THE BOOK OF WONDER

BYLORD DUNSANY

CONTENTS

PrefaceThe Bride of the Man-HorseDistressing Tale of Thangobrind The JewellerThe House of the SphinxProbable Adventure of the Three Literary MenThe Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the IdolaterThe Loot of BombasharnaMiss Cubbidge and the Dragon Of RomanceThe Quest of the Queen's TearsThe Hoard of the GibbelinsHow Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the GnolesHow One Came, As Was Foretold, to the City Of NeverThe Coronation of Mr. Thomas ShapChu-Bu and SheemishThe Wonderful WindowEpilogue

PREFACE

Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary ofLondon: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know:for we have new worlds here. 

THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE

In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk thecentaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of thecentaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the year of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold andset with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, andsaid no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took withhim too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that inits time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and fortwenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege ofTholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs wagedtheir fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, butretreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of thegods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimatearmoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed andlet him go. 

She knew that today he would not drink at the stream coming down fromthe terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner land of the mountains, thattoday he would not wonder awhile at the sunset and afterwards trotback to the cavern again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers that knownot Man. She knew that it was with him as it had been of old with hisfather, and with Goom the father of Jyshak, and long ago with thegods. Therefore she only sighed and let him go. 

But he, coming out from the cavern that was his home, went for thefirst time over the little stream, and going round the corner of thecrags saw glittering beneath him the mundane plain. And the wind ofthe autumn that was gilding the world, rushing up the slopes of themountain, beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised his head andsnorted. 

"I am a man-horse now!" he shouted aloud; and leaping from crag tocrag he galloped by valley and chasm, by torrent-bed and scar ofavalanche, until he came to the wandering leagues of the plain, andleft behind him for ever the Athraminaurian mountains. 

His goal was Zretazoola, the city of Sombelenë. What legend ofSombelenë's inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had everfloated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs'race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood ofman there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akinto the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however faraway, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered;and this springtide of current that visits the blood of man comes fromthe fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; ittakes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens toancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk's fabulous blood stirred inthose lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours thatonly the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, forShepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that heheaded from the first for the city Zretazoola, where Sombelenë in hertemple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains, lay between Shepperalk's home and the city he sought. 

When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that softalluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced andcaracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like amaiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as itpassed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flower, helifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled throughkingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye thatdwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? Hefelt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness likethose gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds 'twixt heaven andsea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing upfrom the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes. He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; thelightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix withhis blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and allmen trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and nowthey dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clioare these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that?Not all of us have sat at historians' feet, but all have learned fableand myth at their mothers' knees. And there were none that did notfear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along thepublic ways. So he passed from city to city. 

By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or forest;before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in thedark, and splashing out of it would trot to some high place to findthe sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings ofhis jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, andthe plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like waterflung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind, and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that, great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new landsbeyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, theglorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath waseven. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one's youth, "said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha, " said the wind of thehills, and the winds of the plain answered. 

Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments, astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtleprophecies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is, " saidthe children. 

Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop, till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edgesof the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legendagain such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of theworld, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with thetwilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, forhe knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelenë. 

It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured withevening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into theirgolden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, thedreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all thoserumours that used to come to him from Sombelenë, because of thefellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to thebat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypressesscreened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. Andopposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with opendoor, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth shouldever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelenë wasimmortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine. 

Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was thechild of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;--shewas more mystical than Woman. 

Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetimedreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by adeathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise. Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilightcould never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secretamong them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it norevening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden fromlovers. 

She was unwed, unwooed. 

The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, andthe gods dared not love her because they knew she must die. 

This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream inthe heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. Andsuddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared thecleft in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft, and sunning herself in the evening. 

Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft, and entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on thestars, he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushedout on to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put theirheads from glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalkdid not tarry to give greetings or to answer challenges from martialtowers, he was down through the earthward gateway like the thunderboltof his sires, and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surgedinto the water between temple and tomb. 

He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeingdimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenë by the hair, undazzled asyet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her overthe floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unrememberedaway into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be herslave for all centuries that are allowed to his race. 

Three blasts he gave as he went upon that silver horn that is theworld-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells. 

DISTRESSING TALE OF THANGOBRIND THE JEWELLER

When Thangobrind the jeweller heard the ominous cough, he turned atonce upon that narrow way. A thief was he, of very high repute, beingpatronized by the lofty and elect, for he stole nothing smaller thanthe Moomoo's egg, and in all his life stole only four kinds ofstone--the ruby, the diamond, the emerald, and the sapphire; and, asjewellers go, his honesty was great. Now there was a Merchant Princewho had come to Thangobrind and had offered his daughter's soul forthe diamond that is larger than the human head and was to be found onthe lap of the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, in his temple of Moung-ga-ling;for he had heard that Thangobrind was a thief to be trusted. 

