mouth with a laugh and an
  affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept the kingdom,
  and was become as familiar as the king's name. I
  was never known by any other designation afterward,
  whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate upon
  matters of state at the council-board of the sovereign.
  This title, translated into modern speech, would be
  THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me.
  And it was a pretty high title. There were very few
  THE'S, and I was one of them. If you spoke of the
  duke, or the earl, or the bishop, how could anybody
  tell which one you meant? But if you spoke of The
  King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different.
  
  Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him
  -- respected the office; at least respected it as much as
  I was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy;
  but as MEN I looked down upon him and his nobles --
  privately. And he and they liked me, and respected
  my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham
  title, they looked down upon me -- and were not par-
  ticularly private about it, either. I didn't charge for
  my opinion about them, and they didn't charge for
  their opinion about me: the account was square, the
  books balanced, everybody was satisfied.
  
  
  CHAPTER IX.
  THE TOURNAMENT
  
  THEY were always having grand tournaments there
  at Camelot; and very stirring and picturesque
  and ridiculous human bull-fights they were, too, but
  just a little wearisome to the practical mind. How-
  ever, I was generally on hand -- for two reasons: a
  man must not hold himself aloof from the things which
  his friends and his community have at heart if he
  would be liked -- especially as a statesman; and both
  as business man and statesman I wanted to study the
  tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improve-
  ment on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing,
  that the very first official thing I did, in my adminis-
  tration -- and it was on the very first day of it, too --
  was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country
  without a patent office and good patent laws was just
  a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or
  backways.
  
  Things ran along, a tournament nearly every week;
  and now and then the boys used to want me to take a
  hand -- I mean Sir Launcelot and the rest -- but I
  said I would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much
  government machinery to oil up and set to rights and
  start a-going.
  
  We had one tournament which was continued from
  day to day during more than a week, and as many as
  five hundred knights took part in it, from first to last.
  They were weeks gathering. They came on horseback
  from everywhere; from the very ends of the country,
  and even from beyond the sea; and many brought
  ladies, and all brought squires and troops of servants.
  It was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to cos-
  tumery, and very characteristic of the country and the
  time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent inde-
  cencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to
  morals. It was fight or look on, all day and every
  day; and sing, gamble, dance, carouse half the night
  every night. They had a most noble good time. You
  never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful
  ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see
  a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lance-
  shaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him
  and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they
  would clap their hands and crowd each other for a
  better view; only sometimes one would dive into her
  handkerchief, and look ostentatiously broken-hearted,
  and then you could lay two to one that there was a
  scandal there somewhere and she was afraid the public
  hadn't found it out.
  
  The noise at night would have been annoying to me
  ordinarily, but I didn't mind it in the present circum-
  stances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks
  detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples.
  They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for
  me, and broke the saw-buck, too, but I let it pass.
  And as for my axe -- well, I made up my mind that
  the next time I lent an axe to a surgeon I would pick
  my century.
  
  I not only watched this tournament from day to day,
  but detailed an intelligent priest from my Department
  of Public Morals and Agriculture, and ordered him to
  report it; for it was my purpose by and by, when I
  should have gotten the people along far enough, to
  start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new
  country, is a patent office; then work up your school
  system; and after that, out with your paper. A
  newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them, but no
  matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and
  don't you forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation
  without it; there isn't any way. So I wanted to
  sample things, and be finding out what sort of reporter-
  material I might be able to rake together out of the
  sixth century when I should come to need it.
  
  Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got
  in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local
  item: you see, he had kept books for the undertaker-
  department of his church when he was younger,
  and there, you know, the money's in the details; the
  more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles,
  prayers -- everything counts; and if the bereaved don't
  buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a
  forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And
  he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary
  thing here and there about a knight that was likely to
  advertise -- no, I mean a knight that had influence;
  and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his
  time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in
  a sty and worked miracles.
  
  Of course this novice's report lacked whoop and
  crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the
  true ring; but its antique wording was quaint and
  sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors
  of the time, and these little merits made up in a meas-
  ure for its more important lacks. Here is an extract
  from it:
  
    Then Sir Brian de les Isles and Grummore Grummorsum,
    knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Aglovale and
    Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grummore Grummorsum
    to the earth. Then came Sir Carados of the dolorous
    tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and
    there encountered with them Sir Percivale de Galis
    and Sir Lamorak de Galis, that were two brethren, and
    there encountered Sir Percivale with Sir Carados, and
    either brake their spears unto their hands, and then
    Sir Turquine with Sir Lamorak, and either of them smote
    down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either
    parties rescued other and horsed them again. And Sir
    Arnold, and Sir Gauter, knights of the castle,
    encountered with Sir Brandiles and Sir Kay, and these
    four knights encountered mightily, and brake their
    spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from
    the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel,
    and there Sir Pertolope the green knight smote down Sir
    Lionel, brother to Sir Launcelot. All this was marked
    by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names.
    Then Sir Bleobaris brake his spear upon Sir Gareth,
    but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth.
    When Sir Galihodin saw that, he bad Sir Gareth keep him,
    and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galihud
    gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise
    Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadan and his brother
    La Cote Male Taile, and Sir Sagramore le Disirous, and 
    Sir Dodinas le Savage; all these he bare down with one
    spear. When King Aswisance of Ireland saw Sir Gareth 
    fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time
    seemed green, and another time, at his again coming,
    he seemed blue. And thus at every course that he rode
    to and fro he changed his color, so that there might
    neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him.
    Then Sir Agwisance the King of Ireland encountered
    with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from
    his horse, saddle and all. And then came King Carados
    of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and
    man. And in the same wise he served King Uriens of the
    land of Gore. And then there came in Six Bagdemagus,
    and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the
    earth. And Bagdemagus's son Meliganus brake a spear
    upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly. And then Sir
    Galahault the noble prince cried on high, Knight with 
    the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee
    ready that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him,
    and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered
    together, and there the prince brake his spear; but Sir
    Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that
    he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not
    his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that
    knight with the many colors is a good knight. Wherefore
    the king called unto him Sir Launcelot, and prayed him
    to encounter with that knight. Sir, said Launcelot, I
    may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at
    this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and
    when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is
    no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and,
    namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great 
    labour; for peradventure, said Sir Launcelot, his
    quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best
    beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see
    well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great
    deeds, and therefore, said Sir Launcelot, as for me,
    this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my
    power to put him from it, I would not.
  
  There was an unpleasant little episode that day,
  which for reasons of state I struck out of my priest's
  report. You will have noticed that Garry was doing
  some great fighting in the engagement. When I say
  Garry I mean Sir Gareth. Garry was my private pet
  name for him; it suggests that I had a deep affection
  for him, and that was the case. But it was a private
  pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one,
  much less to him; being a noble, he would not have
  endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to pro-
  ceed: I sat in the private box set apart for me as the
  king's minister. While Sir Dinadan was waiting for
  his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat
  down and began to talk; for he was always making up
  to me, because I was a stranger and he liked to have a
  fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having
  reached that stage of wear where the teller has to do
  the laughing himself while the other person looks sick.
  I had always responded to his efforts as well as I
  could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him,
  too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew
  the one particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest
  and had most hated and most loathed all my life, he
  had at least spared it me. It was one which I had
  heard attributed to every humorous person who had
  ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to
  Artemus Ward. It was about a humorous lecturer
  who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest
  jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and then
  when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him
  gratefully by the hand and said it had been the funniest
  thing they had ever heard, and "it was all they could
  do to keep from laughin' right out in meetin'." That
  anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling;
  and yet I had sat under the telling of it hundreds and
  thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried
  and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope
  to know what my feelings were, to hear this armor-
  plated ass start in on it again, in the murky twilight of
  tradition, before the dawn of history, while even
  Lactantius might be referred to as "the late Lactan-
  tius," and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five
  hundred years yet? Just as he finished, the call-boy
  came; so, haw-hawing like a demon, he went rattling
  and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and I
  knew nothing more. It was some minutes before I
  came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to
  see Sir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I uncon-
  sciously out with the prayer, "I hope to gracious he's
  killed!" But by ill-luck, before I had got half through
  with the words, Sir Gareth crashed into Sir Sagramor
  le Desirous and sent him thundering over his horse's
  crupper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and
  thought I meant it for HIM.
  
  Well, whenever one of those people got a thing into
  
  his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew
  that, so I saved my breath, and offered no explana-
  tions. As soon as Sir Sagramor got well, he notified
  me that there was a little account to settle between us,
  and he named a day three or four years in the future;
  place of settlement, the lists where the offense had
  been given. I said I would be ready when he got
  back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail.
  The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and
  then. It was a several years' cruise. They always
  put in the long absence snooping around, in the most
  conscientious way, though none of them had any idea
  where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any
  of them actually expected to find it, or would have
  known what to do with it if he HAD run across it.
  You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that
  day, as you may say; that was all. Every year expe-
  ditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief
  expeditions went out to hunt for THEM. There was
  worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they
  actually wanted ME to put in! Well, I should smile.
  
  
  CHAPTER X.
  BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION
  
  THE Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and
  of course it was a good deal discussed, for such
  things interested the boys. The king thought I ought
  now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I
  might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet
  Sir Sagramor when the several years should have rolled
  away. I excused myself for the present; I said it
  would take me three or four years yet to get things
  well fixed up and going smoothly; then I should be
  ready; all the chances were that at the end of that
  time Sir Sagramor would still be out grailing, so no
  valuable time would be lost by the postponement; I
  should then have been in office six or seven years,
  and I believed my system and machinery would be so
  well developed that I could take a holiday without its
  working any harm.
  
  I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already
  accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I
  had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way
  -- nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel
  missionaries of my future civilization. In these were
  gathered together the brightest young minds I could
  find, and I kept agents out raking the country for
  more, all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant
  folk into experts -- experts in every sort of handiwork
  and scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went
  smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their ob-
  scure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to
  come into their precincts without a special permit --
  for I was afraid of the Church.
  
  I had started a teacher-factory and a lot of Sunday-
  schools the first thing; as a result, I now had an ad-
  mirable system of graded schools in full blast in those
  places, and also a complete variety of Protestant con-
  gregations all in a prosperous and growing condition.
  Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted
  to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. But I
  confined public religious teaching to the churches and
  the Sunday-schools, permitting nothing of it in my
  other educational buildings. I could have given my
  own sect the preference and made everybody a Presby-
  terian without any trouble, but that would have been
  to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and
  instincts are as various in the human family as are
  physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a
  man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped
  with the religious garment whose color and shape and
  size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spirit-
  ual complexion, angularities, and stature of the indi-
  vidual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a
  united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest
  conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into
  selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means
  death to human liberty and paralysis to human
  thought.
  
  All mines were royal property, and there were a
  good many of them. They had formerly been worked
  as savages always work mines -- holes grubbed in the
  earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by
  hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to
  put the mining on a scientific basis as early as I could.
  
  Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir
  Sagramor's challenge struck me.
  
  Four years rolled by -- and then! Well, you would
  never imagine it in the world. Unlimited power is the
  ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of
  heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An
  earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly
  government, if the conditions were the same, namely,
  the despot the perfectest individual of the human race,
  and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable
  perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the
  hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism
  is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst
  form that is possible.
  
  My works showed what a despot could do with the
  resources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected
  by this dark land, I had the civilization of the nine-
  teenth century booming under its very nose! It was
  fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a
  gigantic and unassailable fact -- and to be heard from,
  yet, if I lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a
  fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano,
  standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the
  blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its
  bowels. My schools and churches were children four
  years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of
  that day were vast factories now; where I had a dozen
  trained men then, I had a thousand now; where I had
  one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stood
  with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn
  it on and flood the midnight world with light at any
  moment. But I was not going to do the thing in that
  sudden way. It was not my policy. The people
  could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should have
  had the Established Roman Catholic Church on my
  back in a minute.
  
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  No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I
  had had confidential agents trickling through the
  country some time, whose office was to undermine
  knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a
  little at this and that and the other superstition, and so
  prepare the way gradually for a better order of things.
  I was turning on my light one-candle-power at a time,
  and meant to continue to do so.
  
  I had scattered some branch schools secretly about
  the kingdom, and they were doing very well. I meant
  to work this racket more and more, as time wore on, if
  nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest
  secrets was my West Point -- my military academy. I
  kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the
  same with my naval academy which I had established
  at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my
  satisfaction.
  
  Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head
  executive, my right hand. He was a darling; he was
  equal to anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't
  turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for
  journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start
  in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small
  weekly for experimental circulation in my civilization-
  nurseries. He took to it like a duck; there was an
  editor concealed in him, sure. Already he had doubled
  himself in one way; he talked sixth century and wrote
  nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing, stead-
  ily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama
  mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of
  that region either by matter or flavor.
  
  We had another large departure on hand, too. This
  was a telegraph and a telephone; our first venture in
  this line. These wires were for private service only,
  as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day
  should come. We had a gang of men on the road,
  working mainly by night. They were stringing ground
  wires; we were afraid to put up poles, for they would
  attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good
  enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected
  by an insulation of my own invention which was per-
  fect. My men had orders to strike across country,
  avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any
  considerable towns whose lights betrayed their pres-
  ence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobody could
  tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for
  nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only
  struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then gener-
  ally left it without thinking to inquire what its name
  was. At one time and another we had sent out topo-
  graphical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom,
  but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble.
  So we had given the thing up, for the present; it
  would be poor wisdom to antagonize the Church.
  
  As for the general condition of the country, it was
  as it had been when I arrived in it, to all intents and
  purposes. I had made changes, but they were neces-
  sarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus far,
  I had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the
  taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had
  systematized those, and put the service on an effective
  and righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were
  already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much
  more equably distributed than before, that all the king-
  dom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my ad-
  ministration were hearty and general.
  
  Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did
  not mind it, it could not have happened at a better
  time. Earlier it could have annoyed me, but now
  everything was in good hands and swimming right
  along. The king had reminded me several times, of
  late, that the postponement I had asked for, four years
  before, had about run out now. It was a hint that I
  ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up
  a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honor
  of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was still
  out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief
  expeditions, and might be found any year, now. So
  you see I was expecting this interruption; it did not
  take me by surprise.
  
  
  CHAPTER XI.
  THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES.
  
  THERE never was such a country for wandering
  liars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly a
  month went by without one of these tramps arriving;
  and generally loaded with a tale about some princess
  or other wanting help to get her out of some far-away
  castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless
  scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think that
  the first thing the king would do after listening to such
  a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask
  for credentials -- yes, and a pointer or two as to
  locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. But
  nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense
  a thing at that. No, everybody swallowed these peo-
  ple's lies whole, and never asked a question of any
  sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was
  not around, one of these people came along -- it was a
  she one, this time -- and told a tale of the usual pat-
  tern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy
  castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful
  girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had
  been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six
  years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous
  brothers, each with four arms and one eye -- the eye in
  the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of
  fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.
  
  Would you believe it? The king and the whole
  Round Table were in raptures over this preposterous
  opportunity for adventure. Every knight of the Table
  jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their
  vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me,
  who had not asked for it at all.
  
  By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence
  brought me the news. But he -- he could not contain
  his. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a
  steady discharge -- delight in my good fortune, grati-
  tude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for
  me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still,
  but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of
  happiness.
  
  On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that
  conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my
  vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did
  what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I SAID I
  was glad. And in a way it was true; I was as glad as
  a person is when he is scalped.
  
  Well, one must make the best of things, and not
  waste time with useless fretting, but get down to busi-
  ness and see what can be done. In all lies there is
  wheat among the chaff; I must get at the wheat in this
  case: so I sent for the girl and she came. She was a
  comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if
  signs went for anything, she didn't know as much as a
  lady's watch. I said:
  
  "My dear, have you been questioned as to particu-
  lars?"
  
  She said she hadn't.
  
  "Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I
  would ask, to make sure; it's the way I've been raised.
  Now you mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you that
  as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. You
  may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you
  are; but to take it for granted isn't business. YOU
  understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few ques-
  tions; just answer up fair and square, and don't be
  afraid. Where do you live, when you are at home?"
  
  "In the land of Moder, fair sir."
  
  "Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of it
  before. Parents living?"
  
  "As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sith
  it is many years that I have lain shut up in the castle."
  
  "Your name, please?"
  
  "I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an it
  please you."
  
  "Do you know anybody here who can identify you?"
  
  "That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hither
  now for the first time."
  
  "Have you brought any letters -- any documents --
  any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful?"
  
  "Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? Have
  I not a tongue, and cannot I say all that myself?"
  
  "But YOUR saying it, you know, and somebody
  else's saying it, is different."
  
  "Different? How might that be? I fear me I do
  not understand."
  
  "Don't UNDERSTAND? Land of -- why, you see --
  you see -- why, great Scott, can't you understand a
  little thing like that? Can't you understand the
  difference between your -- WHY do you look so inno-
  cent and idiotic!"
  
  "I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will of
  God."
  
  "Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it.
  Don't mind my seeming excited; I'm not. Let us
  change the subject. Now as to this castle, with forty-
  five princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it,
  tell me -- where is this harem?"
  
  "Harem?"
  
  "The CASTLE, you understand; where is the castle?"
  
  "Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen,
  and lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues."
  
  "HOW many?"
  
  "Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they
  are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other,
  and being made all in the same image and tincted with
  the same color, one may not know the one league from
  its fellow, nor how to count them except they be taken
  apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that,
  being not within man's capacity; for ye will note --"
  
  "Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance;
  WHEREABOUTS does the castle lie? What's the direction
  from here?"
  
  "Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from
  here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but
  turneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its place
  abideth not, but is some time under the one sky and
  anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it is
  in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that
  the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by
  the space of half a circle, and this marvel happing
  again and yet again and still again, it will grieve you
  that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart
  and bring to naught the will of Him that giveth not a
  castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth Him,
  and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all
  castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the
  earth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolate
  and vacant, so warning His creatures that where He
  will He will, and where He will not He --"
  
  "Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest;
  never mind about the direction, HANG the direction -- I
  beg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons, I am not well
  to-day; pay no attention when I soliloquize, it is an
  old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid of
  when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food
  that was raised forever and ever before he was born;
  good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on
  spring chickens thirteen hundred years old. But come
  -- never mind about that; let's -- have you got such
  a thing as a map of that region about you? Now a
  good map --"
  
  "Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of
  late the unbelievers have brought from over the great
  seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt
  added thereto, doth --"
  
  "What, a map? What are you talking about?
  Don't you know what a map is? There, there, never
  mind, don't explain, I hate explanations; they fog a
  thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Run
  along, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence."
  
  Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these
  donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. It
  may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but
  I don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a
  hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting,
  even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a
  perfect ass; and yet the king and his knights had
  listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the
  gospel. It kind of sizes up the whole party. And
  think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering
  wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the
  king in his palace than she would have had to get into
  the poorhouse in my day and country. In fact, he
  was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with that
  adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a
  corpse is to a coroner.
  
  Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarence
  came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my
  efforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single point
  that could help me to find the castle. The youth
  looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and
  intimated that he had been wondering to himself what
  I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for.
  
  "Why, great guns," I said, "don't I want to find
  the castle? And how else would I go about it?"
  
  "La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer
  that, I ween. She will go with thee. They always
  do. She will ride with thee."
  
  "Ride with me? Nonsense!"
  
  "But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee.
  Thou shalt see."
  
  "What? She browse around the hills and scour the
  woods with me -- alone -- and I as good as engaged to
  be married? Why, it's scandalous. Think how it
  would look."
  
  My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy
  was eager to know all about this tender matter. I
  swore him to secresy and then whispered her name --
  "Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed, and said
  he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was
  for the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me
  where she lived.
  
  "In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped,
  a little confused; then I said, "Never mind, now; I'll
  tell you some time."
  
  And might he see her? Would I let him see her
  some day?
  
  It was but a little thing to promise -- thirteen hun-
  dred years or so -- and he so eager; so I said Yes.
  But I sighed; I couldn't help it. And yet there was
  no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But that
  is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we
  feel; we just feel.
  
  
  My expedition was all the talk that day and that
  night, and the boys were very good to me, and made
  much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexa-
  tion and disappointment, and come to be as anxious
  for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old vir-
  gins loose as if it were themselves that had the con-
  tract. Well, they WERE good children -- but just chil-
  dren, that is all. And they gave me no end of points
  about how to scout for giants, and how to scoop them
  in; and they told me all sorts of charms against en-
  chantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to
  put on my wounds. But it never occurred to one of
  them to reflect that if I was such a wonderful necro-
  mancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to need
  salves or instructions, or charms against enchantments,
  and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any
  kind -- even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils
  hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as
  these I was after, these commonplace ogres of the
  back settlements.
  
  I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn,
  for that was the usual way; but I had the demon's
  own time with my armor, and this delayed me a little.
  It is troublesome to get into, and there is so much
  detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket around
  your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the
  cold iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of
  chain mail -- these are made of small steel links woven
  together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you
  toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like
  a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearly
  the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night
  shirt, yet plenty used it for that -- tax collectors, and
  reformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title,
  and those sorts of people; then you put on your shoes
  -- flat-boats roofed over with interleaving bands of
  steel -- and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels.
  Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your
  cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and
  your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then
  you hitch onto the breastplate the half-petticoat of
  broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in
  front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down,
  and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal
  scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your
  hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you
  put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron
  gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto
  your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to
  hang over the back of your neck -- and there you are,
  snug as a candle in a candle-mould. This is no time
  to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like that
  is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little
  of the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison
  with the shell.
  
  The boys helped me, or I never could have got in.
  Just as we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I
  saw that as like as not I hadn't chosen the most con-
  venient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked;
  and tall and broad and grand. He had on his head a
  conical steel casque that only came down to his ears,
  and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended
  down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all
  the rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain
  mail, trousers and all. But pretty much all of him was
  hidden under his outside garment, which of course was
  of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from his
  shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the
  bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that
  he could ride and let the skirts hang down on each
  side. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfit
  for it, too. I would have given a good deal for that
  ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around.
  The sun was just up, the king and the court were all
  on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn't
  be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your
  horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get dis-
  appointed. They carry you out, just as they carry a
  sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and
  help get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups;
  and all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and
  like somebody else -- like somebody that has been mar-
  ried on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something
  like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort
  of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they
  stood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by
  my left foot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastly
  they hung my shield around my neck, and I was all
  complete and ready to up anchor and get to sea.
  Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and
  a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self.
  There was nothing more to do now, but for that
  damsel to get up behind me on a pillion, which she
  did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on.
  
  And so we started, and everybody gave us a good-
  bye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. And
  everybody we met, going down the hill and through
  the village was respectful to us, except some shabby
  little boys on the outskirts. They said:
  
  "Oh, what a guy!" And hove clods at us.
  
  In my experience boys are the same in all ages.
  They don't respect anything, they don't care for any-
  thing or anybody. They say "Go up, baldhead" to
  the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of
  antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the
  Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same way
  in Buchanan's administration; I remember, because I
  was there and helped. The prophet had his bears and
  settled with his boys; and I wanted to get down and
  settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because I
  couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without
  a derrick.
  
  
  CHAPTER XII.
  SLOW TORTURE
  
  STRAIGHT off, we were in the country. It was
  most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes
  in the early cool morning in the first freshness of
  autumn. From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying
  spread out below, with streams winding through them,
  and island groves of trees here and there, and huge
  lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of
  shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of
  hills, blue with haze, stretching away in billowy per-
  spective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim
  fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we
  knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns
  sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the
  cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we
  dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light
  that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves
  overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of
  runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and
  making a sort of whispering music, comfortable to hear;
  and at times we left the world behind and entered into
  the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest,
  where furtive wild things whisked and scurried by and
  were gone before you could even get your eye on the
  place where the noise was; and where only the earliest
  birds were turning out and getting to business with a
  song here and a quarrel yonder and a mysterious far-
  off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk
  away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of
  the woods. And by and by out we would swing again
  into the glare.
  
  About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung
  out into the glare -- it was along there somewhere, a
  couple of hours or so after sun-up -- it wasn't as pleas-
  ant as it had been. It was beginning to get hot. This
  was quite noticeable. We had a very long pull, after
  that, without any shade. Now it is curious how
  progressively little frets grow and multiply after they
  once get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all,
  at first, I began to mind now -- and more and more,
  too, all the time. The first ten or fifteen times I wanted
  my handkerchief I didn't seem to care; I got along,
  and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped
  it out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted
  it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and
  no rest; I couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at
  last I lost my temper and said hang a man that would
  make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. You
  see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some
  other things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you
  can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to
  me when I put it there; and in fact I didn't know it.
  I supposed it would be particularly convenient there.
  And so now, the thought of its being there, so handy
  and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the
  worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you
  can't get is the thing that you want, mainly; every one
  has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from every-
  thing else; took it clear off, and centered it in my
  helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining
  the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it
  was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep
  trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it.
  It seems like a little thing, on paper, but it was not a
  little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery.
  I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my
  mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let
  it look how it might, and people say what they would.
  Of course these iron dudes of the Round Table would
  think it was scandalous, and maybe raise Sheol about
  it, but as for me, give me comfort first, and style after-
  wards. So we jogged along, and now and then we
  struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in
  clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze
  and cry; and of course I said things I oughtn't to
  have said, I don't deny that. I am not better than
  others.
  
  We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lone-
  some Britain, not even an ogre; and, in the mood I
  was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an
  ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights would have
  thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so I
  got his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all
  of me.
  
  Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there.
  You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the
  iron more and more all the time. Well, when you are
  hot, that way, every little thing irritates you. When I
  trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed
  me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand that
  shield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now
  around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my
  joints creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that
  a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze
  at that gait, I was like to get fried in that stove; and
  besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron set-
  tled down on you and the more and more tons you
  seemed to weigh every minute. And you had to be
  always changing hands, and passing your spear over to
  the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand to hold
  it long at a time.
  
  Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in
  rivers, there comes a time when you -- when you --
  well, when you itch. You are inside, your hands are
  outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between.
  It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First
  it is one place; then another; then some more; and
  it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the ter-
  ritory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what
  you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. And when it
  had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could
  not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars
  and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and
  wouldn't work, and I couldn't get the visor up; and I
  could only shake my head, which was baking hot by
  this time, and the fly -- well, you know how a fly acts
  when he has got a certainty -- he only minded the
  shaking enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to
  ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep
  on lighting and biting, in a way that a person, already
  so distressed as I was, simply could not stand. So I
  gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet and
  relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences
  out of it and fetched it full of water, and I drank and
  then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the
  armor. One cannot think how refreshing it was. She
  continued to fetch and pour until I was well soaked
  and thoroughly comfortable.
  
  It was good to have a rest -- and peace. But nothing
  is quite perfect in this life, at any time. I had made a
  pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco;
  not the real thing, but what some of the Indians use:
  the inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts
  had been in the helmet, and now I had them again, but
  no matches.
  
  Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact
  was borne in upon my understanding -- that we were
  weather-bound. An armed novice cannot mount his
  horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was not
  enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait
  until somebody should come along. Waiting, in
  silence, would have been agreeable enough, for I was
  full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a
  chance to work. I wanted to try and think out how it
  was that rational or even half-rational men could ever
  have learned to wear armor, considering its incon-
  veniences; and how they had managed to keep up such
  a fashion for generations when it was plain that what I
  had suffered to-day they had had to suffer all the days
  of their lives. I wanted to think that out; and more-
  over I wanted to think out some way to reform this
  evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion
  die out; but thinking was out of the question in the
  circumstances. You couldn't think, where Sandy
  was.
  
  She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted,
  but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill,
  and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in
  a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a
  comfort. But you can't cork that kind; they would
  die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think
  something would surely happen to her works, by and
  by; but no, they never got out of order; and she
  never had to slack up for words. She could grind,
  and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never
  stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was
  just nothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any
  more than a fog has. She was a perfect blatherskite;
  I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber,
  jabber; but just as good as she could be. I hadn't
  minded her mill that morning, on account of having
  that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than
  once in the afternoon I had to say:
  
  "Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all
  the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to im-
  porting it by to-morrow, and it's a low enough treasury
  without that."
  
  
  CHAPTER XIII.
  FREEMEN
  
  YES, it is strange how little a while at a time a per-
  son can be contented. Only a little while back,
  when I was riding and suffering, what a heaven this
  peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded
  shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed,
  where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time
  by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and
  then; yet already I was getting dissatisfied; partly be-
  cause I could not light my pipe -- for, although I had
  long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to
  bring matches with me -- and partly because we had
  nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the
  childlike improvidence of this age and people. A man
  in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a
  journey, and would have been scandalized at the idea
  of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There
  was probably not a knight of all the Round Table com-
  bination who would not rather have died than been
  caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff.
  And yet there could not be anything more sensible.
  It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sand-
  wiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act,
  and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a
  dog got them.
  
  Night approached, and with it a storm. The dark-
  ness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I
  found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock,
  and went off and found another for myself. But I was
  obliged to remain in my armor, because I could not get
  it off by myself and yet could not allow Alisande to
  help, because it would have seemed so like undressing
  before folk. It would not have amounted to that in
  reality, because I had clothes on underneath; but the
  prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just
  at a jump, and I knew that when it came to stripping
  off that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed.
  
  With the storm came a change of weather; and the
  stronger the wind blew, and the wilder the rain lashed
  around, the colder and colder it got. Pretty soon,
  various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things
  began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down in-
  side my armor to get warm; and while some of them
  behaved well enough, and snuggled up amongst my
  clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless,
  uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went
  on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;
  especially the ants, which went tickling along in
  wearisome procession from one end of me to the other
  by the hour, and are a kind of creatures which I
  never wish to sleep with again. It would be my advice
  to persons situated in this way, to not roll or thrash
  around, because this excites the interest of all the
  different sorts of animals and makes every last one of
  them want to turn out and see what is going on, and
  this makes things worse than they were before, and of
  course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can.
  Still, if one did not roll and thrash around he would
  die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other;
  there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid
  I could still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse
  does when he is taking electric treatment. I said I
  would never wear armor after this trip.
  
  All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet
  was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that
  swarm of crawlers, that same unanswerable question
  kept circling and circling through my tired head: How
  do people stand this miserable armor? How have they
  managed to stand it all these generations? How can
  they sleep at night for dreading the tortures of next
  day?
  
  When the morning came at last, I was in a bad
  enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of
  sleep; weary from thrashing around, famished from
  long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of the
  animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how
  had it fared with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat,
  the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise? Why, she was
  as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept like the dead; and
  as for a bath, probably neither she nor any other noble
  in the land had ever had one, and so she was not
  missing it. Measured by modern standards, they were
  merely modified savages, those people. This noble
  lady showed no impatience to get to breakfast -- and
  that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys
  those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to
  bear them; and also how to freight up against probable
  fasts before starting, after the style of the Indian and
  the anaconda. As like as not, Sandy was loaded for a
  three-day stretch.
  
  We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limp-
  ing along behind. In half an hour we came upon a
  group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to
  mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They
  were as humble as animals to me; and when I pro-
  posed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so
  overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of
  mine that at first they were not able to believe that I
  was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and
  withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she
  would as soon think of eating with the other cattle -- a
  remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely be-
  cause it referred to them, and not because it insulted or
  offended them, for it didn't. And yet they were not
  slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase
  they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free popula-
  tion of the country were of just their class and degree:
  small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which
  is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation;
  they were about all of it that was useful, or worth sav-
  ing, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would
  have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some
  dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility
  and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with
  the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of
  use or value in any rationally constructed world. And
  yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, in-
  stead of being in the tail of the procession where it be-
  longed, was marching head up and banners flying, at the
  other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation,
  and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long
  that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and
  not only that, but to believe it right and as it should
  be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves
  that this ironical state of things was ordained of God;
  and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would
  be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such
  poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the
  matter there and become respectfully quiet.
  
  The talk of these meek people had a strange enough
  sound in a formerly American ear. They were free-
  men, but they could not leave the estates of their lord
  or their bishop without his permission; they could not
  prepare their own bread, but must have their corn
  ground and their bread baked at his mill and his
  bakery, and pay roundly for the same; they could not
  sell a piece of their own property without paying him a
  handsome percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece
  of somebody else's without remembering him in cash
  for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him
  gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice,
  leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened
  storm; they had to let him plant fruit trees in their
  fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves
  when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain
  around the trees; they had to smother their anger when
  his hunting parties galloped through their fields laying
  waste the result of their patient toil; they were not
  allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms
  from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they
  must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful
  would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last
  gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy
  their blackmail upon it: first the Church carted off its
  fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twen-
  tieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad
  upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman
  had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case
  it was worth the trouble; there were taxes, and taxes,
  and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes again, and yet
  other taxes -- upon this free and independent pauper,
  but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none
  upon the wasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church;
  if the baron would sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit
  up all night after his day's work and whip the ponds to
  keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's daughter -- but
  no, that last infamy of monarchical government is un-
  printable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate
  with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such
  conditions, and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy
  and refuge, the gentle Church condemned him to
  eternal fire, the gentle law buried him at midnight at the
  cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master
  the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and
  turned his widow and his orphans out of doors.
  
  And here were these freemen assembled in the early
  morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three
  days each -- gratis; every head of a family, and every
  son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or
  so added for their servants. Why, it was like reading
  about France and the French, before the ever memor-
  able and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand
  years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of
  blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the
  proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead
  of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that
  people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong
  and shame and misery the like of which was not to be
  mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of
  Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it;
  the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in
  heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the
  other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted
  death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a
  hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the
  "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Ter-
  ror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift
  death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from
  hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is
  swift death by lightning compared with death by slow
  fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the
  coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been
  so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but
  all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that
  older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and
  awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see
  in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
  
  These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing
  their breakfast and their talk with me, were as full of
  humble reverence for their king and Church and nobility
  as their worst enemy could desire. There was some-
  thing pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them if they
  supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a
  free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single
  family and its descendants should reign over it forever,
  whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other
  families -- including the voter's; and would also elect
  that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy
  summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive trans-
  missible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the
  rest of the nation's families -- INCLUDING HIS OWN.
  
  They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know;
  that they had never thought about it before, and it
  hadn't ever occurred to them that a nation could be so
  situated that every man COULD have a say in the govern-
  ment. I said I had seen one -- and that it would last
  until it had an Established Church. Again they were
  all unhit -- at first. But presently one man looked up
  and asked me to state that proposition again; and state
  it slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. I
  did it; and after a little he had the idea, and he
  brought his fist down and said HE didn't believe a
  nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily
  get down in the mud and dirt in any such way; and
  that to steal from a nation its will and preference must
  be a crime and the first of all crimes. I said to myself:
  
  "This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of
  his sort, I would make a strike for the welfare of this
  country, and try to prove myself its loyalest citizen
  by making a wholesome change in its system of
  government."
  
  You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's
  country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.
  The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the
  eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care
  for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they
  are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, be-
  come ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect
  the body from winter, disease, and death. To be
  loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die
  for rags -- that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure
  animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by
  monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Con-
  necticut, whose Constitution declares "that all political
  power is inherent in the people, and all free govern-
  ments are founded on their authority and instituted for
  their benefit; and that they have AT ALL TIMES an undeni-
  able and indefeasible right to ALTER THEIR FORM OF GOVERN-
  MENT in such a manner as they may think expedient."
  
  Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees
  that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out,
  and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new
  suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the
  only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not ex-
  cuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the
  duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see
  the matter as he does.
  
  And now here I was, in a country where a right to
  say how the country should be governed was restricted
  to six persons in each thousand of its population.
  For the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dis-
  satisfaction with the regnant system and propose to
  change it, would have made the whole six shudder as
  one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonor-
  able, such putrid black treason. So to speak, I was
  become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hun-
  dred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the
  money and did all the work, and the other six elected
  themselves a permanent board of direction and took all
  the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine
  hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.
  The thing that would have best suited the circus side
  of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship
  and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution;
  but I knew that the Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who
  tries such a thing without first educating his materials
  up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to
  get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left,
  even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal"
  which had been for some time working into shape
  in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the
  Cade-Tyler sort.
  
  So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man
  there who sat munching black bread with that abused
  and mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him
  aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After
  I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from
  his veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece
  of bark --
  
    Put him in the Man-factory --
  
  and gave it to him, and said:
  
  "Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into
  the hands of Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence,
  and he will understand."
  
  "He is a priest, then," said the man, and some of
  the enthusiasm went out of his face.
  
  "How -- a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel
  of the Church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can
  enter my Man-Factory? Didn't I tell you that YOU
  couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might
  be, was your own free property?"
  
  "Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore
  it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear
  of this priest being there."
  
  "But he isn't a priest, I tell you."
  
  The man looked far from satisfied. He said:
  
  "He is not a priest, and yet can read?"
  
  "He is not a priest and yet can read -- yes, and
  write, too, for that matter. I taught him myself."
  The man's face cleared. "And it is the first thing
  that you yourself will be taught in that Factory --"
  
  "I? I would give blood out of my heart to know
  that art. Why, I will be your slave, your --"
  
  "No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave.
  Take your family and go along. Your lord the bishop
  will confiscate your small property, but no matter.
  Clarence will fix you all right."
  