Thangobrind oiled his body and slipped out of his shop, and wentsecretly through byways, and got as far as Snarp, before anybody knewthat he was out on business again or missed his sword from its placeunder the counter. Thence he moved only by night, hiding by day andrubbing the edges of his sword, which he called Mouse because it wasswift and nimble. The jeweller had subtle methods of travelling;nobody saw him cross the plains of Zid; nobody saw him come to Murskor Tlun. O, but he loved shadows! Once the moon peeping outunexpectedly from a tempest had betrayed an ordinary jeweller; not sodid it undo Thangobrind; the watchman only saw a crouching shape thatsnarled and laughed: "'Tis but a hyena, " they said. Once in the cityof Ag one of the guardians seized him, but Thangobrind was oiled andslipped from his hand; you scarcely heard his bare feet patter away. He knew that the Merchant Prince awaited his return, his little eyesopen all night and glittering with greed; he knew how his daughter laychained up and screaming night and day. Ah, Thangobrind knew. And hadhe not been out on business he had almost allowed himself one or twolittle laughs. But business was business, and the diamond that hesought still lay on the lap of Hlo-hlo, where it had been for the lasttwo million years since Hlo-hlo created the world and gave unto it allthings except that precious stone called Dead Man's Diamond. The jewelwas often stolen, but it had a knack of coming back again to the lapof Hlo-hlo. Thangobrind knew this, but he was no common jeweller andhoped to outwit Hlo-hlo, perceiving not the trend of ambition and lustand that they are vanity. 

How nimbly he threaded his way thought he pits of Snood!--now like abotanist, scrutinising the ground; now like a dancer, leaping fromcrumbling edges. It was quite dark when he went by the towers of Tor, where archers shoot ivory arrows at strangers lest any foreignershould alter their laws, which are bad, but not to be altered by merealiens. At night they shoot by the sound of the strangers' feet. O, Thangobrind, was ever a jeweller like you! He dragged two stonesbehind him by long cords, and at these the archers shot. Temptingindeed was the snare that they set in Woth, the emeralds loose-set inthe city's gate; but Thangobrind discerned the golden cord thatclimbed the wall from each and the weights that would topple upon himif he touched one, and so he left them, though he left them weeping, and at last came to Theth. There all men worship Hlo-hlo; though theyare willing to believe in other gods, as missionaries attest, but onlyas creatures of the chase for the hunting of Hlo-hlo, who wears Theirhalos, so these people say, on golden hooks along his hunting-belt. And from Theth he came to the city of Moung and the temple ofMoung-ga-ling, and entered and saw the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, sittingthere with Dead Man's Diamond glittering on his lap, and looking forall the world like a full moon, but a full moon seen by a lunatic whohad slept too long in its rays, for there was in Dead Man's Diamond acertain sinister look and a boding of things to happen that are betternot mentioned here. The face of the spider-idol was lit by that fatalgem; there was no other light. In spite of his shocking limbs and thatdemoniac body, his face was serene and apparently unconscious. 

A little fear came into the mind of Thangobrind the jeweller, apassing tremor--no more; business was business and he hoped for thebest. Thangobrind offered honey to Hlo-hlo and prostrated himselfbefore him. Oh, he was cunning! When the priests stole out of thedarkness to lap up the honey they were stretched senseless on thetemple floor, for there was a drug in the honey that was offered toHlo-hlo. And Thangobrind the jeweller picked Dead Man's Diamond up andput it on his shoulder and trudged away from the shrine; and Hlo-hlothe spider-idol said nothing at all, but he laughed softly as thejeweller shut the door. When the priests awoke out of the grip of thedrug that was offered with the honey to Hlo-hlo, they rushed to alittle secret room with an outlet on the stars and cast a horoscope ofthe thief. Something that they saw in the horoscope seemed to satisfythe priests. 

It was not like Thangobrind to go back by the road by which he hadcome. No, he went by another road, even though it led to the narrowway, night-house and spider-forest. 

The city of Moung went towering by behind him, balcony above balcony, eclipsing half the stars, as he trudged away. Though when a softpittering as of velvet feet arose behind him he refused to acknowledgethat it might be what he feared, yet the instincts of his trade toldhim that it is not well when any noise whatever follows a diamond bynight, and this was one of the largest that had ever come to him inthe way of business. When he came to the narrow way that leads tospider-forest, Dead Man's Diamond feeling cold and heavy, and thevelvety footfall seeming fearfully close, the jeweller stopped andalmost hesitated. He looked behind him; there was nothing there. Helistened attentively; there was no sound now. Then he thought of thescreams of the Merchant Prince's daughter, whose soul was thediamond's price, and smiled and went stoutly on. There watched him, apathetically, over the narrow way, that grim and dubious woman whosehouse is Night. Thangobrind, hearing no longer the sound of suspiciousfeet, felt easier now. He was all but come to the end of the narrowway, when the woman listlessly uttered that ominous cough. 

The cough was too full of meaning to be disregarded. Thangobrindturned round and saw at once what he feared. The spider-idol had notstayed at home. The jeweller put his diamond gently upon the groundand drew his sword called Mouse. And then began that famous fight uponthe narrow way in which the grim old woman whose house was Nightseemed to take so little interest. To the spider-idol you saw at onceit was all a horrible joke. To the jeweller it was grim earnest. Hefought and panted and was pushed back slowly along the narrow way, buthe wounded Hlo-hlo all the while with terrible long gashes all overhis deep, soft body till Mouse was slimy with blood. But at last thepersistent laughter of Hlo-hlo was too much for the jeweller's nerves, and, once more wounding his demoniac foe, he sank aghast and exhaustedby the door of the house called Night at the feet of the grim oldwoman, who having uttered once that ominous cough interfered nofurther with the course of events. And there carried Thangobrind thejeweller away those whose duty it was, to the house where the two menhang, and taking down from his hook the left-hand of the two, they putthat venturous jeweller in his place; so that there fell on him thedoom that he feared, as all men know though it is so long since, andthere abated somewhat the ire of the envious gods. 