  
  CHAPTER XIV.
  "DEFEND THEE, LORD"
  
  I PAID three pennies for my breakfast, and a most
  extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could
  have breakfasted a dozen persons for that money; but
  I was feeling good by this time, and I had always been
  a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these people
  had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as
  their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to
  emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness
  with a good big financial lift where the money would
  do so much more good than it would in my helmet,
  where, these pennies being made of iron and not stinted
  in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a
  burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in
  those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that I
  hadn't got the proportions of things entirely adjusted,
  even yet, after so long a sojourn in Britain -- hadn't
  got along to where I was able to absolutely realize that
  a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of dollars in
  Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just
  twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my
  start from Camelot could have been delayed a very few
  days I could have paid these people in beautiful new
  coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased
  me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted the
  American values exclusively. In a week or two now,
  cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and
  also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but
  steady streams all through the commercial veins of the
  kingdom, and I looked to see this new blood freshen up
  its life.
  
  The farmers were bound to throw in something, to
  sort of offset my liberality, whether I would or no; so
  I let them give me a flint and steel; and as soon as
  they had comfortably bestowed Sandy and me on our
  horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke
  shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those
  people broke for the woods, and Sandy went over
  backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud.
  They thought I was one of those fire-belching dragons
  they had heard so much about from knights and other
  professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade
  those people to venture back within explaining distance.
  Then I told them that this was only a bit of enchant-
  ment which would work harm to none but my enemies.
  And I promised, with my hand on my heart, that if all
  who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and
  pass before me they should see that only those who re-
  mained behind would be struck dead. The procession
  moved with a good deal of promptness. There were no
  casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough
  to remain behind to see what would happen.
  
  I lost some time, now, for these big children, their
  fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my
  awe-compelling fireworks that I had to stay there and
  smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me
  go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for
  it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to
  the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. It
  plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a consider-
  able while, and that was a gain. But above all other
  benefits accruing, I had learned something. I was
  ready for any giant or any ogre that might come along,
  now.
  
  We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my
  opportunity came about the middle of the next after-
  noon. We were crossing a vast meadow by way of
  short-cut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing,
  seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted a re-
  mark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:
  
  "Defend thee, lord! -- peril of life is toward!"
  
  And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little
  way and stood. I looked up and saw, far off in the
  shade of a tree, half a dozen armed knights and their
  squires; and straightway there was bustle among them
  and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My
  pipe was ready and would have been lit, if I had not
  been lost in thinking about how to banish oppression
  from this land and restore to all its people their stolen
  rights and manhood without disobliging anybody. I lit
  up at once, and by the time I had got a good head of
  reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too;
  none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one
  reads so much about -- one courtly rascal at a time, and
  the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came
  in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they
  came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low
  down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at
  a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight --
  for a man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited,
  with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready
  to break over me, then spouted a column of white
  smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should
  have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was
  a finer sight than the other one.
  
  But these people stopped, two or three hundred
  yards away, and this troubled me. My satisfaction
  collapsed, and fear came; I judged I was a lost man.
  But Sandy was radiant; and was going to be eloquent --
  but I stopped her, and told her my magic had mis-
  carried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with
  all despatch, and we must ride for life. No, she
  wouldn't. She said that my enchantment had disabled
  those knights; they were not riding on, because they
  couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles
  presently, and we would get their horses and harness.
  I could not deceive such trusting simplicity, so I said
  it was a mistake; that when my fireworks killed at all,
  they killed instantly; no, the men would not die, there
  was something wrong about my apparatus, I couldn't
  tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those
  people would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy
  laughed, and said:
  
  "Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir
  Launcelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by
  them, and will assail them again, and yet again, and
  still again, until he do conquer and destroy them; and
  so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovale and Sir
  Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else
  that will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will.
  And, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have
  not their fill, but yet desire more?"
  
  "Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why
  don't they leave? Nobody's hindering. Good land,
  I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, I'm sure."
  
  "Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that.
  They dream not of it, no, not they. They wait to
  yield them."
  
  "Come -- really, is that 'sooth' -- as you people
  say? If they want to, why don't they?"
  
  "It would like them much; but an ye wot how
  dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blam-
  able. They fear to come."
  
  "Well, then, suppose I go to them instead, and --"
  
  "Ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming.
  I will go."
  
  And she did. She was a handy person to have
  along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubt-
  ful errand, myself. I presently saw the knights riding
  away, and Sandy coming back. That was a relief. I
  judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings
  -- I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview
  wouldn't have been so short. But it turned out that
  she had managed the business well; in fact, admirably.
  She said that when she told those people I was The
  Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore
  with fear and dread" was her word; and then they
  were ready to put up with anything she might require.
  So she swore them to appear at Arthur's court within
  two days and yield them, with horse and harness, and
  be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command.
  How much better she managed that thing than I should
  have done it myself! She was a daisy.
  
  
  CHAPTER XV.
  SANDY'S TALE
  
  AND so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I,
  as we rode off. "Who would ever have sup-
  posed that I should live to list up assets of that sort.
  I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle
  them off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"
  
  "Seven, please you, sir, and their squires."
  
  "It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they
  hang out?"
  
  "Where do they hang out?"
  
  "Yes, where do they live?"
  
  "Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell
  eftsoons." Then she said musingly, and softly, turn-
  ing the words daintily over her tongue: "Hang they
  out -- hang they out -- where hang -- where do they
  hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of
  a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and
  is prettily worded withal. I will repeat it anon and
  anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure
  learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so! already
  it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch
  as --"
  
  "Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy."
  
  "Cowboys?"
  
  "Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to
  tell me about them. A while back, you remember.
  Figuratively speaking, game's called."
  
  "Game --"
  
  "Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to
  work on your statistics, and don't burn so much
  kindling getting your fire started. Tell me about the
  knights."
  
  "I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two
  departed and rode into a great forest. And --"
  
  "Great Scott!"
  
  You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had
  set her works a-going; it was my own fault; she would
  be thirty days getting down to those facts. And she
  generally began without a preface and finished without
  a result. If you interrupted her she would either go
  right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of
  words, and go back and say the sentence over again.
  So, interruptions only did harm; and yet I had to in-
  terrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently, too, in order
  to save my life; a person would die if he let her mo-
  notony drip on him right along all day.
  
  "Great Scott! " I said in my distress. She went
  right back and began over again:
  
  "So they two departed and rode into a great forest.
  And --"
  
  "WHICH two?"
  
  "Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came
  to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So
  on the morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and
  so they rode forth till they came to a great forest; then
  was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of
  twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great
  horses, and the damsels went to and fro by a tree.
  And then was Sir Gawaine ware how there hung a
  white shield on that tree, and ever as the damsels came
  by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the
  shield --"
  
  "Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country,
  Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I
  can just see those creatures now, parading before that
  shield and acting like that. The women here do cer-
  tainly act like all possessed. Yes, and I mean your
  best, too, society's very choicest brands. The hum-
  blest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could
  teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the
  highest duchess in Arthur's land."
  
  "Hello-girl?"
  
  "Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new
  kind of a girl; they don't have them here; one often
  speaks sharply to them when they are not the least in
  fault, and he can't get over feeling sorry for it and
  ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such
  shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is,
  no gentleman ever does it -- though I -- well, I myself,
  if I've got to confess --"
  
  "Peradventure she --"
  
  "Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I
  couldn't ever explain her so you would understand."
  
  "Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir
  Gawaine and Sir Uwaine went and saluted them, and
  asked them why they did that despite to the shield.
  Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a
  knight in this country that owneth this white shield, and
  he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth
  all ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this
  despite to the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine,
  it beseemeth evil a good knight to despise all ladies and
  gentlewomen, and peradventure though he hate you he
  hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth in some
  other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved
  again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of --"
  
  "Man of prowess -- yes, that is the man to please
  them, Sandy. Man of brains -- that is a thing they
  never think of. Tom Sayers -- John Heenan -- John
  L. Sullivan -- pity but you could be here. You
  would have your legs under the Round Table and a
  'Sir' in front of your names within the twenty-four
  hours; and you could bring about a new distribution
  of the married princesses and duchesses of the Court in
  another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just a sort of
  polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a
  squaw in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of
  a hat to desert to the buck with the biggest string of
  scalps at his belt."
  
  "-- and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of,
  said Sir Gawaine. Now, what is his name? Sir, said
  they, his name is Marhaus the king's son of Ireland."
  
  "Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other
  form doesn't mean anything. And look out and hold
  on tight, now, we must jump this gully....
  There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in the
  circus; he is born before his time."
  
  "I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing
  good knight as any is on live."
  
  "ON LIVE. If you've got a fault in the world,
  Sandy, it is that you are a shade too archaic. But it
  isn't any matter."
  
  "-- for I saw him once proved at a justs where many
  knights were gathered, and that time there might no
  man withstand him. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, damsels,
  methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to suppose he that
  hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and
  then may those knights match him on horseback, and
  that is more your worship than thus; for I will abide
  no longer to see a knight's shield dishonored. And
  therewith Sir Uwaine and Sir Gawaine departed a little
  from them, and then were they ware where Sir Marhaus
  came riding on a great horse straight toward them.
  And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they
  fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of
  them fell by the way. Then the one of the knights of
  the tower dressed his shield, and said on high, Sir Mar-
  haus defend thee. And so they ran together that the
  knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus
  smote him so hard that he brake his neck and the
  horse's back --"
  
  "Well, that is just the trouble about this state of
  things, it ruins so many horses."
  
  "That saw the other knight of the turret, and
  dressed him toward Marhaus, and they went so eagerly
  together, that the knight of the turret was soon smitten
  down, horse and man, stark dead --"
  
  "ANOTHER horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that
  ought to be broken up. I don't see how people with
  any feeling can applaud and support it."
  
  ....
  
  "So these two knights came together with great
  random --"
  
  I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter,
  but I didn't say anything. I judged that the Irish
  knight was in trouble with the visitors by this time, and
  this turned out to be the case.
  
  "-- that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his
  spear brast in pieces on the shield, and Sir Marhaus
  smote him so sore that horse and man he bare to the
  earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side --
  
  "The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little
  TOO simple; the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by
  consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of
  variety; they run too much to level Saharas of fact,
  and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about
  them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights
  are all alike: a couple of people come together with
  great random -- random is a good word, and so is
  exegesis, for that matter, and so is holocaust, and de-
  falcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land!
  a body ought to discriminate -- they come together
  with great random, and a spear is brast, and one party
  brake his shield and the other one goes down, horse
  and man, over his horse-tail and brake his neck, and
  then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast
  HIS spear, and the other man brast his shield, and
  down HE goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and
  brake HIS neck, and then there's another elected, and
  another and another and still another, till the material
  is all used up; and when you come to figure up results,
  you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whip-
  ped; and as a PICTURE, of living, raging, roaring battle,
  sho! why, it's pale and noiseless -- just ghosts scuffling
  in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary
  get out of the mightiest spectacle? -- the burning of
  Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would
  merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy
  brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, THAT
  ain't a picture!"
  
  It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it
  didn't disturb Sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam
  soared steadily up again, the minute I took off the lid:
  
  "Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward
  Gawaine with his spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw
  that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their
  spears, and they came together with all the might of
  their horses, that either knight smote other so hard in
  the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear
  brake --"
  
  "I knew it would."
  
  -- "but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir
  Gawaine and his horse rushed down to the earth --"
  
  "Just so -- and brake his back."
  
  -- "and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and
  pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Mar-
  haus on foot, and therewith either came unto other
  eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their
  shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms and
  their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir
  Gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the
  space of three hours ever stronger and stronger. and
  thrice his might was increased. All this espied Sir
  Marhaus, and had great wonder how his might in-
  creased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and
  then when it was come noon --"
  
  The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to
  scenes and sounds of my boyhood days:
  
  "N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments --
  knductr'll strike the gong-bell two minutes before train
  leaves -- passengers for the Shore line please take seats
  in the rear k'yar, this k'yar don't go no furder -- AHH -
  pls, AW-rnjz, b'NANners, S-A-N-D'ches, p--OP-corn!"
  
  -- "and waxed past noon and drew toward even-
  song. Sir Gawaine's strength feebled and waxed pass-
  ing faint, that unnethes he might dure any longer, and
  Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger --"
  
  "Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little
  would one of these people mind a small thing like that."
  
  -- "and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have
  well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a mar-
  velous man of might as ever I felt any, while it lasteth,
  and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a
  pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble.
  Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word
  that I should say. And therewith they took off their
  helms and either kissed other, and there they swore
  together either to love other as brethren --"
  
  But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber,
  thinking about what a pity it was that men with such
  superb strength -- strength enabling them to stand up
  cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with
  perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other
  for six hours on a stretch -- should not have been
  born at a time when they could put it to some useful
  purpose. Take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has
  that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose,
  and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass;
  but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass.
  It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should
  never have been attempted in the first place. And yet,
  once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you
  never know what is going to come of it.
  
  When I came to myself again and began to listen, I
  perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that
  Alisande had wandered a long way off with her people.
  
  "And so they rode and came into a deep valley full
  of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water;
  above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair foun-
  tain, and three damsels sitting thereby. In this coun-
  try, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight since it was
  christened, but he found strange adventures --"
  
  "This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the
  king's son of Ireland talks like all the rest; you ought
  to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic exple-
  tive; by this means one would recognize him as soon
  as he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a
  common literary device with the great authors. You
  should make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came
  never knight since it was christened, but he found
  strange adventures, be jabers.' You see how much
  better that sounds."
  
  -- "came never knight but he found strange adven-
  tures, be jabers. Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord,
  albeit 'tis passing hard to say, though peradventure
  that will not tarry but better speed with usage. And
  then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted other,
  and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head,
  and she was threescore winter of age or more --"
  
  "The DAMSEL was?"
  
  "Even so, dear lord -- and her hair was white under
  the garland --"
  
  "Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not --
  the loose-fit kind, that go up and down like a portcullis
  when you eat, and fall out when you laugh."
  
  "The second damsel was of thirty winter of age,
  with a circlet of gold about her head. The third damsel
  was but fifteen year of age --"
  
  Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and
  the voice faded out of my hearing!
  
  Fifteen! Break -- my heart! oh, my lost darling!
  Just her age who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the
  world to me, and whom I shall never see again! How
  the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of
  memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many,
  many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft
  summer mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say
  "Hello, Central!" just to hear her dear voice come
  melting back to me with a "Hello, Hank!" that was
  music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got
  three dollars a week, but she was worth it.
  
  I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of
  who our captured knights were, now -- I mean in case
  she should ever get to explaining who they were. My
  interest was gone, my thoughts were far away, and sad.
  By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and
  there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague way
  that each of these three knights took one of these three
  damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode
  north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures,
  and meet again and lie, after year and day. Year and
  day -- and without baggage. It was of a piece with
  the general simplicity of the country.
  
  The sun was now setting. It was about three in the
  afternoon when Alisande had begun to tell me who the
  cowboys were; so she had made pretty good progress
  with it -- for her. She would arrive some time or
  other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could
  be hurried.
  
  We were approaching a castle which stood on high
  ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose
  gray towers and battlements were charmingly draped
  with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched
  with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the
  largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be
  the one we were after, but Sandy said no. She did
  not know who owned it; she said she had passed it
  without calling, when she went down to Camelot.
  
  
  CHAPTER XVI.
  MORGAN LE FAY
  
  IF knights errant were to be believed, not all castles
  were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a
  matter of fact, knights errant were NOT persons to be
  believed -- that is, measured by modern standards of
  veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own
  time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It
  was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-
  seven per cent.; the rest was fact. Now after making
  this allowance, the truth remained that if I could find
  out something about a castle before ringing the door-
  bell -- I mean hailing the warders -- it was the sensible
  thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the dis-
  tance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road
  that wound down from this castle.
  
  As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a
  plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in
  steel, but bore a curious addition also -- a stiff square
  garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to
  smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and
  read this sign on his tabard:
  
    "Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It."
  
  That was a little idea of my own, and had several
  wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and
  uplifting of this nation. In the first place, it was a
  furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight
  errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I
  had started a number of these people out -- the bravest
  knights I could get -- each sandwiched between bul-
  letin-boards bearing one device or another, and I
  judged that by and by when they got to be numerous
  enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then,
  even the steel-clad ass that HADN'T any board would
  himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of
  the fashion.
  
  Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and
  without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce
  a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from
  them it would work down to the people, if the priests
  could be kept quiet. This would undermine the
  Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next,
  education -- next, freedom -- and then she would begin
  to crumble. It being my conviction that any Estab-
  lished Church is an established crime, an established
  slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail
  it in any way or with any weapon that promised to
  hurt it. Why, in my own former day -- in remote
  centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time -- there
  were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been
  born in a free country: a "free" country with the
  Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it --
  timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored
  consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism
  with.
  
  My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt
  signs on their tabards -- the showy gilding was a neat
  idea, I could have got the king to wear a bulletin-board
  for the sake of that barbaric splendor -- they were to
  spell out these signs and then explain to the lords and
  ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies were
  afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The mission-
  ary's next move was to get the family together and try
  it on himself; he was to stop at no experiment, how-
  ever desperate. that could convince the nobility that
  soap was harmless; if any final doubt remained, he
  must catch a hermit -- the woods were full of them;
  saints they called themselves, and saints they were be-
  lieved to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked
  miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them. If a
  hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince
  a duke, give him up, let him alone.
  
  Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant
  on the road they washed him, and when he got well
  they swore him to go and get a bulletin-board and dis-
  seminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. As
  a consequence the workers in the field were increasing
  by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading.
  My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had
  only two hands; but before I had left home I was
  already employing fifteen, and running night and day;
  and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced
  that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around
  and said he did not believe he could stand it much
  longer, and Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly
  anything but walk up and down the roof and swear,
  although I told him it was worse up there than any-
  where else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and
  he was always complaining that a palace was no place
  for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to
  start one in his house he would be damned if he
  wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies present,
  too, but much these people ever cared for that; they
  would swear before children, if the wind was their way
  when the factory was going.
  
  This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male
  Taile, and he said that this castle was the abode of
  Morgan le Fay, sister of King Arthur, and wife of
  King Uriens. monarch of a realm about as big as the
  District of Columbia -- you could stand in the middle
  of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom.
  "Kings" and "Kingdoms" were as thick in Britain
  as they had been in little Palestine in Joshua's time,
  when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up
  because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.
  