And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitudefor this great deliverance that she took to respectability of themilitant kind, and became aggressively dull, and called her home theEnglish Riviera, and had platitudes worked in worsted upon hertea-cosy, and in the end never died, but passed away in her residence. 

THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX

When I came to the House of the Sphinx it was already dark. They mademe eagerly welcome. And I, in spite of the deed, was glad of anyshelter from that ominous wood. I saw at once that there had been adeed, although a cloak did all that a cloak may do to conceal it. Themere uneasiness of the welcome made me suspect that cloak. 

The Sphinx was moody and silent. I had not come to pry into thesecrets of Eternity nor to investigate the Sphinx's private life, andso had little to say and few questions to ask; but to whatever I didsay she remained morosely indifferent. It was clear that either shesuspected me of being in search of the secrets of one of her gods, orof being boldly inquisitive about her traffic with Time, or else shewas darkly absorbed with brooding upon the deed. 

I saw soon enough that there was another than me to welcome; I saw itfrom the hurried way that they glanced from the door to the deed andback to the door again. And it was clear that the welcome was to be abolted door. But such bolts, and such a door! Rust and decay andfungus had been there far too long, and it was not a barrier anylonger that would keep out even a determined wolf. And it seemed to besomething worse than a wolf that they feared. 

A little later on I gathered from what they said that some imperiousand ghastly thing was looking for the Sphinx, and that something thathad happened had made its arrival certain. It appeared that they hadslapped the Sphinx to vex her out of her apathy in order that sheshould pray to one of her gods, whom she had littered in the house ofTime; but her moody silence was invincible, and her apathy Oriental, ever since the deed had happened. And when they found that they couldnot make her pray, there was nothing for them to do but to pay littleuseless attentions to the rusty lock of the door, and to look at thedeed and wonder, and even pretend to hope, and to say that after allit might not bring that destined thing from the forest, which no onenamed. 

It may be said I had chosen a gruesome house, but not if I haddescribed the forest from which I came, and I was in need of any spotwherein I could rest my mind from the thought of it. 

I wondered very much what thing would come from the forest on accountof the deed; and having seen that forest--as you, gentle reader, havenot--I had the advantage of knowing that anything might come. It wasuseless to ask the Sphinx--she seldom reveals things, like herparamour Time (the gods take after her), and while this mood was onher, rebuff was certain. So I quietly began to oil the lock of thedoor. And as soon as they saw this simple act I won their confidence. It was not that my work was of any use--it should have been done longbefore; but they saw that my interest was given for the moment to thething that they thought vital. They clustered round me then. Theyasked me what I thought of the door, and whether I had seen better, and whether I had seen worse; and I told them about all the doors Iknew, and said that he doors of the baptistry in Florence were betterdoors, and the doors made by a certain firm of builders in London wereworse. And then I asked them what it was that was coming after theSphinx because of the deed. And at first they would not say, and Istopped oiling the door; and then they said that it was thearch-inquisitor of the forest, who is investigator and avenger of allsilverstrian things; and from that they said about him it seemed to methat this person was quite white, and was a kind of madness that wouldsettle down quite blankly upon a place, a kind of mist in which reasoncould not live; and it was the fear of this that made them fumblenervously at the lock of that rotten door; but with the Sphinx it wasnot so much fear as sheer prophecy. 

The hope that they tried to hope was well enough in its way, but I didnot share it; it was clear that the thing that they feared was thecorollary of the deed--one saw that more by the resignation upon theface of the Sphinx than by their sorry anxiety for the door. 

The wind soughed, and the great tapers flared, and their obvious fearand the silence of the Sphinx grew more than ever a part of theatmosphere, and bats went restlessly through the gloom of the windthat beat the tapers low. 

Then a few things screamed far off, then a little nearer, andsomething was coming towards us, laughing hideously. I hastily gave aprod to the door that they guarded; my finger sank right into themouldering wood--there was not a chance of holding it. I had notleisure to observe their fright; I thought of the back-door, for theforest was better than this; only the Sphinx was absolutely calm, herprophecy was made and she seemed to have seen her doom, so that no newthing could perturb her. 

But by mouldering rungs of ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges ofthe dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and afeeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower totower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one ofthe upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed onto the floor of the forest. And I was glad to be back again in theforest from which I had fled. 

And the Sphinx in her menaced house--I know not how she fared--whethershe gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in hersmitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knewwell those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the endshe crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came atlast to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows ofmadness whether it is divine or whether it be of the pit?

PROBABLE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE LITERARY MEN

When the nomads came to El Lola they had no more songs, and thequestion of stealing the golden box arose in all its magnitude. On theone hand, many had sought the golden box, the receptacle (as theAethiopians know) of poems of fabulous value; and their doom is stillthe common talk of Arabia. On the other hand, it was lonely to sitaround the camp-fire by night with no new songs. 