  La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored
  here the worst failure of his campaign. He had not
  worked off a cake; yet he had tried all the tricks of
  the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; but the
  hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for this
  animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take
  his place among the saints of the Roman calendar.
  Thus made he his moan, this poor Sir La Cote Male
  Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. And so my heart
  bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay
  him. Wherefore I said:
  
  "Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a
  defeat. We have brains, you and I; and for such as
  have brains there are no defeats, but only victories.
  Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an
  advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and
  the biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an
  advertisement that will transform that Mount Washing-
  ton defeat into a Matterhorn victory. We will put on
  your bulletin-board, 'PATRONIZED BY THE ELECT.' How
  does that strike you?"
  
  "Verily, it is wonderly bethought!"
  
  "Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a
  modest little one-line ad., it's a corker."
  
  So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He
  was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms
  in his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events
  of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had
  once made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was
  as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a
  different way, for her tongue churned forth only rail-
  ings and insult, whereas Sandy's music was of a
  kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so I knew
  how to interpret the compassion that was in his face
  when he bade me farewell. He supposed I was having
  a bitter hard time of it.
  
  Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along,
  and she said that La Cote's bad luck had begun with
  the very beginning of that trip; for the king's fool had
  overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it
  was customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror,
  but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted after-
  ward in sticking to him, after all his defeats. But,
  said I, suppose the victor should decline to accept his
  spoil? She said that that wouldn't answer -- he must.
  He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be regular. I made
  a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too
  burdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat
  me, on the chance that she would desert to him.
  
  In due time we were challenged by the warders,
  from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. I
  have nothing pleasant to tell about that visit. But it
  was not a disappointment, for I knew Mrs. le Fay by
  reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant.
  She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had
  made everybody believe she was a great sorceress. All
  her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. She
  was loaded to the eyelids with cold malice. All her
  history was black with crime; and among her crimes
  murder was common. I was most curious to see her;
  as curious as I could have been to see Satan. To my
  surprise she was beautiful; black thoughts had failed
  to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to
  wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness.
  She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter,
  she could have been mistaken for sister to her own son.
  
  As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we
  were ordered into her presence. King Uriens was
  there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued look; and
  also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, in whom I
  was, of course, interested on account of the tradition
  that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and
  also on account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir
  Marhaus, which Sandy had been aging me with. But
  Morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous per-
  sonality here; she was head chief of this household,
  that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then
  she began, with all manner of pretty graces and
  graciousnesses, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was
  like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt
  persuaded that this woman must have been misrepre-
  sented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along,
  and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the
  rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a
  wave, came with something on a golden salver, and,
  kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and
  lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee.
  She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a
  way as another person would have harpooned a rat!
  
  Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken
  limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was
  dead. Out of the old king was wrung an involuntary
  "O-h!" of compassion. The look he got, made him
  cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in
  it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to
  the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile
  madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk.
  
  I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while
  she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants
  to see that they made no balks in handling the body
  and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean
  towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when
  they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she
  indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their
  duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that
  La Cote Male Taile had failed to see the mistress of
  the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any
  tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak.
  
  Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever.
  Marvelous woman. And what a glance she had: when
  it fell in reproof upon those servants, they shrunk and
  quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes
  out of a cloud. I could have got the habit myself. It
  was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he was
  always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could
  not even turn toward him but he winced.
  
  In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary
  word about King Arthur, forgetting for the moment
  how this woman hated her brother. That one little
  compliment was enough. She clouded up like
  storm; she called for her guards, and said:
  
  "Hale me these varlets to the dungeons."
  
  That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had
  a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say -- or
  do. But not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a
  hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest con-
  fidence, and said:
  
  "God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou
  maniac? It is The Boss!"
  
  Now what a happy idea that was! -- and so simple;
  yet it would never have occurred to me. I was born
  modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one
  of the spots.
  
  The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared
  her countenance and brought back her smiles and all
  her persuasive graces and blandishments; but never-
  theless she was not able to entirely cover up with them
  the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said:
  
  "La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one
  gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing
  which I have said unto one who has vanquished
  Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments I
  foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when
  you entered here. I did but play this little jest with
  hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as
  not doubting you would blast the guards with occult
  fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel
  much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have
  long been childishly curious to see."
  
  The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as
  they got permission.
  
  
  CHAPTER XVII.
  A ROYAL BANQUET
  
  MADAME, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no
  doubt judged that I was deceived by her excuse;
  for her fright dissolved away, and she was soon so
  importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill
  somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing.
  However, to my relief she was presently interrupted by
  the call to prayers. I will say this much for the
  nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and
  morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and
  enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them
  from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties
  enjoined by the Church. More than once I had seen
  a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage,
  stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once
  I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching
  his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and
  humbly give thanks, without even waiting to rob the
  body. There was to be nothing finer or sweeter in the
  life of even Benvenuto Cellini, that rough-hewn saint,
  ten centuries later. All the nobles of Britain, with
  their families, attended divine service morning and
  night daily, in their private chapels, and even the
  worst of them had family worship five or six times a
  day besides. The credit of this belonged entirely to
  the Church. Although I was no friend to that Cath-
  olic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often,
  in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What would
  this country be without the Church?"
  
  After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting
  hall which was lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and
  everything was as fine and lavish and rudely splendid
  as might become the royal degree of the hosts. At
  the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the
  king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching
  down the hall from this, was the general table, on the
  floor. At this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles
  and the grown members of their families, of both
  sexes, -- the resident Court, in effect -- sixty-one per-
  sons; below the salt sat minor officers of the house-
  hold, with their principal subordinates: altogether a
  hundred and eighteen persons sitting, and about as
  many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or
  serving in one capacity or another. It was a very fine
  show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps,
  and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what
  seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of
  the wail known to later centuries as "In the Sweet
  Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been
  rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the
  queen had the composer hanged, after dinner.
  
  After this music, the priest who stood behind the
  royal table said a noble long grace in ostensible Latin.
  Then the battalion of waiters broke away from their
  posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried,
  and the mighty feeding began; no words anywhere,
  but absorbing attention to business. The rows of
  chops opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound
  of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean
  machinery.
  
  The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unim-
  aginable was the destruction of substantials. Of the
  chief feature of the feast -- the huge wild boar that lay
  stretched out so portly and imposing at the start --
  nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt;
  and he was but the type and symbol of what had hap-
  pened to all the other dishes.
  
  With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking
  began -- and the talk. Gallon after gallon of wine and
  mead disappeared, and everybody got comfortable,
  then happy, then sparklingly joyous -- both sexes, --
  and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that
  were terrific to hear, but nobody blushed; and when
  the nub was sprung, the assemblage let go with a
  horse-laugh that shook the fortress. Ladies answered
  back with historiettes that would almost have made
  Queen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth
  of England hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody
  hid here, but only laughed -- howled, you may say.
  In pretty much all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics
  were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the chap-
  lain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than
  that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was
  of as daring a sort as any that was sung that night.
  
  By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore
  with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly,
  some affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrel-
  somely, some dead and under the table. Of the
  ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duch-
  ess, whose wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was
  a spectacle, sure enough. Just as she was she could
  have sat in advance for the portrait of the young
  daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner
  whence she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and
  helpless, to her bed, in the lost and lamented days of
  the Ancient Regime.
  
  Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands,
  and all conscious heads were bowed in reverent expec-
  tation of the coming blessing, there appeared under
  the arch of the far-off door at the bottom of the hall
  an old and bent and white-haired lady, leaning upon a
  crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it
  toward the queen and cried out:
  
  "The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman
  without pity, who have slain mine innocent grandchild
  and made desolate this old heart that had nor chick, nor
  friend nor stay nor comfort in all this world but him!"
  
  Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a
  curse was an awful thing to those people; but the
  queen rose up majestic, with the death-light in her
  eye, and flung back this ruthless command:
  
  "Lay hands on her! To the stake with her!"
  
  The guards left their posts to obey. It was a
  shame; it was a cruel thing to see. What could be
  done? Sandy gave me a look; I knew she had an-
  other inspiration. I said:
  
  "Do what you choose."
  
  She was up and facing toward the queen in a mo-
  ment. She indicated me, and said:
  
  "Madame, HE saith this may not be. Recall the
  commandment, or he will dissolve the castle and it
  shall vanish away like the instable fabric of a dream!"
  
  Confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a per-
  son to! What if the queen --
  
  But my consternation subsided there, and my panic
  passed off; for the queen, all in a collapse, made no
  show of resistance but gave a countermanding sign and
  sunk into her seat. When she reached it she was
  sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage
  rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for
  the door like a mob; overturning chairs, smashing
  crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding
  -- anything to get out before I should change my
  mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim
  vacancies of space. Well, well, well, they WERE a
  superstitious lot. It is all a body can do to conceive
  of it.
  
  The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she
  was even afraid to hang the composer without first
  consulting me. I was very sorry for her -- indeed, any
  one would have been, for she was really suffering; so
  I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and
  had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I
  therefore considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended
  by having the musicians ordered into our presence to
  play that Sweet Bye and Bye again, which they did.
  Then I saw that she was right, and gave her permission
  to hang the whole band. This little relaxation of
  sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A states-
  man gains little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad
  authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds
  the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to
  undermine his strength. A little concession, now and
  then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy.
  
  Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once
  more, and measurably happy, her wine naturally began
  to assert itself again, and it got a little the start of her.
  I mean it set her music going -- her silver bell of a
  tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would
  not become me to suggest that it was pretty late and
  that I was a tired man and very sleepy. I wished I
  had gone off to bed when I had the chance. Now I
  must stick it out; there was no other way. So she
  tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and
  ghostly hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by
  there came, as if from deep down under us, a far-away
  sound, as of a muffled shriek -- with an expression of
  agony about it that made my flesh crawl. The queen
  stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted
  her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The
  sound bored its way up through the stillness again.
  
  "What is it?" I said.
  
  "It is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. It
  is many hours now."
  
  "Endureth what?"
  
  "The rack. Come -- ye shall see a blithe sight.
  An he yield not his secret now, ye shall see him torn
  asunder."
  
  What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so com-
  posed and serene, when the cords all down my legs
  were hurting in sympathy with that man's pain. Con-
  ducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we
  tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stair-
  ways dank and dripping, and smelling of mould and
  ages of imprisoned night -- a chill, uncanny journey
  and a long one, and not made the shorter or the
  cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this
  sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an
  anonymous informer, of having killed a stag in the
  royal preserves. I said:
  
  "Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing,
  your Highness. It were fairer to confront the accused
  with the accuser."
  
  "I had not thought of that, it being but of small
  consequence. But an I would, I could not, for that
  the accuser came masked by night, and told the
  forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so
  the forester knoweth him not."
  
  "Then is this Unknown the only person who saw
  the stag killed?"
  
  "Marry, NO man SAW the killing, but this Unknown
  saw this hardy wretch near to the spot where the stag
  lay, and came with right loyal zeal and betrayed him
  to the forester."
  
  "So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too?
  Isn't it just possible that he did the killing himself?
  His loyal zeal -- in a mask -- looks just a shade sus-
  picious. But what is your highness's idea for racking
  the prisoner? Where is the profit?"
  
  "He will not confess, else; and then were his soul
  lost. For his crime his life is forfeited by the law --
  and of a surety will I see that he payeth it! -- but it
  were peril to my own soul to let him die unconfessed
  and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling me into
  hell for HIS accommodation."
  
  "But, your Highness, suppose he has nothing to
  confess?"
  
  "As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to
  death and he confess not, it will peradventure show
  that he had indeed naught to confess -- ye will grant
  that that is sooth? Then shall I not be damned for
  an unconfessed man that had naught to confess --
  wherefore, I shall be safe."
  
  It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was
  useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance
  against petrified training; they wear it as little as the
  waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's.
  The brightest intellect in the land would not have been
  able to see that her position was defective.
  
  As we entered the rack-cell I caught a picture that
  will not go from me; I wish it would. A native young
  giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the
  frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to
  ropes which led over windlasses at either end. There
  was no color in him; his features were contorted and
  set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A
  priest bent over him on each side; the executioner
  stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches
  stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched
  a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish,
  a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap
  lay a little child asleep. Just as we stepped across the
  threshold the executioner gave his machine a slight
  turn, which wrung a cry from both the prisoner and
  the woman; but I shouted, and the executioner released
  the strain without waiting to see who spoke. I could
  not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to
  see it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place
  and speak to the prisoner privately; and when she was
  going to object I spoke in a low voice and said I did
  not want to make a scene before her servants, but I
  must have my way; for I was King Arthur's repre-
  sentative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she
  had to yield. I asked her to indorse me to these peo-
  ple, and then leave me. It was not pleasant for her,
  but she took the pill; and even went further than I
  was meaning to require. I only wanted the backing of
  her own authority; but she said:
  
  "Ye will do in all things as this lord shall command.
  It is The Boss."
  
  It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you
  could see it by the squirming of these rats. The
  queen's guards fell into line, and she and they marched
  away, with their torch-bearers, and woke the echoes of
  the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their
  retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from
  the rack and placed upon his bed, and medicaments
  applied to his hurts, and wine given him to drink.
  The woman crept near and looked on, eagerly, lov-
  ingly, but timorously, -- like one who fears a repulse;
  indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead,
  and jumped back, the picture of fright, when I turned
  unconsciously toward her. It was pitiful to see.
  
  "Lord," I said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to.
  Do anything you're a mind to; don't mind me."
  
  Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when
  you do it a kindness that it understands. The baby
  was out of her way and she had her cheek against the
  man's in a minute. and her hands fondling his hair,
  and her happy tears running down. The man revived
  and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he
  could do. I judged I might clear the den, now, and I
  did; cleared it of all but the family and myself. Then
  I said:
  
  "Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter;
  I know the other side."
  
  The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But
  the woman looked pleased -- as it seemed to me --
  pleased with my suggestion. I went on --
  
  "You know of me?"
  
  "Yes. All do, in Arthur's realms."
  
  "If my reputation has come to you right and
  straight, you should not be afraid to speak."
  
  The woman broke in, eagerly:
  
  "Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! Thou
  canst an thou wilt. Ah, he suffereth so; and it is for
  me -- for ME! And how can I bear it? I would I
  might see him die -- a sweet, swift death; oh, my
  Hugo, I cannot bear this one!"
  
  And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my
  feet, and still imploring. Imploring what? The man's
  death? I could not quite get the bearings of the thing.
  But Hugo interrupted her and said:
  
  "Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve
  whom I love, to win a gentle death? I wend thou
  knewest me better."
  
  "Well," I said, "I can't quite make this out. It
  is a puzzle. Now --"
  
  "Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him!
  Consider how these his tortures wound me! Oh, and
  he will not speak! -- whereas, the healing, the solace
  that lie in a blessed swift death --"
  
  "What ARE you maundering about? He's going out
  from here a free man and whole -- he's not going to
  die."
  
  The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung
  herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy,
  and cried out:
  
  "He is saved! -- for it is the king's word by the
  mouth of the king's servant -- Arthur, the king whose
  word is gold!"
  
  "Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after
  all. Why didn't you before?"
  
  "Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she."
  
  "Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?"
  
  "Ye had made no promise; else had it been other-
  wise."
  
  "I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite
  see, after all. You stood the torture and refused to
  confess; which shows plain enough to even the dull-
  est understanding that you had nothing to confess --"
  
  "I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the
  deer!"
  
  "You DID? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up
  business that ever --"
  
  "Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess,
  but --"
  
  "You DID! It gets thicker and thicker. What did
  you want him to do that for?"
  
  "Sith it would bring him a quick death and save
  him all this cruel pain."
  
  "Well -- yes, there is reason in that. But HE didn't
  want the quick death."
  
  "He? Why, of a surety he DID."
  
  "Well, then, why in the world DIDN'T he confess?"
  
  "Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick with-
  out bread and shelter?"
  
  "Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law
  takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow
  and his orphans. They could torture you to death,
  but without conviction or confession they could not
  rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a
  man; and YOU -- true wife and the woman that you
  are -- you would have bought him release from torture
  at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death -- well,
  it humbles a body to think what your sex can do when
  it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both for my
  colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm
  going to turn groping and grubbing automata into
  MEN."
  
  
  CHAPTER XVIII.
  IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS
  
  WELL, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent
  to his home. I had a great desire to rack the
  executioner; not because he was a good, painstaking
  and paingiving official, -- for surely it was not to his
  discredit that he performed his functions well -- but to
  pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise dis-
  tressing that young woman. The priests told me about
  this, and were generously hot to have him punished.
  Something of this disagreeable sort was turning up
  every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed
  that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but
  that many, even the great majority, of these that were
  down on the ground among the common people, were
  sincere and right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation
  of human troubles and sufferings. Well, it was a thing
  which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted about
  it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never
  been my way to bother much about things which you
  can't cure. But I did not like it, for it was just the
  sort of thing to keep people reconciled to an Estab-
  lished Church. We MUST have a religion -- it goes
  without saying -- but my idea is, to have it cut up into
  forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as
  had been the case in the United States in my time.
  Concentration of power in a political machine is bad;
  and and an Established Church is only a political machine;
  it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, pre-
  served for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and
  does no good which it could not better do in a split-up
  and scattered condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't
  gospel: it was only an opinion -- my opinion, and I
  was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any
  more than the pope's -- or any less, for that matter.
  
  Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would
  I overlook the just complaint of the priests. The man
  must be punished somehow or other, so I degraded
  him from his office and made him leader of the band
  -- the new one that was to be started. He begged
  hard, and said he couldn't play -- a plausible excuse,
  but too thin; there wasn't a musician in the country
  that could.
  
  The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning
  when she found she was going to have neither Hugo's
  life nor his property. But I told her she must bear
  this cross; that while by law and custom she certainly
  was entitled to both the man's life and his property,
  there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur
  the king's name I had pardoned him. The deer was
  ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sud-
  den passion, and not for gain; and he had carried it
  into the royal forest in the hope that that might make
  detection of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I
  couldn't make her see that sudden passion is an ex-
  tenuating circumstance in the killing of venison -- or
  of a person -- so I gave it up and let her sulk it out
  I DID think I was going to make her see it by remark-
  ing that her own sudden passion in the case of the
  page modified that crime.
  
  "Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest!
  Crime, forsooth! Man, I am going to PAY for him!"
  
  Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training
  -- training is everything; training is all there is TO a
  person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no
  such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading
  name is merely heredity and training. We have no
  thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they
  are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is
  original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or dis-
  creditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the
  point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
  contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of
  ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the
  Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our
  race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and un-
  profitably developed. And as for me, all that I think
  about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic
  drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly
  live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that
  one microscopic atom in me that is truly ME: the rest
  may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.
  