It was the tribe of Heth that discussed these things one evening uponthe plains below the peak of Mluna. Their native land was the trackacross the world of immemorial wanderers; and there was trouble amongthe elders of the nomads because there were no new songs; while, untouched by human trouble, untouched as yet by the night that washiding the plains away, the peak of Mluna, calm in the afterglow, looked on the Dubious Land. And it was there on the plain upon theknown side of Mluna, just as the evening star came mouse-like intoview and the flames of the camp-fire lifted their lonely plumesuncheered by any song, that that rash scheme was hastily planned bythe nomads which the world has named The Quest of the Golden Box. 

No measure of wiser precaution could the elders of the nomads havetaken than to choose for their thief that very Slith, that identicalthief that (even as I write) in how many school-rooms governessesteach stole a march on the King of Westalia. Yet the weight of the boxwas such that others had to accompany him, and Sippy and Slorg were nomore agile thieves than may be found today among vendors of theantique. 

So over the shoulder of Mluna these three climbed next day and sleptas well as they might among its snows rather than risk a night in thewoods of the Dubious Land. And the morning came up radiant and thebirds were full of song, but the forest underneath and the wastebeyond it and the bare and ominous crags all wore the appearance of anunuttered threat. 

Though Slith had an experience of twenty years of theft, yet he saidlittle; only if one of the others made a stone roll with his foot, or, later on in the forest, if one of them stepped on a twig, he whisperedsharply to them always the same words: "That is not business. " He knewthat he could not make them better thieves during a two-days' journey, and whatever doubts he had he interfered no further. 

From the shoulder of Mluna they dropped into the clouds, and from theclouds to the forest, to whose native beasts, as well the threethieves knew, all flesh was meat, whether it were the flesh of fish orman. There the thieves drew idolatrously from their pockets each one aseparate god and prayed for protection in the unfortunate wood, andhoped therefrom for a threefold chance of escape, since if anythingshould eat one of them it were certain to eat them all, and theyconfided that the corollary might be true and all should escape if onedid. Whether one of these gods was propitious and awake, or whetherall of the three, or whether it was chance that brought them throughthe forest unmouthed by detestable beasts, none knoweth; but certainlyneither the emissaries of the god that most they feared, nor the wrathof the topical god of that ominous place, brought their doom to thethree adventurers there or then. And so it was that they came toRumbly Heath, in the heart of the Dubious Land, whose stormy hillockswere the ground-swell and the after-wash of the earthquake lulled fora while. Something so huge that it seemed unfair to man that it shouldmove so softly stalked splendidly by them, and only so barely did theyescape its notice that one word ran and echoed through their threeimaginations--"If--if--if. " And when this danger was at last gone bythey moved cautiously on again and presently saw the little harmlessmipt, half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill, contented squeaks onthe edge of the world. And they edged away unseen, for they said thatthe inquisitiveness of the mipt had become fabulous, and that, harmless as he was, he had a bad way with secrets; yet they probablyloathed the way that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admittheir loathing; for it does not become adventurers to care who eatstheir bones. Be this as it may, they edged away from the mipt, andcame almost at once to the wizened tree, the goal-post of theiradventure, and knew that beside them was the crack in the world andthe bridge from Bad to Worse, and that underneath them stood the rockyhouse of the Owner of the Box. 

This was their simple plan: to slip into the corridor in the uppercliff; to run softly down it (of course with naked feet) under thewarning to travellers that is graven upon stone, which interpreterstake to be "It Is Better Not"; not to touch the berries that are therefor a purpose, on the right side going down; and so to come to theguardian on his pedestal who had slept for a thousand years and shouldbe sleeping still; and go in through the open window. One man was towait outside by the crack in the World until the others came out withthe golden box, and, should they cry for help, he was to threaten atonce to unfasten the iron clamp that kept the crack together. When thebox was secured they were to travel all night and all the followingday, until the cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of Mluna were wellbetween them and the Owner of the Box. 

The door in the cliff was open. They passed without a murmur down thecold steps, Slith leading them all the way. A glance of longing, nomore, each gave to the beautiful berries. The guardian upon hispedestal was still asleep. Slorg climbed by a ladder, that Slith knewwhere to find, to the iron clamp across the crack in the World, andwaited beside it with a chisel in his hand, listening closely foranything untoward, while his friends slipped into the house; and nosound came. And presently Slith and Sippy found the golden box:everything seemed happening as they had planned, it only remained tosee if it was the right one and to escape with it from that dreadfulplace. Under the shelter of the pedestal, so near to the guardian thatthey could feel his warmth, which paradoxically had the effect ofchilling the blood of the boldest of them, they smashed the emeraldhasp and opened the golden box; and there they read by the light ofingenious sparks which Slith knew how to contrive, and even this poorlight they hid with their bodies. What was their joy, even at thatperilous moment, as they lurked between the guardian and the abyss, tofind that the box contained fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form, five sonnets that were by far the most beautiful in the world, nineballads in the manner of Provence that had no equal in the treasuriesof man, a poem addressed to a moth in twenty-eight perfect stanzas, apiece of blank verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet knownto have been attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which nomerchant would dare to set a price. They would have read them again, for they gave happy tears to a man and memories of dear things done ininfancy, and brought sweet voices from far sepulchres; but Slithpointed imperiously to the way by which they had come, andextinguished the light; and Slorg and Sippy sighed, then took the box. 