  No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had
  brains enough, but her training made her an ass -- that
  is, from a many-centuries-later point of view. To kill
  the page was no crime -- it was her right; and upon
  her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of
  offense. She was a result of generations of training
  in the unexamined and unassailed belief that the law
  which permitted her to kill a subject when she chose
  was a perfectly right and righteous one.
  
  Well, we must give even Satan his due. She de-
  served a compliment for one thing; and I tried to pay
  it, but the words stuck in my throat. She had a right
  to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to pay
  for him. That was law for some other people, but
  not for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a
  large and generous thing to pay for that lad, and that
  I ought in common fairness to come out with some-
  thing handsome about it, but I couldn't -- my mouth
  refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that
  poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair
  young creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps
  and vanities laced with his golden blood. How could
  she PAY for him! WHOM could she pay? And so,
  well knowing that this woman, trained as she had been,
  deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not able to
  utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do
  was to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak
  -- and the pity of it was, that it was true:
  
  "Madame, your people will adore you for this."
  
  Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day
  if I lived. Some of those laws were too bad, altogether
  too bad. A master might kill his slave for nothing --
  for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time -- just as
  we have seen that the crowned head could do it with
  HIS slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could
  kill a free commoner, and pay for him -- cash or
  garden-truck. A noble could kill a noble without ex-
  pense, as far as the law was concerned, but reprisals in
  kind were to be expected. ANYbody could kill SOME-
  body, except the commoner and the slave; these had
  no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the
  law wouldn't stand murder. It made short work of
  the experimenter -- and of his family, too, if he mur-
  dered somebody who belonged up among the orna-
  mental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so
  much as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even
  hurt, he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they
  pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the
  world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have
  a good time; and some of the performances of the
  best people present were as tough, and as properly
  unprintable, as any that have been printed by the
  pleasant Casanova in his chapter about the dismember-
  ment of Louis XV.'s poor awkward enemy.
  
  I had had enough of this grisly place by this time,
  and wanted to leave, but I couldn't, because I had
  something on my mind that my conscience kept prod-
  ding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. If I had
  the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience.
  It is one of the most disagreeable things connected
  with a person; and although it certainly does a great
  deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run;
  it would be much better to have less good and more
  comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and I am only
  one man; others, with less experience, may think
  differently. They have a right to their view. I only
  stand to this: I have noticed my conscience for many
  years, and I know it is more trouble and bother to me
  than anything else I started with. I suppose that in
  the beginning I prized it, because we prize anything
  that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so.
  If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it
  is: if I had an anvil in me would I prize it? Of course
  not. And yet when you come to think, there is no
  real difference between a conscience and an anvil -- I
  mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand times.
  And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you
  couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way
  that you can work off a conscience -- at least so it will
  stay worked off; not that I know of, anyway.
  
  There was something I wanted to do before leaving,
  but it was a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at
  it. Well, it bothered me all the morning. I could
  have mentioned it to the old king, but what would be
  the use? -- he was but an extinct volcano; he had
  been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good
  while, he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle
  enough, and kindly enough for my purpose, without
  doubt, but not usable. He was nothing, this so-called
  king: the queen was the only power there. And she
  was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to
  warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might
  take that very opportunity to turn herself loose and
  bury a city. However, I reflected that as often as any
  other way, when you are expecting the worst, you get
  something that is not so bad, after all.
  
  So I braced up and placed my matter before her
  royal Highness. I said I had been having a general
  jail-delivery at Camelot and among neighboring castles,
  and with her permission I would like to examine her
  collection, her bric-a-brac -- that is to say, her prison-
  ers. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she
  finally consented. I was expecting that, too, but not
  so soon. That about ended my discomfort. She
  called her guards and torches, and we went down into
  the dungeons. These were down under the castle's
  foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out
  of the living rock. Some of these cells had no light at
  all. In one of them was a woman, in foul rags, who
  sat on the ground, and would not answer a question or
  speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice,
  through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what
  casual thing it might be that was disturbing with sound
  and light the meaningless dull dream that was become
  her life; after that, she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked
  fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave no further
  sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middle
  age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been
  there nine years, and was eighteen when she entered.
  She was a commoner, and had been sent here on her
  bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite, a neighboring
  lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said
  lord she had refused what has since been called le droit
  du seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to
  violence and spilt half a gill of his almost sacred blood.
  The young husband had interfered at that point. be-
  lieving the bride's life in danger, and had flung the
  noble out into the midst of the humble and trembling
  wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him there aston-
  ished at this strange treatment, and implacably embit-
  tered against both bride and groom. The said lord
  being cramped for dungeon-room had asked the queen
  to accommodate his two criminals, and here in her
  bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, they
  had come before their crime was an hour old, and had
  never seen each other since. Here they were, ken-
  neled like toads in the same rock; they had passed
  nine pitch dark years within fifty feet of each other,
  yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not.
  All the first years, their only question had been --
  asked with beseechings and tears that might have
  moved stones, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not
  stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?" But they
  had never got an answer; and at last that question was
  not asked any more -- or any other.
  
  I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He
  was thirty-four years old, and looked sixty. He sat
  upon a squared block of stone, with his head bent
  down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair
  hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was
  muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked
  us slowly over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the
  distress of the torchlight, then dropped his head and
  fell to muttering again and took no further notice of
  us. There were some pathetically suggestive dumb
  witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles were
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  cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone
  on which he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters
  attached; but this apparatus lay idle on the ground,
  and was thick with rust. Chains cease to be needed
  after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner.
  
  I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take
  him to her, and see -- to the bride who was the fairest
  thing in the earth to him, once -- roses, pearls, and dew
  made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, the master-work
  of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice like
  no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace,
  and beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of
  dreams -- as he thought -- and to no other. The sight
  of her would set his stagnant blood leaping; the sight
  of her --
  
  But it was a disappointment. They sat together on
  the ground and looked dimly wondering into each
  other's faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curi-
  osity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped
  their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and
  wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows
  that we know nothing about.
  
  I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The
  queen did not like it much. Not that she felt any
  personal interest in the matter, but she thought it dis-
  respectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However, I
  assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I
  would fix him so that he could.
  
  I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful
  rat-holes, and left only one in captivity. He was a
  lord, and had killed another lord, a sort of kinsman of
  the queen. That other lord had ambushed him to
  assassinate him, but this fellow had got the best of him
  and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that
  I left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the
  only public well in one of his wretched villages. The
  queen was bound to hang him for killing her kinsman,
  but I would not allow it: it was no crime to kill an
  assassin. But I said I was willing to let her hang him
  for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up
  with that, as it was better than nothing.
  
  Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those
  forty-seven men and women were shut up there! In-
  deed, some were there for no distinct offense at all,
  but only to gratify somebody's spite; and not always
  the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest
  prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had
  made. He said he believed that men were about all
  alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes.
  He said he believed that if you were to strip the nation
  naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he
  couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke
  from a hotel clerk. Apparently here was a man whose
  brains had not been reduced to an ineffectual mush by
  idiotic training. I set him loose and sent him to the
  Factory.
  
  Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just
  behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these
  an arrow-slit had been pierced outward to the daylight,
  and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun
  for his comfort. The case of one of these poor fel-
  lows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's
  hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could
  peer out through the arrow-slit and see his own home
  off yonder in the valley; and for twenty-two years he
  had watched it, with heartache and longing, through
  that crack. He could see the lights shine there at
  night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in
  and come out -- his wife and children, some of them,
  no doubt, though he could not make out at that dis-
  tance. In the course of years he noted festivities
  there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered if they were
  weddings or what they might be. And he noted
  funerals; and they wrung his heart. He could make
  out the coffin, but he could not determine its size, and
  so could not tell whether it was wife or child. He
  could see the procession form, with priests and mourn-
  ers, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with
  them. He had left behind him five children and a
  wife; and in nineteen years he had seen five funerals
  issue, and none of them humble enough in pomp to
  denote a servant. So he had lost five of his treasures;
  there must still be one remaining -- one now infinitely,
  unspeakably precious, -- but WHICH one? wife, or child?
  That was the question that tortured him, by night and
  by day, asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest,
  of some sort, and half a ray of light, when you are in
  a dungeon, is a great support to the body and preserver
  of the intellect. This man was in pretty good condi-
  tion yet. By the time he had finished telling me his
  distressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that
  you would have been in yourself, if you have got
  average human curiosity; that is to say, I was as
  burning up as he was to find out which member of
  the family it was that was left. So I took him over
  home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party
  it was, too -- typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy,
  and whole Niagaras of happy tears; and by George!
  we found the aforetime young matron graying toward
  the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies
  all men and women, and some of them married and
  experimenting familywise themselves -- for not a soul
  of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the ingenious
  devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred
  for this prisoner, and she had INVENTED all those funer-
  als herself, to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest
  stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving the
  family-invoice a funeral SHORT, so as to let him wear his
  poor old soul out guessing.
  
  But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan
  le Fay hated him with her whole heart, and she never
  would have softened toward him. And yet his crime
  was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate
  depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she
  had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-
  headed people are above a certain social grade their
  hair is auburn.
  
  Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there
  were five whose names, offenses, and dates of incar-
  ceration were no longer known! One woman and four
  men -- all bent, and wrinkled, and mind-extinguished
  patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten
  these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories
  about them, nothing definite and nothing that they re-
  peated twice in the same way. The succession of
  priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the
  captives and remind them that God had put them
  there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them
  that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppres-
  sion was what He loved to see in parties of a subordi-
  nate rank, had traditions about these poor old human
  ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went but
  little way, for they concerned the length of the incar-
  ceration only, and not the names of the offenses. And
  even by the help of tradition the only thing that could
  be proven was that none of the five had seen daylight
  for thirty-five years: how much longer this privation
  has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queen
  knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that
  they were heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the
  throne, from the former firm. Nothing of their history
  had been transmitted with their persons, and so the
  inheriting owners had considered them of no value,
  and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:
  
  "Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"
  
  The question was a puzzler. She didn't know WHY
  she hadn't, the thing had never come up in her mind.
  So here she was, forecasting the veritable history of
  future prisoners of the Castle d'If, without knowing it.
  It seemed plain to me now, that with her training,
  those inherited prisoners were merely property -- noth-
  ing more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit prop-
  erty, it does not occur to us to throw it away, even
  when we do not value it.
  
  When I brought my procession of human bats up
  into the open world and the glare of the afternoon sun
  -- previously blindfolding them, in charity for eyes
  so long untortured by light --  they were a spectacle
  to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic
  frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of
  Monarchy by the Grace of God and the Established
  Church. I muttered absently:
  
  "I WISH I could photograph them!"
  
  You have seen that kind of people who will never let
  on that they don't know the meaning of a new big
  word. The more ignorant they are, the more pitifully
  certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their
  heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and was
  always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it.
  She hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up
  with sudden comprehension, and she said she would
  do it for me.
  
  I thought to myself: She? why what can she know
  about photography? But it was a poor time to be
  thinking. When I looked around, she was moving on
  the procession with an axe!
  
  Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan
  le Fay. I have seen a good many kinds of women in
  my time, but she laid over them all for variety. And
  how sharply characteristic of her this episode was.
  She had no more idea than a horse of how to photo-
  graph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just
  like her to try to do it with an axe.
  
  
  CHAPTER XIX.
  KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE
  
  SANDY and I were on the road again, next morn-
  ing, bright and early. It was so good to open up
  one's lungs and take in whole luscious barrels-ful of
  the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned, woodland-
  scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind
  for two days and nights in the moral and physical
  stenches of that intolerable old buzzard-roost!
  mean, for me: of course the place was all right and
  agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used to
  high life all her days.
  
  Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now
  for a while, and I was expecting to get the conse-
  quences. I was right; but she had stood by me most
  helpfully in the castle, and had mightily supported and
  reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were
  worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double
  their size; so I thought she had earned a right to work
  her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and I felt not a
  pang when she started it up:
  
  "Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the
  damsel of thirty winter of age southward --"
  
  "Are you going to see if you can work up another
  half-stretch on the trail of the cowboys, Sandy?"
  
  "Even so, fair my lord."
  
  "Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I
  can help it. Begin over again; start fair, and shake
  out all your reefs, and I will load my pipe and give
  good attention."
  
  "Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the
  damsel of thirty winter of age southward. And so
  they came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were
  nighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last
  they came into a courtelage where abode the duke of
  South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And
  on the morn the duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad
  him make him ready. And so Sir Marhaus arose and
  armed him, and there was a mass sung afore him, and
  he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in the
  court of the castle, there they should do the battle.
  So there was the duke already on horseback, clean
  armed, and his six sons by him, and every each had a
  spear in his hand, and so they encountered, whereas
  the duke and his two sons brake their spears upon
  him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched
  none of them. Then came the four sons by couples,
  and two of them brake their spears, and so did the
  other two. And all this while Sir Marhaus touched
  them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke, and
  smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to
  the earth. And so he served his sons. And then Sir
  Marhaus alight down, and bad the duke yield him or
  else he would slay him. And then some of his sons
  recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhaus.
  Then Sir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or
  else I will do the uttermost to you all. When the
  duke saw he might not escape the death, he cried to
  his sons, and charged them to yield them to Sir Mar-
  haus. And they kneeled all down and put the pom-
  mels of their swords to the knight, and so he received
  them. And then they holp up their father, and so by
  their common assent promised unto Sir Marhaus never
  to be foes unto King Arthur, and thereupon at Whit-
  suntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them
  in the king's grace. *
  
  [* Footnote: The story is borrowed, language and
  all, from the Morte d'Arthur. --M.T.]
  
  "Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now
  ye shall wit that that very duke and his six sons are
  they whom but few days past you also did overcome
  and send to Arthur's court!"
  
  "Why, Sandy, you can't mean it!"
  
  "An I speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me."
  
  "Well, well, well, -- now who would ever have
  thought it? One whole duke and six dukelets; why,
  Sandy, it was an elegant haul. Knight-errantry is a
  most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious hard
  work, too, but I begin to see that there IS money in
  it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever
  engage in it as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound
  and legitimate business can be established on a basis of
  speculation. A successful whirl in the knight-errantry
  line -- now what is it when you blow away the non-
  sense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a
  corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything
  else out of it. You're rich -- yes, -- suddenly rich --
  for about a day, maybe a week; then somebody cor-
  ners the market on YOU, and down goes your bucket-
  shop; ain't that so, Sandy?"
  
  "Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth,
  bewraying simple language in such sort that the words
  do seem to come endlong and overthwart --"
  
  "There's no use in beating about the bush and
  trying to get around it that way, Sandy, it's SO, just as
  I say. I KNOW it's so. And, moreover, when you
  come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry is
  WORSE than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's
  left, and so somebody's benefited anyway; but when
  the market breaks, in a knight-errantry whirl, and
  every knight in the pool passes in his checks, what
  have you got for assets? Just a rubbish-pile of bat-
  tered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware.
  Can you call THOSE assets? Give me pork, every time.
  Am I right?"
  
  "Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by
  the manifold matters whereunto the confusions of these
  but late adventured haps and fortunings whereby not
  I alone nor you alone, but every each of us, meseem-
  eth --"
  
  "No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all
  right, as far as it goes, but you don't know business;
  that's where the trouble is. It unfits you to argue
  about business, and you're wrong to be always trying.
  However, that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and
  will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's
  court. And speaking of the cowboys, what a curious
  country this is for women and men that never get old.
  Now there's Morgan le Fay, as fresh and young as a
  Vassar pullet, to all appearances, and here is this old
  duke of the South Marches still slashing away with
  sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a
  family as he has raised. As I understand it, Sir
  Gawaine killed seven of his sons, and still he had six
  left for Sir Marhaus and me to take into camp. And
  then there was that damsel of sixty winter of age still
  excursioning around in her frosty bloom -- How old
  are you, Sandy?"
  
  It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her.
  The mill had shut down for repairs, or something.
  
  
  CHAPTER XX.
  THE OGRE'S CASTLE
  
  BETWEEN six and nine we made ten miles, which
  was plenty for a horse carrying triple -- man,
  woman, and armor; then we stopped for a long noon-
  ing under some trees by a limpid brook.
  
  Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he
  drew near he made dolorous moan, and by the words
  of it I perceived that he was cursing and swearing; yet
  nevertheless was I glad of his coming, for that I saw
  he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters all of
  shining gold was writ:
  
    "USE PETERSON S PROPHYLACTIC TOOTH-BRUSH--
    ALL THE GO."
  
  I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I
  knew him for knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de
  la Montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinc-
  tion was that he had come within an ace of sending Sir
  Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was
  never long in a stranger's presence without finding
  some pretext or other to let out that great fact. But
  there was another fact of nearly the same size, which
  he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never
  withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he
  didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and
  sent down over horse-tail himself. This innocent vast
  lubber did not see any particular difference between
  the two facts. I liked him, for he was earnest in his
  work, and very valuable. And he was so fine to look
  at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand
  leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield
  with its quaint device of a gauntleted hand clutch-
  ing a prophylactic tooth-brush, with motto: "Try
  Noyoudont." This was a tooth-wash that I was
  introducing.
  
  He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it;
  but he would not alight. He said he was after the
  stove-polish man; and with this he broke out cursing
  and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarder referred to
  was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of
  considerable celebrity on account of his having tried
  conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul
  that Sir Gaheris himself -- although not successfully.
  He was of a light and laughing disposition, and to him
  nothing in this world was serious. It was for this
  reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polish
  sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there
  could be nothing serious about stove-polish. All that
  the agent needed to do was to deftly and by degrees
  prepare the public for the great change, and have them
  established in predilections toward neatness against the
  time when the stove should appear upon the stage.
  
  Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with
  cursings. He said he had cursed his soul to rags;
  and yet he would not get down from his horse, neither
  would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until
  he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this ac-
  count. It appeared, by what I could piece together
  of the unprofane fragments of his statement, that he
  had chanced upon Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning,
  and been told that if he would make a short cut across
  the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he
  could head off a company of travelers who would be
  rare customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With
  characteristic zeal Sir Madok had plunged away at
  once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful
  crosslot riding had overhauled his game. And behold,
  it was the five patriarchs that had been released from
  the dungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures,
  it was all of twenty years since any one of them had
  known what it was to be equipped with any remaining
  snag or remnant of a tooth.
  
  "Blank-blank-blank him," said Sir Madok, "an I
  do not stove-polish him an I may find him, leave it to
  me; for never no knight that hight Ossaise or aught
  else may do me this disservice and bide on live, an I
  may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a
  great oath this day."
  