The guardian still slept the sleep that survived a thousand years. 

As they came away they saw that indulgent chair close by the edge ofthe World in which the Owner of the Box had lately sat readingselfishly and alone the most beautiful songs and verses that poet everdreamed. 

They came in silence to the foot of the stairs; and then it befellthat as they drew nearer safely, in the night's most secret hour, somehand in an upper chamber lit a shocking light, lit it and made nosound. 

For a moment it might have been an ordinary light, fatal as even thatcould very well be at such a moment as this; but when it began tofollow them like an eye and to grow redder and redder as it watchedthem, then even optimism despaired. 

And Sippy very unwisely attempted flight, and Slorg even as unwiselytried to hide; but Slith, knowing well why that light was lit in thatsecret chamber and _who_ it was that lit it, leaped over the edge ofthe World and is falling from us still through the unreverberateblackness of the abyss. 

THE INJUDICIOUS PRAYERS OF POMBO THE IDOLATER

Pombo the idolater had prayed to Ammuz a simple prayer, a necessaryprayer, such as even an idol of ivory could very easily grant, andAmmuz has not immediately granted it. Pombo had therefore prayed toTharma for the overthrow of Ammuz, an idol friendly to Tharma, and indoing this offended against the etiquette of the gods. Tharma refusedto grant the little prayer. Pombo prayed frantically to all the godsof idolatry, for though it was a simple matter, yet it was verynecessary to a man. And gods that were older than Ammuz rejected theprayers of Pombo, and even gods that were younger and therefore ofgreater repute. He prayed to them one by one, and they all refused tohear him; nor at first did he think at all of the subtle, divineetiquette against which he had offended. It occurred to him all atonce as he prayed to his fiftieth idol, a little green-jade god whomthe Chinese know, that all the idols were in league against him. WhenPombo discovered this he resented his birth bitterly, and madelamentation and alleged that he was lost. He might have been seen thenin any part of London haunting curiosity-shops and places where theysold idols of ivory or of stone, for he dwelt in London with others ofhis race though he was born in Burmah among those who hold Gangesholy. On drizzly evenings of November's worst his haggard face couldbe seen in the glow of some shop pressed close against the glass, where he would supplicate some calm, cross-legged idol till policemenmoved him on. And after closing hours back he would go to his dingyroom, in that part of our capital where English is seldom spoken, tosupplicate little idols of his own. And when Pombo's simple, necessaryprayer was equally refused by the idols of museums, auction-rooms, shops, then he took counsel with himself and purchased incense andburned it in a brazier before his own cheap little idols, and playedthe while upon an instrument such as that wherewith men charm snakes. And still the idols clung to their etiquette. 

Whether Pombo knew about this etiquette and considered it frivolous inthe face of his need, or whether his need, now grown desperate, unhinged his mind, I know not, but Pombo the idolater took a stick andsuddenly turned iconoclast. 

Pombo the iconoclast immediately left his house, leaving his idols tobe swept away with the dust and so to mingle with Man, and went to anarch-idolater of repute who carved idols out of rare stones, and puthis case before him. The arch-idolater who made idols of his ownrebuked Pombo in the name of Man for having broken his idols--"forhath not Man made them?" the arch-idolater said; and concerning theidols themselves he spoke long and learnedly, explaining divineetiquette, and how Pombo had offended, and how no idol in the worldwould listen to Pombo's prayer. When Pombo heard this he wept and madebitter outcry, and cursed the gods of ivory and the gods of jade, andthe hand of Man that made them, but most of all he cursed theiretiquette that had undone, as he said, an innocent man; so that atlast that arch-idolater, who made idols of his own, stopped in hiswork upon an idol of jasper for a king that was weary of Wosh, andtook compassion on Pombo, and told him that though no idol in theworld would listen to his prayer, yet only a little way over the edgeof it a certain disreputable idol sat who knew nothing of etiquette, and granted prayers that no respectable god would ever consent tohear. When Pombo heard this he took two handfuls of thearch-idolater's beard and kissed them joyfully, and dried his tearsand became his old impertinent self again. And he that carved fromjasper the usurper of Wosh explained how in the village of World'sEnd, at the furthest end of Last Street, there is a hole that you taketo be a well, close by the garden wall, but that if you lower yourselfby your hands over the edge of the hole, and feel about with your feettill they find a ledge, that is the top step of a flight of stairsthat takes you down over the edge of the World. "For all that menknow, those stairs may have a purpose and even a bottom step, " saidthe arch-idolater, "but discussion about the lower flights is idle. "Then the teeth of Pombo chattered, for he feared the darkness, but hethat made idols of his own explained that those stairs were always litby the faint blue gloaming in which the World spins. "Then, " he said, "you will go by Lonely House and under the bridge that leads from theHouse to Nowhere, and whose purpose is not guessed; thence pastMaharrion, the god of flowers, and his high-priest, who is neitherbird nor cat; and so you will come to the little idol Duth, thedisreputable god that will grant your prayer. " And he went on carvingagain at his idol of jasper for the king who was weary of Wosh; andPombo thanked him and went singing away, for in his vernacular mind hethought that "he _had_ the gods. "

It is a long journey from London to World's End, and Pombo had nomoney left, and yet within five weeks he was strolling along LastStreet; but how he contrived to get there I will not say, for it wasnot entirely honest. And Pombo found the well at the end of the gardenbeyond the end house of Last Street, and many thoughts ran through hismind as he hung by his hands from the edge, but chiefest of all thosethoughts was one that said the gods were laughing at him through themouth of the arch-idolater, their prophet, and the thought beat in hishead till it ached like his wrists . . . And then he found the step. 

And Pombo walked downstairs. There, sure enough, was the gloaming inwhich the world spins, and the stars shone far off in it faintly;there was nothing before him as he went downstairs but that strangeblue waste of gloaming, with its multitude of stars, and cometsplunging through it on outward journeys and comets returning home. Andthen he saw the lights of the bridge to Nowhere, and all of a suddenhe was in the glare of the shimmering parlour-window of Lonely House;and he heard voices there pronouncing words, and the voices werenowise human, and but for his bitter need he had screamed and fled. Halfway between the voices and Maharrion, whom he now saw standing outfrom the world, covered in rainbow halos, he perceived the weird greybeast that is neither cat nor bird. As Pombo hesitated, chilly withfear, he heard those voices grow louder in Lonely House, and at thathe stealthily moved a few steps lower, and then rushed past the beast. The beast intently watched Maharrion hurling up bubbles that are everyone a season of spring in unknown constellations, calling the swallowshome to unimagined fields, watched him without even turning to look atPombo, and saw him drop into the Linlunlarna, the river that rises atthe edge of the World, the golden pollen that sweetens the tide of theriver and is carried away from the World to be a joy to the Stars. Andthere before Pombo was the little disreputable god who cares nothingfor etiquette and will answer prayers that are refused by all therespectable idols. And whether the view of him, at last, excitedPombo's eagerness, or whether his need was greater than he could bearthat it drove him so swiftly downstairs, or whether as is most likely, he ran too fast past the beast, I do not know, and it does not matterto Pombo; but at any rate he could not stop, as he had designed, inattitude of prayer at the feet of Duth, but ran on past him down thenarrowing steps, clutching at smooth, bare rocks till he fell from theWorld as, when our hearts miss a beat, we fall in dreams and wake upwith a dreadful jolt; but there was no waking up for Pombo, who stillfell on towards the incurious stars, and his fate is even one with thefate of Slith. 

THE LOOT OF BOMBASHARNA

Things had grown too hot for Shard, captain of pirates, on all theseas that he knew. The ports of Spain were closed to him; they knewhim in San Domingo; men winked in Syracuse when he went by; the twoKings of the Sicilies never smiled within an hour of speaking of him;there were huge rewards for his head in every capital city, withpictures of it for identification--_and all the pictures wereunflattering_. Therefore Captain Shard decided that the time had cometo tell his men the secret. 

Riding off Teneriffe one night, he called them all together. Hegenerously admitted that there were things in the past that mightrequire explanation: the crowns that the Princes of Aragon had sent totheir nephews the Kings of the two Americas had certainly neverreached their Most Sacred Majesties. Where, men might ask, were theeyes of Captain Stobbud? Who had been burning towns on the Patagonianseaboard? Why should such a ship as theirs choose pearls for cargo?Why so much blood on the decks and so many guns? And where was the_Nancy_, the _Lark_, or the _Margaret Belle_? Such questions as these, he urged, might be asked by the inquisitive, and if counsel for thedefence should happen to be a fool, and unacquainted with the ways ofthe sea, they might become involved in troublesome legal formulae. AndBloody Bill, as they rudely called Mr. Gagg, a member of the crew, looked up at the sky, and said that it was a windy night and lookedlike hanging. And some of those present thoughtfully stroked theirnecks while Captain Shard unfolded to them his plan. He said the timewas come to quit the _Desperate Lark_, for she was too well known tothe navies of four kingdoms, and a fifth was getting to know her, andothers had suspicions. (More cutters than even Captain Shard suspectedwere already looking for her jolly black flag with its neatskull-and-crossbones in yellow. ) There was a little archipelago thathe knew of on the wrong side of the Sargasso Sea; there were butthirty islands there, bare, ordinary islands, but one of them floated. He had noticed it years ago, and had gone ashore and never told asoul, but had quietly anchored it with the anchor of his ship to thebottom of the sea, which just there was profoundly deep, and had madethe thing the secret of his life, determining to marry and settle downthere if it ever became impossible to earn his livelihood in the usualway at sea. When first he saw it, it was drifting slowly, with thewind in the tops of the trees; but if the cable had not rusted away, it should be still where he left it, and they would make a rudder andhollow out cabins below, and at night they would hoist sails to thetrunks of the trees and sail wherever they liked. 

And all the pirates cheered, for they wanted to set their feet on landagain somewhere where the hangman would not come and jerk them off itat once; and bold men though they were, it was a strain seeing so manylights coming their way at night. Even then. . . ! But it swerved awayagain and was lost in the mist. 

And Captain Shard said that they would need to get provisions first, and he, for one, intended to marry before he settled down; and so theyshould have one more fight before they left the ship, and sack thesea-coast city of Bombasharna and take from it provisions for severalyears, while he himself would marry the Queen of the South. And againthe pirates cheered, for often they had seen seacoast Bombasharna, andhad always envied its opulence from the sea. 