  And with these words and others, he lightly took his
  spear and gat him thence. In the middle of the after-
  noon we came upon one of those very patriarchs our-
  selves, in the edge of a poor village. He was basking
  in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not
  seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him
  were also descendants of his own body whom he had
  never seen at all till now; but to him these were all
  strangers, his memory was gone, his mind was stag-
  nant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast
  half a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but
  here were his old wife and some old comrades to
  testify to it. They could remember him as he was in
  the freshness and strength of his young manhood,
  when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's
  hands and went away into that long oblivion. The
  people at the castle could not tell within half a genera-
  tion the length of time the man had been shut up there
  for his unrecorded and forgotten offense; but this old
  wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there
  among her married sons and daughters trying to realize
  a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a
  formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was
  suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set
  before her face.
  
  It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that ac-
  count that I have made room for it here, but on
  account of a thing which seemed to me still more
  curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought
  from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage
  against these oppressors. They had been heritors and
  subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing
  could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here
  was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which
  this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire
  being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of
  patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance
  of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very
  imagination was dead. When you can say that of a
  man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no
  lower deep for him.
  
  I rather wished I had gone some other road. This
  was not the sort of experience for a statesman to en-
  counter who was planning out a peaceful revolution in
  his mind. For it could not help bringing up the un-
  get-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philoso-
  phizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in
  the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-
  goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law
  that all revolutions that will succeed must BEGIN in
  blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history
  teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk
  needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine,
  and I was the wrong man for them.
  
  Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show
  signs of excitement and feverish expectancy. She
  said we were approaching the ogre's castle. I was
  surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object of
  our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this
  sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and
  startling thing for a moment, and roused up in me a
  smart interest. Sandy's excitement increased every
  moment; and so did mine, for that sort of thing is
  catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't
  reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and
  thumps about things which the intellect scorns. Pres-
  ently, when Sandy slid from the horse, motioned me
  to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head
  bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that
  bordered a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and
  quicker. And they kept it up while she was gaining
  her ambush and getting her glimpse over the declivity;
  and also while I was creeping to her side on my knees.
  Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her
  finger, and said in a panting whisper:
  
  "The castle! The castle! Lo, where it looms!"
  
  What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I
  said:
  
  "Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with
  a wattled fence around it."
  
  She looked surprised and distressed. The animation
  faded out of her face; and during many moments she
  was lost in thought and silent. Then:
  
  "It was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a
  musing fashion, as if to herself. "And how strange
  is this marvel, and how awful -- that to the one per-
  ception it is enchanted and dight in a base and shame-
  ful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not
  enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm
  and stately still, girt with its moat and waving its ban-
  ners in the blue air from its towers. And God shield
  us, how it pricks the heart to see again these gracious
  captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces!
  We have tarried along, and are to blame."
  
  I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to ME, not
  to her. It would be wasted time to try to argue her
  out of her delusion, it couldn't be done; I must just
  humor it. So I said:
  
  "This is a common case -- the enchanting of a thing
  to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another.
  You have heard of it before, Sandy, though you
  haven't happened to experience it. But no harm is
  done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these
  ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it
  would be necessary to break the enchantment, and that
  might be impossible if one failed to find out the par-
  ticular process of the enchantment. And hazardous,
  too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the
  true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into
  dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so
  on, and end by reducing your materials to nothing
  finally, or to an odorless gas which you can't follow --
  which, of course, amounts to the same thing. But
  here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under
  the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to
  dissolve it. These ladies remain ladies to you, and to
  themselves, and to everybody else; and at the same
  time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for
  when I know that an ostensible hog is a lady, that is
  enough for me, I know how to treat her."
  
  "Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an
  angel. And I know that thou wilt deliver them, for
  that thou art minded to great deeds and art as strong a
  knight of your hands and as brave to will and to do,
  as any that is on live."
  
  "I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are
  those three yonder that to my disordered eyes are
  starveling swine-herds --"
  
  "The ogres, Are THEY changed also? It is most
  wonderful. Now am I fearful; for how canst thou
  strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of
  stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily, fair sir;
  this is a mightier emprise than I wend."
  
  "You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how
  MUCH of an ogre is invisible; then I know how to
  locate his vitals. Don't you be afraid, I will make
  short work of these bunco-steerers. Stay where you
  are."
  
  I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky
  and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck
  up a trade with the swine-herds. I won their gratitude
  by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen
  pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. I
  was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the
  manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have
  been along next day and swept off pretty much all the
  stock, leaving the swine-herds very short of hogs and
  Sandy out of princesses. But now the tax people
  could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left
  besides. One of the men had ten children; and he
  said that last year when a priest came and of his ten
  pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out
  upon him, and offered him a child and said:
  
  "Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave
  me my child, yet rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?"
  
  How curious. The same thing had happened in the
  Wales of my day, under this same old Established
  Church, which was supposed by many to have changed
  its nature when it changed its disguise.
  
  I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty
  gate and beckoned Sandy to come -- which she did;
  and not leisurely, but with the rush of a prairie fire.
  And when I saw her fling herself upon those hogs,
  with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain
  them to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them,
  and call them reverently by grand princely names, I
  was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race.
  
  We had to drive those hogs home -- ten miles; and
  no ladies were ever more fickle-minded or contrary.
  They would stay in no road, no path; they broke out
  through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all
  directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest
  places they could find. And they must not be struck,
  or roughly accosted; Sandy could not bear to see
  them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. The
  troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called my
  Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoy-
  ing and difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor.
  There was one small countess, with an iron ring in her
  snout and hardly any hair on her back, that was the
  devil for perversity. She gave me a race of an hour,
  over all sorts of country, and then we were right where
  we had started from, having made not a rod of real
  progress. I seized her at last by the tail, and brought
  her along squealing. When I overtook Sandy she was
  horrified, and said it was in the last degree indelicate
  to drag a countess by her train.
  
  We got the hogs home just at dark -- most of them.
  The princess Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and
  two of her ladies in waiting: namely, Miss Angela
  Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, the
  former of these two being a young black sow with a
  white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one
  with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank
  on the starboard side -- a couple of the tryingest blis-
  ters to drive that I ever saw. Also among the missing
  were several mere baronesses -- and I wanted them to
  stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be
  found; so servants were sent out with torches to scour
  the woods and hills to that end.
  
  Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house,
  and, great guns! -- well, I never saw anything like it.
  Nor ever heard anything like it. And never smelt
  anything like it. It was like an insurrection in a gaso-
  meter.
  
  
  CHAPTER XXI.
  THE PILGRIMS
  
  WHEN I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably
  tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of
  the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious!
  but that was as far as I could get -- sleep was out of
  the question for the present. The ripping and tearing
  and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls
  and corridors was pandemonium come again, and kept
  me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts were
  busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves
  with Sandy's curious delusion. Here she was, as sane
  a person as the kingdom could produce; and yet,
  from my point of view she was acting like a crazy
  woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!
  of education! It can bring a body up to believe any-
  thing. I had to put myself in Sandy's place to realize
  that she was not a lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine,
  to demonstrate how easy it is to seem a lunatic to a
  person who has not been taught as you have been
  taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon,
  uninfluenced by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an
  hour; had seen a man, unequipped with magic powers,
  get into a basket and soar out of sight among the
  clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's
  help, to the conversation of a person who was several
  hundred miles away, Sandy would not merely have
  supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she
  knew it. Everybody around her believed in enchant-
  ments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle
  could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs,
  would have been the same as my doubting among Con-
  necticut people the actuality of the telephone and its
  wonders, -- and in both cases would be absolute proof
  of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy
  was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be
  sane -- to Sandy -- I must keep my superstitions about
  unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons,
  and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed that the
  world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to sup-
  port it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of
  water that occupied all space above; but as I was the
  only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious
  and criminal opinions, I recognized that it would be
  good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if I
  did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by
  everybody as a madman.
  
  The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the
  dining-room and gave them their breakfast, waiting
  upon them personally and manifesting in every way
  the deep reverence which the natives of her island,
  ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its
  outward casket and the mental and moral contents be
  what they may. I could have eaten with the hogs if I
  had had birth approaching my lofty official rank; but
  I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and
  made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at
  the second table. The family were not at home. I
  said:
  
  "How many are in the family, Sandy, and where
  do they keep themselves?"
  
  "Family?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Which family, good my lord?"
  
  "Why, this family; your own family."
  
  "Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no
  family."
  
  "No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?"
  
  "Now how indeed might that be? I have no home."
  
  "Well, then, whose house is this?"
  
  "Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew
  myself."
  
  "Come -- you don't even know these people?
  Then who invited us here?"
  
  "None invited us. We but came; that is all."
  
  "Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary per-
  formance. The effrontery of it is beyond admiration.
  We blandly march into a man's house, and cram it
  full of the only really valuable nobility the sun has yet
  discovered in the earth, and then it turns out that we
  don't even know the man's name. How did you ever
  venture to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed,
  of course, it was your home. What will the man say?"
  
  "What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but
  give thanks?"
  
  "Thanks for what?"
  
  Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:
  
  "Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with
  strange words. Do ye dream that one of his estate is
  like to have the honor twice in his life to entertain
  company such as we have brought to grace his house
  withal?"
  
  "Well, no -- when you come to that. No, it's an
  even bet that this is the first time he has had a treat
  like this."
  
  "Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same
  by grateful speech and due humility; he were a dog,
  else, and the heir and ancestor of dogs."
  
  To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It
  might become more so. It might be a good idea to
  muster the hogs and move on. So I said:
  
  "The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the
  nobility together and be moving."
  
  "Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"
  
  "We want to take them to their home, don't we?"
  
  "La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of
  the earth! Each must hie to her own home; wend
  you we might do all these journeys in one so brief life
  as He hath appointed that created life, and thereto
  death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin done
  through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought
  upon and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great
  enemy of man, that serpent hight Satan, aforetime
  consecrated and set apart unto that evil work by over-
  mastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through
  fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst
  so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining
  multitudes its brethren-born in glade and shade of that
  fair heaven wherein all such as native be to that rich
  estate and --"
  
  "Great Scott!"
  
  "My lord?"
  
  "Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort
  of thing. Don't you see, we could distribute these
  people around the earth in less time than it is going to
  take you to explain that we can't. We mustn't talk
  now, we must act. You want to be careful; you
  mustn't let your mill get the start of you that way, at
  a time like this. To business now -- and sharp's the
  word. Who is to take the aristocracy home?"
  
  "Even their friends. These will come for them
  from the far parts of the earth."
  
  This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpected-
  ness; and the relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner.
  She would remain to deliver the goods, of course.
  
  "Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely
  and successfully ended, I will go home and report;
  and if ever another one --"
  
  "I also am ready; I will go with thee."
  
  This was recalling the pardon.
  
  "How? You will go with me? Why should you?"
  
  "Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That
  were dishonor. I may not part from thee until in
  knightly encounter in the field some overmatching
  champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were
  to blame an I thought that that might ever hap."
  
  "Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself.
  "I may as well make the best of it." So then I spoke
  up and said:
  
  "All right; let us make a start."
  
  While she was gone to cry her farewells over the
  pork, I gave that whole peerage away to the servants.
  And I asked them to take a duster and dust around a
  little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and prom-
  enaded; but they considered that that would be hardly
  worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave
  departure from custom, and therefore likely to make
  talk. A departure from custom -- that settled it; it
  was a nation capable of committing any crime but
  that. The servants said they would follow the fashion,
  a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observ-
  ance; they would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms
  and halls, and then the evidence of the aristocratic
  visitation would be no longer visible. It was a kind of
  satire on Nature: it was the scientific method, the
  geologic method; it deposited the history of the family
  in a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig
  through it and tell by the remains of each period what
  changes of diet the family had introduced successively
  for a hundred years.
  
  The first thing we struck that day was a procession
  of pilgrims. It was not going our way, but we joined
  it, nevertheless; for it was hourly being borne in
  upon me now, that if I would govern this country
  wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life,
  and not at second hand, but by personal observation
  and scrutiny.
  
  This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in
  this: that it had in it a sample of about all the upper
  occupations and professions the country could show,
  and a corresponding variety of costume. There were
  young men and old men, young women and old
  women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon
  mules and horses, and there was not a side-saddle in
  the party; for this specialty was to remain unknown in
  England for nine hundred years yet.
  
  It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious,
  happy, merry and full of unconscious coarsenesses and
  innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the
  merry tale went the continual round and caused no
  more embarrassment than it would have caused in the
  best English society twelve centuries later. Practical
  jokes worthy of the English wits of the first quarter of
  the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and
  there and yonder along the line, and compelled the
  delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright
  remark was made at one end of the procession and
  started on its travels toward the other, you could note
  its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of
  laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;
  and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.
  
  Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage,
  and she posted me. She said:
  
  "They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be
  blessed of the godly hermits and drink of the miracu-
  lous waters and be cleased from sin."
  
  "Where is this watering place?"
  
  "It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders
  of the land that hight the Cuckoo Kingdom."
  
  "Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?"
  
  "Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of
  old time there lived there an abbot and his monks.
  Belike were none in the world more holy than these;
  for they gave themselves to study of pious books, and
  spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and
  ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard,
  and prayed much, and washed never; also they wore
  the same garment until it fell from their bodies through
  age and decay. Right so came they to be known of
  all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and
  visited by rich and poor, and reverenced."
  
  "Proceed."
  
  "But always there was lack of water there. Whereas,
  upon a time, the holy abbot prayed, and for answer
  a great stream of clear water burst forth by miracle
  in a desert place. Now were the fickle monks tempted
  of the Fiend, and they wrought with their abbot un-
  ceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would
  construct a bath; and when he was become aweary and
  might not resist more, he said have ye your will, then,
  and granted that they asked. Now mark thou what
  'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which He loveth,
  and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense.
  These monks did enter into the bath and come thence
  washed as white as snow; and lo, in that moment His
  sign appeared, in miraculous rebuke! for His insulted
  waters ceased to flow, and utterly vanished away."
  
  "They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that
  kind of crime is regarded in this country."
  
  "Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had
  been of perfect life for long, and differing in naught
  from the angels. Prayers, tears, torturings of the
  flesh, all was vain to beguile that water to flow again.
  Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive
  candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them;
  and all in the land did marvel."
  
  "How odd to find that even this industry has its
  financial panics, and at times sees its assignats and
  greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a
  standstill. Go on, Sandy."
  
  "And so upon a time, after year and day, the good
  abbot made humble surrender and destroyed the bath.
  And behold, His anger was in that moment appeased,
  and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even
  unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that
  generous measure."
  
  "Then I take it nobody has washed since."
  
  "He that would essay it could have his halter free;
  yes, and swiftly would he need it, too."
  
  "The community has prospered since?"
  
  "Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle
  went abroad into all lands. From every land came
  monks to join; they came even as the fishes come, in
  shoals; and the monastery added building to building,
  and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms
  and took them in. And nuns came, also; and more
  again, and yet more; and built over against the mon-
  astery on the yon side of the vale, and added building
  to building, until mighty was that nunnery. And
  these were friendly unto those, and they joined their
  loving labors together, and together they built a fair
  great foundling asylum midway of the valley between."
  
  "You spoke of some hermits, Sandy."
  
  "These have gathered there from the ends of the
  earth. A hermit thriveth best where there be multi-
  tudes of pilgrims. Ye shall not find no hermit of no
  sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit of a kind
  he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far
  strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and
  caves and swamps that line that Valley of Holiness,
  and whatsoever be his breed, it skills not, he shall find
  a sample of it there."
  
  I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat
  good-humored face, purposing to make myself agree-
  able and pick up some further crumbs of fact; but I
  had hardly more than scraped acquaintance with him
  when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in
  the immemorial way, to that same old anecdote -- the
  one Sir Dinadan told me, what time I got into trouble
  with Sir Sagramor and was challenged of him on ac-
  count of it. I excused myself and dropped to the rear
  of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence
  from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day
  of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle
  and monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the
  change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how
  many have wended thither who know that anecdote.
  
  Early in the afternoon we overtook another proces-
  sion of pilgrims; but in this one was no merriment, no
  jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy
  giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both were
  here, both age and youth; gray old men and women,
  strong men and women of middle age, young hus-
  bands, young wives, little boys and girls, and three
  babies at the breast. Even the children were smileless;
  there was not a face among all these half a hundred
  people but was cast down, and bore that set expression
  of hopelessness which is bred of long and hard trials
  and old acquaintance with despair. They were slaves.
  Chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled
  hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists; and all
  except the children were also linked together in a file
  six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar
  to collar all down the line. They were on foot, and
  had tramped three hundred miles in eighteen days,
  upon the cheapest odds and ends of food, and stingy
  rations of that. They had slept in these chains every
  night, bundled together like swine. They had upon
  their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be
  said to be clothed. Their irons had chafed the skin
  from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated
  and wormy. Their naked feet were torn, and none
  walked without a limp. Originally there had been a
  hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been
  sold on the trip. The trader in charge of them rode
  a horse and carried a whip with a short handle and a
  long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the
  end. With this whip he cut the shoulders of any that
  tottered from weariness and pain, and straightened
  them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed his
  desire without that. None of these poor creatures
  looked up as we rode along by; they showed no con-
  sciousness of our presence. And they made no sound
  but one; that was the dull and awful clank of their
  chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three
  burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved
  in a cloud of its own making.
  
  All these faces were gray with a coating of dust.
  One has seen the like of this coating upon furniture in
  unoccupied houses, and has written his idle thought in
  it with his finger. I was reminded of this when I
  noticed the faces of some of those women, young
  mothers carrying babes that were near to death and
  freedom, how a something in their hearts was written
  in the dust upon their faces, plain to see, and lord, how
  plain to read! for it was the track of tears. One of
  these young mothers was but a girl, and it hurt me to
  the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it was
  come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast
  that ought not to know trouble yet, but only the glad-
  ness of the morning of life; and no doubt --
  
  She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down
  came the lash and flicked a flake of skin from her
  naked shoulder. It stung me as if I had been hit in-
  stead. The master halted the file and jumped from his
  horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, and said
  she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and
  as this was the last chance he should have, he would
  settle the account now. She dropped on her knees
  and put up her hands and began to beg, and cry, and
  implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave no
  attention. He snatched the child from her, and then
  made the men-slaves who were chained before and
  behind her throw her on the ground and hold her there
  and expose her body; and then he laid on with his
  lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she shriek-
  ing and struggling the while piteously. One of the
  men who was holding her turned away his face, and
  for this humanity he was reviled and flogged.
  
  All our pilgrims looked on and commented -- on the
  expert way in which the whip was handled. They
  were too much hardened by lifelong everyday familiar-
  ity with slavery to notice that there was anything else
  in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what
  slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what one may
  call the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pil-
  grims were kind-hearted people, and they would not
  have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.
  