So they set all sail, and often altered their course, and dodged andfled from strange lights till dawn appeared, and all day long fledsouthwards. And by evening they saw the silver spires of slenderBombasharna, a city that was the glory of the coast. And in the midstof it, far away though they were, they saw the palace of the Queen ofthe South; and it was so full of windows all looking toward the sea, and they were so full of light, both from the sunset that was fadingupon the water and from candles that maids were lighting one by one, that it looked far off like a pearl, shimmering still in its haliotisshell, still wet from the sea. 

So Captain Shard and his pirates saw it, at evening over the water, and thought of rumours that said that Bombasharna was the loveliestcity of the coasts of the world, and that its palace was lovelier eventhan Bombasharna; but for the Queen of the South rumour had nocomparison. Then night came down and hid the silver spires, and Shardslipped on through the gathering darkness until by midnight thepiratic ship lay under the seaward battlements. 

And at the hour when sick men mostly die, and sentries on lonelyramparts stand to arms, exactly half-an-hour before dawn, Shard, withtwo rowing boats and half his crew, with craftily muffled oars, landedbelow the battlements. They were through the gateway of the palaceitself before the alarm was sounded, and as soon as they heard thealarm Shard's gunners at sea opened upon the town, and before thesleepy soldiery of Bombasharna knew whether the danger was from theland or the sea, Shard had successfully captured the Queen of theSouth. They would have looted all day that silver sea-coast city, butthere appeared with dawn suspicious topsails just along the horizon. Therefore the captain with his Queen went down to the shore at onceand hastily re-embarked and sailed away with what loot they hadhurridly got, and with fewer men, for they had to fight a good deal toget back to the boat. They cursed all day the interference of thoseominous ships which steadily grew nearer. There were six ships atfirst, and that night they slipped away from all but two; but all thenext day those two were still in sight, and each of them had more gunsthan the _Desperate Lark_. All the next night Shard dodged about thesea, but the two ships separated and one kept him in sight, and thenext morning it was alone with Shard on the sea, and his archipelagowas just in sight, the secret of his life. 

And Shard saw he must fight, and a bad fight it was, and yet it suitedShard's purpose, for he had more merry men when the fight began thanhe needed for his island. And they got it over before any other shipcame up; and Shard put all adverse evidence out of the way, and camethat night to the islands near the Sargasso Sea. 

Long before it was light the survivors of the crew were peering at thesea, and when dawn came there was the island, no bigger than twoships, straining hard at its anchor, with the wind in the tops of thetrees. 

And then they landed and dug cabins below and raised the anchor out ofthe deep sea, and soon they made the island what they calledshipshape. But the _Desperate Lark_ they sent away empty under fullsail to sea, where more nations than Shard suspected were watching forher, and where she was presently captured by an admiral of Spain, who, when he found none of that infamous crew on board to hang by the neckfrom the yard-arm, grew ill through disappointment. 

And Shard on his island offered the Queen of the South the choicest ofthe old wines of Provence, and for adornment gave her Indian jewelslooted from galleons with treasure for Madrid, and spread a tablewhere she dined in the sun, while in some cabin below he bade theleast coarse of his mariners sing; yet always she was morose and moodytowards him, and often at evening he was heard to say that he wishedhe knew more about the ways of Queens. So they lived for years, thepirates mostly gambling and drinking below, Captain Shard trying toplease the Queen of the South, and she never wholly forgettingBombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on thetrees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before thewind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but assoon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became anordinary uncharted rock. 

They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast townsas of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and evenattached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they wouldplunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship waswrecked on their island of a night they said it was all to the good. They grew very crafty in seamanship, and cunning in what they did, forthey knew that any news of the _Desperate Lark_'s old crew would bringhangmen from the interior running down to every port. 

And no one is known to have found them out or to have annexed theirisland; but a rumour arose and passed from port to port and everyplace where sailors meet together, and even survives to this day, of adangerous uncharted rock anywhere between Plymouth and the Horn, whichwould suddenly rise in the safest track of ships, and upon whichvessels were supposed to have been wrecked, leaving, strangely enough, no evidence of their doom. There was a little speculation about it atfirst, till it was silenced by the chance remark of a man old withwandering: "It is one of the mysteries that haunt the sea. "

And almost Captain Shard and the Queen of the South lived happily everafter, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would seetheir captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him mutter now and againin a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ways of Queens. "

MISS CUBBIDGE AND THE DRAGON OF ROMANCE

This tale is told in the balconies of Belgrave Square and among thetowers of Pont Street; men sing it at evening in the Brompton Road. 

Little upon her eighteenth birthday thought Miss Cubbidge, of Number12A Prince of Wales' Square, that before another year had gone its wayshe would lose the sight of that unshapely oblong that was so long herhome. And, had you told her further that within that year all trace ofthat so-called square, and of the day when her father was elected by athumping majority to share in the guidance of the destinies of theempire, should utterly fade from her memory, she would merely havesaid in that affected voice of hers, "Go to!"

There was nothing about it in the daily Press, the policy of herfather's party had no provision for it, there was no hint of it inconversation at evening parties to which Miss Cubbidge went: there wasnothing to warn her at all that a loathsome dragon with golden scalesthat rattled as he went would have come up clean out of the prime ofromance and gone by night (so far as we know) through Hammersmith, andcome to Ardle Mansion, and then had turned to his left, which ofcourse brought him to Miss Cubbidge's father's house. 