  I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves
  free, but that would not do. I must not interfere too
  much and get myself a name for riding over the
  country's laws and the citizen's rights roughshod. If
  I lived and prospered I would be the death of slavery,
  that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so
  that when I became its executioner it should be by
  command of the nation.
  
  Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now
  arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a
  few miles back, deliverable here where her irons could
  be taken off. They were removed; then there was a
  squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to
  which should pay the blacksmith. The moment the
  girl was delivered from her irons, she flung herself, all
  tears and frantic sobbings, into the arms of the slave
  who had turned away his face when she was whipped.
  He strained her to his breast, and smothered her
  face and the child's with kisses, and washed them
  with the rain of his tears. I suspected. I inquired.
  Yes, I was right; it was husband and wife. They had
  to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged
  away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like
  one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from
  sight; and even after that, we could still make out the
  fading plaint of those receding shrieks. And the hus-
  band and father, with his wife and child gone, never to
  be seen by him again in life? -- well, the look of him
  one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I
  knew I should never get his picture out of my mind
  again, and there it is to this day, to wring my heart-
  strings whenever I think of it.
  
  We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall,
  and when I rose next morning and looked abroad, I
  was ware where a knight came riding in the golden
  glory of the new day, and recognized him for knight
  of mine -- Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the
  gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying
  specialty was plug hats. He was clothed all in steel,
  in the beautifulest armor of the time -- up to where his
  helmet ought to have been; but he hadn't any helmet,
  he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous a
  spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of
  my surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood
  by making it grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's sad-
  dle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every
  time he overcame a wandering knight he swore him
  into my service and fitted him with a plug and made
  him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir
  Ozana and get his news.
  
  "How is trade?" I asked.
  
  "Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet
  were they sixteen whenas I got me from Camelot."
  
  "Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana.
  Where have you been foraging of late?"
  
  "I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness,
  please you sir."
  
  "I am pointed for that place myself. Is there
  anything stirring in the monkery, more than com-
  mon?"
  
  "By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him
  good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy
  crown; so get ye lightly to the stable and do even as I
  bid......  Sir, it is parlous news I bring, and -- be
  these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, good
  folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith it
  concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye
  will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life
  being hostage for my word, and my word and message
  being these, namely: That a hap has happened where-
  of the like has not been seen no more but once this
  two hundred years, which was the first and last time
  that that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that
  form by commandment of the Most High whereto by
  reasons just and causes thereunto contributing, wherein
  the matter --"
  
  "The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This
  shout burst from twenty pilgrim mouths at once.
  
  "Ye say well, good people. I was verging to it,
  even when ye spake. "
  
  "Has somebody been washing again?"
  
  "Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is
  thought to be some other sin, but none wit what."
  
  "How are they feeling about the calamity?"
  
  "None may describe it in words. The fount is
  these nine days dry. The prayers that did begin then,
  and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the
  holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night
  nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the
  foundlings be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers
  writ upon parchment, sith that no strength is left in
  man to lift up voice. And at last they sent for thee,
  Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; and if you
  could not come, then was the messenger to fetch
  Merlin, and he is there these three days now, and
  saith he will fetch that water though he burst the globe
  and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish it; and right
  bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his
  hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff
  of moisture hath he started yet, even so much as might
  qualify as mist upon a copper mirror an ye count not
  the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt sun and sun
  over the dire labors of his task; and if ye --"
  
  Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I
  showed to Sir Ozana these words which I had written
  on the inside of his hat: Chemical Department, Labor-
  atory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two of first
  size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the
  proper complementary details -- and two of my trained
  assistants." And I said:
  
  "Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly,
  brave knight, and show the writing to Clarence, and
  tell him to have these required matters in the Valley of
  Holiness with all possible dispatch."
  
  "I will well, Sir Boss," and he was off.
  
  
  CHAPTER XXII.
  THE HOLY FOUNTAIN
  
  THE pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they
  would have acted differently. They had come a
  long and difficult journey, and now when the journey
  was nearly finished, and they learned that the main
  thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they
  didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would
  probably have done -- turn back and get at something
  profitable -- no, anxious as they had before been to
  see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as
  forty times as anxious now to see the place where it
  had used to be. There is no accounting for human
  beings.
  
  We made good time; and  a couple of hours before
  sunset we stood upon the high confines of the Valley
  of Holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to end
  and noted its features. That is, its large features.
  These were the three masses of buildings. They were
  distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy con-
  structions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert
  -- and was. Such a scene is always mournful, it is so
  impressively still, and looks so steeped in death. But
  there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness
  only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint far
  sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the
  passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly
  knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our
  spirits.
  
  We reached the monastery before dark, and there
  the males were given lodging, but the women were sent
  over to the nunnery. The bells were close at hand
  now, and their solemn booming smote upon the ear
  like a message of doom. A superstitious despair pos-
  sessed the heart of every monk and published itself
  in his ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed,
  soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted
  about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a
  troubled dream, and as uncanny.
  
  The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even
  to tears; but he did the shedding himself. He said:
  
  "Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An
  we bring not the water back again, and soon, we are
  ruined, and the good work of two hundred years must
  end. And see thou do it with enchantments that be
  holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her
  cause be done by devil's magic."
  
  "When I work, Father, be sure there will be no
  devil's work connected with it. I shall use no arts
  that come of the devil, and no elements not created
  by the hand of God. But is Merlin working strictly
  on pious lines?"
  
  "Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would,
  and took oath to make his promise good."
  
  "Well, in that case, let him proceed."
  
  "But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?"
  
  "It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither
  would it be professional courtesy. Two of a trade
  must not underbid each other. We might as well cut
  rates and be done with it; it would arrive at that in
  the end. Merlin has the contract; no other magician
  can touch it till he throws it up."
  
  "But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emer-
  gency and the act is thereby justified. And if it were
  not so, who will give law to the Church? The Church
  giveth law to all; and what she wills to do, that she
  may do, hurt whom it may. I will take it from him;
  you shall begin upon the moment."
  
  "It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say,
  where power is supreme, one can do as one likes and
  suffer no injury; but we poor magicians are not so
  situated. Merlin is a very good magician in a small
  way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. He
  is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would
  not be etiquette for me to take his job until he himself
  abandons it."
  
  The abbot's face lighted.
  
  "Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade
  him to abandon it."
  
  "No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say.
  If he were persuaded against his will, he would load
  that well with a malicious enchantment which would
  balk me until I found out its secret. It might take a
  month. I could set up a little enchantment of mine
  which I call the telephone, and he could not find out
  its secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he
  might block me for a month. Would you like to risk a
  month in a dry time like this?"
  
  "A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to
  shudder. Have it thy way, my son. But my heart is
  heavy with this disappointment. Leave me, and let
  me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as
  I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus
  the thing that is called rest, the prone body making
  outward sign of repose where inwardly is none."
  
  Of course, it would have been best, all round, for
  Merlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half a
  day, since he would never be able to start that water,
  for he was a true magician of the time; which is to
  say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his repu-
  tation, always had the luck to be performed when
  nobody but Merlin was present; he couldn't start this
  well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as
  bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a
  spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be
  some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial
  moment and spoil everything. But I did not want
  Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take
  hold of it effectively myself; and I could not do that
  until I got my things from Camelot, and that would
  take two or three days.
  
  My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered
  them up a good deal; insomuch that they ate a square
  meal that night for the first time in ten days. As
  soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced
  with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the
  mead began to go round they rose faster. By the
  time everybody was half-seas over, the holy com-
  munity was in good shape to make a night of it; so
  we stayed by the board and put it through on that
  line. Matters got to be very jolly. Good old ques-
  tionable stories were told that made the tears run down
  and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round bellies
  shake with laughter; and questionable songs were
  bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the
  boom of the tolling bells.
  
  At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the
  success of it. Not right off, of course, for the native
  of those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the
  early applications of a humorous thing; but the fifth
  time I told it, they began to crack in places; the eight
  time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth
  repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth
  they disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them
  up. This language is figurative. Those islanders --
  well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return
  for your investment of effort, but in the end they make
  the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.
  
  I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was
  there, enchanting away like a beaver, but not raising
  the moisture. He was not in a pleasant humor; and
  every time I hinted that perhaps this contract was a
  shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue
  and cursed like a bishop -- French bishop of the
  Regency days, I mean.
  
  Matters were about as I expected to find them.
  The "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dug
  in the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary
  way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie
  that had created its reputation was not miraculous; I
  could have told it myself, with one hand tied behind
  me. The well was in a dark chamber which stood in
  the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose walls were
  hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would
  have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically
  commemorative of curative miracles which had been
  achieved by the waters when nobody was looking.
  That is, nobody but angels; they are always on deck
  when there is a miracle to the fore -- so as to get put
  in the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as
  a fire company; look at the old masters.
  
  The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the
  water was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks,
  and poured into troughs which delivered it into stone
  reservoirs outside in the chapel -- when there was
  water to draw, I mean -- and none but monks could
  enter the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had tempo-
  rary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professional
  brother and subordinate. But he hadn't entered it
  himself. He did everything by incantations; he never
  worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and
  used his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could
  have cured the well by natural means, and then turned
  it into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he was
  an old numskull, a magician who believed in his own
  magic; and no magician can thrive who is handicapped
  with a superstition like that.
  
  I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that
  some of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen and
  exposed fissures that allowed the water to escape. I
  measured the chain -- 98 feet. Then I called in
  couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and
  made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain
  was all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion;
  a considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing a
  good big fissure.
  
  I almost regretted that my theory about the well's
  trouble was correct, because I had another one that
  had a showy point or two about it for a miracle. I
  remembered that in America, many centuries later,
  when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to blast it
  out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this
  well dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish
  these people most nobly by having a person of no
  especial value drop a dynamite bomb into it. It was
  my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was plain
  that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot
  have everything the way he would like it. A man has
  no business to be depressed by a disappointment, any-
  way; he ought to make up his mind to get even.
  That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no
  hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet.
  And it did, too.
  
  When I was above ground again, I turned out the
  monks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hun-
  dred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet
  of water in it I I called in a monk and asked:
  
  "How deep is the well?"
  
  "That, sir, I wit not, having never been told."
  
  "How does the water usually stand in it?"
  
  "Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testi-
  mony goeth, brought down to us through our prede-
  cessors."
  
  It was true -- as to recent times at least -- for there
  was witness to it, and better witness than a monk;
  only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed
  wear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty.
  What had happened when the well gave out that other
  time? Without doubt some practical person had come
  along and mended the leak, and then had come up and
  told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if
  the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow
  again. The leak had befallen again now, and these
  children would have prayed, and processioned, and
  tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried
  up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would
  ever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well or
  go down in it and find out what was really the matter.
  Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to
  get away from in the world. It transmits itself like
  physical form and feature; and for a man, in those
  days, to have had an idea that his ancestors hadn't
  had, would have brought him under suspicion of being
  illegitimate. I said to the monk:
  
  "It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry
  well, but we will try, if my brother Merlin fails.
  Brother Merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the
  parlor-magic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, is
  not likely to succeed. But that should be nothing to
  his discredit; the man that can do THIS kind of miracle
  knows enough to keep hotel."
  
  "Hotel? I mind not to have heard --"
  
  "Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man
  that can do this miracle can keep hostel. I can do this
  miracle; I shall do this miracle; yet I do not try to
  conceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occult
  powers to the last strain."
  
  "None knoweth that truth better than the brother-
  hood, indeed; for it is of record that aforetime it was
  parlous difficult and took a year. Natheless, God send
  you good success, and to that end will we pray."
  
  As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the
  notion around that the thing was difficult. Many a
  small thing has been made large by the right kind of
  advertising. That monk was filled up with the diffi-
  culty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.
  In two days the solicitude would be booming.
  
  On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had
  been sampling the hermits. I said:
  
  "I would like to do that myself. This is Wednes-
  day. Is there a matinee?"
  
  "A which, please you, sir?"
  
  "Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?"
  
  "Who?"
  
  "The hermits, of course."
  
  "Keep open?"
  
  "Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do
  they knock off at noon?"
  
  "Knock off?"
  
  "Knock off? -- yes, knock off. What is the matter
  with knock off? I never saw such a dunderhead;
  can't you understand anything at all? In plain terms,
  do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the
  fires --"
  
  "Shut up shop, draw --"
  
  "There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired.
  You can't seem to understand the simplest thing."
  
  I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me
  dole and sorrow that I fail, albeit sith I am but a
  simple damsel and taught of none, being from the
  cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning that
  do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of that
  most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend
  state to the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by
  bar and lack of that great consecration seeth in his
  own unlearned estate but a symbol of that other sort
  of lack and loss which men do publish to the pitying
  eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of
  grief do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when
  such shall in the darkness of his mind encounter these
  golden phrases of high mystery, these shut-up-shops,
  and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is but by the
  grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind
  that can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great
  and mellow-sounding miracles of speech, and if there
  do ensue confusion in that humbler mind, and failure
  to divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so be
  this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,
  wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear
  homage and may not lightly be misprized, nor had
  been, an ye had noted this complexion of mood
  and mind and understood that that I would I could
  not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor
  might NOR could, nor might-not nor could-not, might
  be by advantage turned to the desired WOULD, and so I
  pray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of your
  kindness and your charity forgive it, good my master
  and most dear lord."
  
  I couldn't make it all out -- that is, the details -- but
  I got the general idea; and enough of it, too, to be
  ashamed. It was not fair to spring those nineteenth
  century technicalities upon the untutored infant of the
  sixth and then rail at her because she couldn't get
  their drift; and when she was making the honest best
  drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she
  couldn't fetch the home plate; and so I apologized.
  Then we meandered pleasantly away toward the hermit
  holes in sociable converse together, and better friends
  than ever.
  
  I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and
  shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever
  she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly
  started on one of those horizonless transcontinental
  sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was
  standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the
  German Language. I was so impressed with this, that
  sometimes when she began to empty one of these sen-
  tences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of
  reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had
  been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had ex-
  actly the German way; whatever was in her mind to
  be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or
  a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it
  into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary
  German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are
  going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of
  his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
  
  We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon.
  It was a most strange menagerie. The chief emulation
  among them seemed to be, to see which could manage
  to be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin.
  Their manner and attitudes were the last expression of
  complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's
  pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite
  him and blister him unmolested; it was another's to
  lean against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to the
  admiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it was
  another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;
  it was another's to drag about with him, year in and
  year out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to
  never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the
  thorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrims
  around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of
  age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to
  heel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence from
  water. Groups of gazing pilgrims stood around all
  and every of these strange objects, lost in reverent
  wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which
  these pious austerities had won for them from an
  exacting heaven.
  
  By and by we went to see one of the supremely
  great ones. He was a mighty celebrity; his fame had
  penetrated all Christendom; the noble and the re-
  nowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the
  globe to pay him reverence. His stand was in the
  center of the widest part of the valley; and it took all
  that space to hold his crowds.
  
  His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad
  platform on the top of it. He was now doing what he
  had been doing every day for twenty years up there --
  bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his
  feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a
  stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 min-
  utes and 46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this
  power going to waste. It was one of the most useful
  motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so I made
  a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day
  to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a
  sewing machine with it. I afterward carried out that
  scheme, and got five years' good service out of him;
  in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thou-
  sand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. I
  worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,
  the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the
  power. These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere
  trifle for the materials -- I furnished those myself, it
  would not have been right to make him do that -- and
  they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a half
  apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded
  race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a
  perfect protection against sin, and advertised as such
  by my knights everywhere, with the paint-pot and
  stencil-plate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or a
  bowlder or a dead wall in England but you could read
  on it at a mile distance:
  
    "Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the
    Nobility. Patent applied for."
  
  There was more money in the business than one
  knew what to do with. As it extended, I brought out
  a line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing
  for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the fore-
  hatch and the running-gear clewed up with a feather-
  stitch to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay
  and triced up with a half-turn in the standing rigging
  forward of the weather-gaskets. Yes, it was a daisy.
  
  But about that time I noticed that the motive power
  had taken to standing on one leg, and I found that
  there was something the matter with the other one; so
  I stocked the business and unloaded, taking Sir Bors
  de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his
  friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the
  good saint got him to his rest. But he had earned it.
  I can say that for him.
  
  When I saw him that first time -- however, his per-
  sonal condition will not quite bear description here.
  You can read it in the Lives of the Saints. *
  
  [* All the details concerning the hermits, in this
  chapter, are from Lecky -- but greatly modified. This
  book not being a history but only a tale, the majority
  of the historian's frank details were too strong for
  reproduction in it. - EDITOR]
  
  
  CHAPTER XXIII.
  RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN
  
  SATURDAY noon I went to the well and looked on
  a while. Merlin was still burning smoke-powders,
  and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as
  ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course
  he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.
  Finally I said:
  
  "How does the thing promise by this time, partner?"
  
  "Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the
  powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the oc-
  cult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught
  can avail. Peace, until I finish."
  
  He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the
  region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for
  the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled
  down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He
  poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted
  his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most
  extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he
  dropped down panting, and about exhausted. Now
  arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns,
  and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple
  of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke,
  and all in a grand state of excitement. The abbot
  inquired anxiously for results. Merlin said:
  
  "If any labor of mortal might break the spell that
  binds these waters, this which I have but just essayed
  had done it. It has failed; whereby I do now know
  that that which I had feared is a truth established; the
  sign of this failure is, that the most potent spirit known
  to the magicians of the East, and whose name none
  may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well.
  The mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can
  penetrate the secret of that spell, and without that
  secret none can break it. The water will flow no more
  forever, good Father. I have done what man could.
  Suffer me to go."
  
  Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a
  consternation. He turned to me with the signs of it in
  his face, and said:
  
  "Ye have heard him. Is it true?"
  
  "Part of it is."
  
  "Not all, then, not all! What part is true?"
  
  "That that spirit with the Russian name has put his
  spell upon the well."
  
  "God's wownds, then are we ruined!"
  
  "Possibly."
  
  "But not certainly? Ye mean, not certainly?"
  
  "That is it."
  
  "Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none
  can break the spell --"
  
  "Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't neces-
  sarily true. There are conditions under which an effort
  to break it may have some chance -- that is, some
  small, some trifling chance -- of success."
  
  "The conditions --"
  
  "Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I
  want the well and the surroundings for the space of
  half a mile, entirely to myself from sunset to-day until
  I remove the ban -- and nobody allowed to cross the
  ground but by my authority."
  
  "Are these all?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "And you have no fear to try?"
  
  "Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one
  may also succeed. One can try, and I am ready to
  chance it. I have my conditions?"
  
  "These and all others ye may name. I will issue
  commandment to that effect."
  
  "Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye
  wit that he that would break this spell must know that
  spirit's name?"
  
  "Yes, I know his name."
  
  "And wit you also that to know it skills not of
  itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha!
  Knew ye that?"
  
  "Yes, I knew that, too."
  
  "You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye
  minded to utter that name and die?"
  
  "Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it
  was Welsh."
  
  "Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to
  tell Arthur."
  
  "That's all right. Take your gripsack and get
  along. The thing for YOU to do is to go home and
  work the weather, John W. Merlin."
  
  It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he
  was the worst weather-failure in the kingdom. When-
  ever he ordered up the danger-signals along the coast
  there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he
  prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. But I kept
  him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine
  his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and
  instead of starting home to report my death, he said
  he would remain and enjoy it.
  
  My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty
  well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. They
  had pack-mules along, and had brought everything I
  needed -- tools, pump, lead pipe, Greek fire, sheaves
  of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays,
  electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries -- everything
  necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They
  got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we
  sallied out through a solitude so wholly vacant and
  complete that it quite overpassed the required condi-
  tions. We took possession of the well and its sur-
  roundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of
  things, from the stoning up of a well to the construct-
  ing of a mathematical instrument. An hour before
  sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shape fashion,
  and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our fire-
  works in the chapel, locked up the place, and went
  home to bed.
  
  Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well
  again; for there was a deal to do yet, and I was deter-
  mined to spring the miracle before midnight, for busi-
  ness reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for the
  Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is worth
  six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In
  nine hours the water had risen to its customary level --
  that is to say, it was within twenty-three feet of the
  top. We put in a little iron pump, one of the first
  turned out by my works near the capital; we bored
  into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer
  wall of the well-chamber and inserted a section of lead
  pipe that was long enough to reach to the door of the
  chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the
  gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and
  fifty acres of people I was intending should be present
  on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at
  the proper time.
  
  We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and
  hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel,
  where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder
  till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we
  stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they
  could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets
  there are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf,
  I can tell you. We grounded the wire of a pocket
  electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole
  magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the roof --
  blue on one corner, green on another, red on another,
  and purple on the last -- and grounded a wire in each.
  
  About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a
  pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks
  on it, and so made a platform. We covered it with
  swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped
  it off with the abbot's own throne. When you are
  going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want
  to get in every detail that will count; you want to
  make all the properties impressive to the public eye;
  you want to make matters comfortable for your head
  guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your
  effects for all they are worth. I know the value of
  these things, for I know human nature. You can't
  throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble,
  and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the
  end. Well, we brought the wires to the ground at the
  chapel, and then brought them under the ground to
  the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a
  rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform
  to keep off the common multitude, and that finished
  the work. My idea was, doors open at 10:30, per-
  formance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could
  charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer.
  I instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as
  10, before anybody was around, and be ready to man
  the pumps at the proper time, and make the fur fly.
  Then we went home to supper.
  
  The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far
  by this time; and now for two or three days a steady
  avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley.
  The lower end of the valley was become one huge
  camp; we should have a good house, no question
  about that. Criers went the rounds early in the eve-
  ning and announced the coming attempt, which put
  every pulse up to fever heat. They gave notice that
  the abbot and his official suite would move in state and
  occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the
  region which was under my ban must be clear; the
  bells would then cease from tolling, and this sign
  should be permission to the multitudes to close in and
  take their places.
  
  I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors
  when the abbot's solemn procession hove in sight --
  which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence,
  because it was a starless black night and no torches
  permitted. With it came Merlin, and took a front seat
  on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.
  One could not see the multitudes banked together be-
  yond the ban, but they were there, just the same.
  The moment the bells stopped, those banked masses
  broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave,
  and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow,
  and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked
  upon a pavement of human heads to -- well, miles.
  
  We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty
  minutes -- a thing I had counted on for effect; it is
  always good to let your audience have a chance to
  work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence
  a noble Latin chant -- men's voices -- broke and
  swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic
  tide of melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one
  of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished
  I stood up on the platform and extended my hands
  abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -- that
  always produces a dead hush -- and then slowly pro-
  nounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which
  caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint:
  
    "Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifen-
    machersgesellschafft!"
  
  Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that
  word, I touched off one of my electric connections
  and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a
  hideous blue glare! It was immense -- that effect!
  Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in
  every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The
  abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and
  their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. Merlin held
  his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his
  corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that,
  before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I
  lifted my hands and groaned out this word -- as it were
  in agony:
  
    "Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchensspreng-
    ungsattentaetsversuchungen!"
  
  -- and turned on the red fire! You should have heard
  that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that
  crimson hell joined the blue! After sixty seconds I
  shouted:
  
    "Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthier-
    treibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!"
  
  -- and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty
  seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and
  thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of
  words:
  
    "Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmutter-
    marmormonumentenmacher!"
  
  -- and whirled on the purple glare! There they were,
  all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! -- four
  furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke
  aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to
  the furthest confines of that valley. In the distance
  one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid
  against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for
  the first time in twenty years. I knew the boys were
  at the pump now and ready. So I said to the abbot:
  
  "The time is come, Father. I am about to pro-
  nounce the dread name and command the spell to dis-
  solve. You want to brace up, and take hold of some-
  thing." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in
  another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal
  can break it. If it break, all will know it, for you will
  see the sacred water gush from the chapel door!"
  
  I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a
  chance to spread my announcement to those who
  couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks,
  then I made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and
  gesturing, and shouted:
  
  "Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the
  holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the
  infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway
  dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie
  bound a thousand years. By his own dread name I
  command it -- BGWJJILLIGKKK!"
  
  Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a
  vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself
  toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in
  mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! One mighty
  groan of terror started up from the massed people --
  then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy -- for
  there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw
  the freed water leaping forth! The old abbot could not
  speak a word, for tears and the chokings in his throat;
  without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms
  and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.
  And harder to get over, too, in a country where there
  were really no doctors that were worth a damaged
  nickel.
  
  You should have seen those acres of people throw
  themselves down in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and
  pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive,
  and welcome it back with the dear names they gave
  their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was
  long gone away and lost, and was come home again.
  Yes, it was pretty to see, and made me think more of
  them than I had done before.
  
  I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in
  and gone down like a landslide when I pronounced that
  fearful name, and had never come to since. He never
  had heard that name before, -- neither had I -- but to
  him it was the right one. Any jumble would have
  been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that
  that spirit's own mother could not have pronounced
  that name better than I did. He never could under-
  stand how I survived it, and I didn't tell him. It is
  only young magicians that give away a secret like that.
  Merlin spent three months working enchantments to
  try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that
  name and outlive it. But he didn't arrive.
  
  When I started to the chapel, the populace un-
  covered and fell back reverently to make a wide way
  for me, as if I had been some kind of a superior being
  -- and I was. I was aware of that. I took along a
  night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of
  the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that
  a good part of the people out there were going to sit
  up with the water all night, consequently it was but
  right that they should have all they wanted of it. To
  those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle
  itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of
  admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its
  performance.
  
  It was a great night, an immense night. There was
  reputation in it. I could hardly get to sleep for glory-
  ing over it.
  
  
  CHAPTER XXIV.
  A RIVAL MAGICIAN
  
  MY influence in the Valley of Holiness was some-
  thing prodigious now. It seemed worth while
  to try to turn it to some valuable account. The
  thought came to me the next morning, and was sug-
  gested by my seeing one of my knights who was in
  the soap line come riding in. According to history,
  the monks of this place two centuries before had been
  worldly minded enough to want to wash. It might be
  that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still re-
  maining. So I sounded a Brother:
  
  "Wouldn't you like a bath?"
  
  He shuddered at the thought -- the thought of the
  peril of it to the well -- but he said with feeling:
  
  "One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has
  not known that blessed refreshment sith that he was a
  boy. Would God I might wash me! but it may not
  be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden."
  
  And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I
  was resolved he should have at least one layer of his
  real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence
  and bankrupted the pile. So I went to the abbot and
  asked for a permit for this Brother. He blenched at
  the idea -- I don't mean that you could see him blench,
  for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped
  him, and I didn't care enough about it to scrape him,
  but I knew the blench was there, just the same, and
  within a book-cover's thickness of the surface, too --
  blenched, and trembled. He said:
  
  "Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine,
  and freely granted out of a grateful heart -- but this,
  oh, this! Would you drive away the blessed water
  again?"
  
  "No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have
  mysterious knowledge which teaches me that there
  was an error that other time when it was thought the
  institution of the bath banished the fountain." A
  large interest began to show up in the old man's face.
  "My knowledge informs me that the bath was inno-
  cent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite
  another sort of sin."
  
  "These are brave words -- but -- but right welcome,
  if they be true."
  
  "They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath
  again, Father. Let me build it again, and the fountain
  shall flow forever."
  
  "You promise this? -- you promise it? Say the
  word -- say you promise it!"
  
  "I do promise it."
  
  "Then will I have the first bath myself! Go --
  get ye to your work. Tarry not, tarry not, but go."
  
  I and my boys were at work, straight off. The
  ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of
  the monastery, not a stone missing. They had been
  left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a
  pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we had it
  all done and the water in -- a spacious pool of clear
  pure water that a body could swim in. It was running
  water, too. It came in, and went out, through the
  ancient pipes. The old abbot kept his word, and was
  the first to try it. He went down black and shaky,
  leaving the whole black community above troubled and
  worried and full of bodings; but he came back white
  and joyful, and the game was made! another triumph
  scored.
  
  It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley
  of Holiness, and I was very well satisfied, and ready to
  move on now, but I struck a disappointment. I caught
  a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheuma-
  tism of mine. Of course the rheumatism hunted up
  my weakest place and located itself there. This was
  the place where the abbot put his arms about me and
  mashed me, what time he was moved to testify his
  gratitude to me with an embrace.
  
  When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But every-
  body was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these
  brought cheer back into my life, and were the right
  medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward
  health and strength again; so I gained fast.
  
  Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my
  mind to turn out and go a cruise alone, leaving her at
  the nunnery to rest up. My idea was to disguise myself
  as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through
  the country a week or two on foot. This would give
  
  me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and
  poorest class of free citizens on equal terms. There
  was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their
  everyday life and the operation of the laws upon it. If
  I went among them as a gentleman, there would be
  restraints and conventionalities which would shut me
  out from their private joys and troubles, and I should
  get no further than the outside shell.
  
  One morning I was out on a long walk to get up
  muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which
  bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when I
  came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low
  precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermit-
  age which had often been pointed out to me from a
  distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt
  and austerity. I knew he had lately been offered a
  situation in the Great Sahara, where lions and sandflies
  made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult,
  and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought
  I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this
  den agreed with its reputation.
  
  My surprise was great: the place was newly swept
  and scoured. Then there was another surprise. Back
  in the gloom of the cavern I heard the clink of a little
  bell, and then this exclamation:
  
  "Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot? -- Be-
  hold, thou mayst glad thy heart an thou hast faith to
  believe the wonderful when that it cometh in unex-
  pected guise and maketh itself manifest in impossible
  places -- here standeth in the flesh his mightiness The
  Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him
  speak!"
  
  Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what
  a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities; what
  a fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables
  -- the home of the bogus miracle become the home of
  a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned into a
  telephone office!
  
  The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I
  recognized one of my young fellows. I said:
  
  "How long has this office been established here,
  Ulfius?"
  
  "But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you.
  We saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it
  well to make a station, for that where so many lights
  be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size."
  
  "Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary
  sense, but it's a good stand, anyway. Do you know
  where you are?"
  
  "Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for
  whenas my comradeship moved hence upon their
  labors, leaving me in charge, I got me to needed rest,
  purposing to inquire when I waked, and report the
  place's name to Camelot for record."
  
  "Well, this is the Valley of Holiness."
  
  It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name,
  as I had supposed he would. He merely said:
  
  "I will so report it."
  
  "Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the
  noise of late wonders that have happened here! You
  didn't hear of them?"
  
  "Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and
  avoid speech with all. We learn naught but that we
  get by the telephone from Camelot."
  
  "Why THEY know all about this thing. Haven't
  they told you anything about the great miracle of the
  restoration of a holy fountain?"
  
  "Oh, THAT? Indeed yes. But the name of THIS
  valley doth woundily differ from the name of THAT one;
  indeed to differ wider were not pos --"
  
  "What was that name, then?"
  
  "The Valley of Hellishness."
  
  "THAT explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway.
  It is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound
  that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense.
  But no matter, you know the name of the place now.
  Call up Camelot."
  
  He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good
  to hear my boy's voice again. It was like being home.
  After some affectionate interchanges, and some account
  of my late illness, I said:
  
  "What is new?"
  
  "The king and queen and many of the court do
  start even in this hour, to go to your valley to pay
  pious homage to the waters ye have restored, and
  cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place where the
  infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds --
  an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me
  likewise smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection
  of those flames from out our stock and sent them by
  your order."
  
  "Does the king know the way to this place?"
  
  "The king? -- no, nor to any other in his realms,
  mayhap; but the lads that holp you with your miracle
  will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the
  places for rests at noons and sleeps at night."
  
  "This will bring them here -- when?"
  
  "Mid-afternoon, or later, the third day."
  
  "Anything else in the way of news?"
  
  "The king hath begun the raising of the standing
  army ye suggested to him; one regiment is complete
  and officered."
  
  "The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that my-
  self. There is only one body of men in the kingdom
  that are fitted to officer a regular army."
  
  "Yes -- and now ye will marvel to know there's not
  so much as one West Pointer in that regiment."
  
  "What are you talking about? Are you in earnest?"
  
  "It is truly as I have said."
  
  "Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen,
  and what was the method? Competitive examination?"
  
  "Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but
  know this -- these officers be all of noble family, and
  are born -- what is it you call it? -- chuckleheads."
  
  "There's something wrong, Clarence. "
  
  "Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a
  lieutenancy do travel hence with the king -- young
  nobles both -- and if you but wait where you are you
  will hear them questioned."
  
  "That is news to the purpose. I will get one West
  Pointer in, anyway. Mount a man and send him to
  that school with a message; let him kill horses, if
  necessary, but he must be there before sunset to-night
  and say -- "
  
  "There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to
  the school. Prithee let me connect you with it."
  
  It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones
  and lightning communication with distant regions, I
  was breathing the breath of life again after long suffo-
  cation. I realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate
  horror this land had been to me all these years, and
  how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as
  to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to
  notice it.
  
  I gave my order to the superintendent of the Acad-
  emy personally. I also asked him to bring me some
  paper and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety
  matches. I was getting tired of doing without these
  conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn't
  going to wear armor any more at present, and there-
  fore could get at my pockets.
  
  When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing
  of interest going on. The abbot and his monks were
  assembled in the great hall, observing with childish
  wonder and faith the performances of a new magician,
  a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of the
  fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an
  Indian medicine-man wears. He was mowing, and
  mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical
  figures in the air and on the floor, -- the regular thing,
  you know. He was a celebrity from Asia -- so he
  said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was
  as good as gold, and passed current everywhere.
  
  How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician
  on this fellow's terms. His specialty was to tell you
  what any individual on the face of the globe was doing
  at the moment; and what he had done at any time in
  the past, and what he would do at any time in the
  future. He asked if any would like to know what the
  Emperor of the East was doing now? The sparkling
  eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent
  answer -- this reverend crowd WOULD like to know what
  that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud
  went through some more mummery, and then made
  grave announcement:
  
  "The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at
  this moment put money in the palm of a holy begging
  friar -- one, two, three pieces, and they be all of
  silver."
  
  A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all
  around:
  
  "It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "What study,
  what labor, to have acquired a so amazing power as this!"
  
  Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of
  Inde was doing? Yes. He told them what the
  Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Then he told
  them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the
  King of the Remote Seas was about. And so on and
  so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at
  his accuracy rose higher and higher. They thought
  he must surely strike an uncertain place some time;
  but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and
  always with unerring precision. I saw that if this thing
  went on I should lose my supremacy, this fellow would
  capture my following, I should be left out in the cold.
  I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it right away,
  too. I said:
  
  "If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know
  what a certain person is doing."
  
  "Speak, and freely. I will tell you."
  
  "It will be difficult -- perhaps impossible."
  
  "My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult
  it is, the more certainly will I reveal it to you."
  
  You see, I was working up the interest. It was
  getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the
  craning necks all around, and the half-suspended
  breathing. So now I climaxed it:
  
  "If you make no mistake -- if you tell me truly
  what I want to know -- I will give you two hundred
  silver pennies."
  
  "The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you
  would know."
  
  "Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand."
  
  "Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise.
  It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd -- that
  simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't
  ten thousand miles away. The magician was hit hard;
  it was an emergency that had never happened in his
  experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know
  how to meet it. He looked stunned, confused; he
  couldn't say a word. "Come," I said, "what are
  you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up,
  right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of
  the earth is doing, and yet can't tell what a person is
  doing who isn't three yards from you? Persons behind
  me know what I am doing with my right hand -- they
  will indorse you if you tell correctly." He was still
  dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak
  up and tell; it is because you don't know. YOU a
  magician! Good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud
  and liar."
  
  This distressed the monks and terrified them. They
  were not used to hearing these awful beings called
  names, and they did not know what might be the con-
  sequence. There was a dead silence now; superstitious
  bodings were in every mind. The magician began to
  pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an
  easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief
  around; for it indicated that his mood was not destruc-
  tive. He said:
  
  "It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this
  person's speech. Let all know, if perchance there be
  any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree
  deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any
  but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the
  purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur
  the great king is doing, it were another matter, and I
  had told ye; but the doings of a subject interest me
  not."
  
  "Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said
  'anybody,' and so I supposed 'anybody' included --
  well, anybody; that is, everybody."
  
  "It doth -- anybody that is of lofty birth; and the
  better if he be royal."
  
  "That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot,
  who saw his opportunity to smooth things and avert
  disaster, "for it were not likely that so wonderful a
  gift as this would be conferred for the revelation of the
  concerns of lesser beings than such as be born near to
  the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king --"
  
  "Would you know of him?" broke in the en-
  chanter.
  
  "Most gladly, yea, and gratefully."
  
  Everybody was full of awe and interest again right
  away, the incorrigible idiots. They watched the incan-
  tations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "There,
  now, what can you say to that?" air, when the
  announcement came:
  
  "The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his
  palace these two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep."
  
  "God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and
  crossed himself; "may that sleep be to the refresh-
  ment of his body and his soul."
  
  "And so it might be, if he were sleeping," I said,
  "but the king is not sleeping, the king rides."
  
  Here was trouble again -- a conflict of authority.
  

   MARK TWAIN.
  

  ##################################################

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