There sat Miss Cubbidge at evening on her balcony quite alone, waitingfor her father to be made a baronet. She was wearing walking-boots anda hat and a lownecked evening dress; for a painter was but just nowpainting her portrait and neither she nor the painter saw anything oddin the strange combination. She did not notice the roar of thedragon's golden scales, nor distinguish above the manifold lights ofLondon the small, red glare of his eyes. He suddenly lifted his head, a blaze of gold, over the balcony; he did not appear a yellow dragonthen, for his glistening scales reflected the beauty that London putsupon her only at evening and night. She screamed, but to no knight, nor knew what knight to call on, nor guessed where were the dragons'overthrowers of far, romantic days, nor what mightier game theychased, or what wars they waged; perchance they were busy even thenarming for Armageddon. 

 * * * * *

Out of the balcony of her father's house in Prince of Wales' Square, the painted dark-green balcony that grew blacker every year, thedragon lifted Miss Cubbidge and spread his rattling wings, and Londonfell away like an old fashion. And England fell away, and the smoke ofits factories, and the round material world that goes humming roundthe sun vexed and pursued by time, until there appeared the eternaland ancient lands of Romance lying low by mystical seas. 

You had not pictured Miss Cubbidge stroking the golden head of one ofthe dragons of song with one hand idly, while with the other shesometime played with pearls brought up from lonely places of the sea. They filled huge haliotis shells with pearls and laid them therebeside her, they brought her emeralds which she set to flash among thetresses of her long black hair, they brought her threaded sapphiresfor her cloak: all this the princes of fable did and the elves and thegnomes of myth. And partly she still lived, and partly she was onewith long-ago and with those sacred tales that nurses tell, when alltheir children are good, and evening has come, and the fire is burningwell, and the soft pat-pat of the snowflakes on the pane is like thefurtive tread of fearful things in old, enchanted woods. If at firstshe missed those dainty novelties among which she was reared, the old, sufficient song of the mystical sea singing of faery lore at firstsoothed and at last consoled her. Even, she forgot thoseadvertisements of pills that are so dear to England; even, she forgotpolitical cant and the things that one discusses and the things thatone does not, and had perforce to contend herself with seeing sailingby huge golden-laden galleons with treasure for Madrid, and the merryskull-and-cross-bones of the pirateers, and the tiny nautilus settingout to sea, and ships of heroes trafficking in romance or of princesseeking for enchanted isles. 

It was not by chains that the dragon kept her there, but by one of thespells of old. To one to whom the facilities of the daily Press hadfor so long been accorded spells would have palled--you would havesaid--and galleons after a time and all things out-of-date. After atime. But whether the centuries passed her or whether the years orwhether no time at all, she did not know. If any thing indicated thepassing of time it was the rhythm of elfin horns blowing upon theheights. If the centuries went by her the spell that bound her gaveher also perennial youth, and kept alight for ever the lantern by herside, and saved from decay the marble palace facing the mystical sea. And if no time went by her there at all, her single moment on thosemarvellous coasts was turned as it were to a crystal reflecting athousand scenes. If it was all a dream, it was a dream that knew nomorning and no fading away. The tide roamed on and whispered of masterand of myth, while near that captive lady, asleep in his marble tankthe golden dragon dreamed: and a little way out from the coast allthat the dragon dreamed showed faintly in the mist that lay over thesea. He never dreamed of any rescuing knight. So long as he dreamed, it was twilight; but when he came up nimbly out of his tank night felland starlight glistened on the dripping, golden scales. 

There he and his captive either defeated Time or never encountered himat all; while, in the world we know, raged Roncesvalles or battles yetto be--I know not to what part of the shore of Romance he bore her. Perhaps she became one of those princesses of whom fable loves totell, but let it suffice that there she lived by the sea: and kingsruled, and Demons ruled, and kings came again, and many citiesreturned to their native dust, and still she abided there, and stillher marble palace passed not away nor the power that there was in thedragon's spell. 

And only once did there ever come to her a message from the world thatof old she knew. It came in a pearly ship across the mystical sea; itwas from an old school-friend that she had had in Putney, merely anote, no more, in a little, neat, round hand: it said, "It is notProper for you to be there alone. "

THE QUEST OF THE QUEEN'S TEARS

Sylvia, Queen of the Woods, in her woodland palace, held court, andmade a mockery of her suitors. She would sing to them, she said, shewould give them banquets, she would tell them tales of legendary days, her jugglers should caper before them, her armies salute them, herfools crack jests with them and make whimsical quips, only she couldnot love them. 

This was not the way, they said, to treat princes in their splendorand mysterious troubadours concealing kingly names; it was not inaccordance with fable; myth had no precedent for it. She should havethrown her glove, they said, into some lion's den, she should haveasked for a score of venomous heads of the serpents of Licantara, ordemanded the death of any notable dragon, or sent them all upon somedeadly quest, but that she could not love them--! It was unheardof--it had no parallel in the annals of romance. 

And then she said that if they must needs have a quest she would offerher hand to him who first should move her to tears: and the questshould be called, for reference in histories or song, the Quest of theQueen's Tears, and he that achieved them she would wed, be he only apetty duke of lands unknown to romance. 

And many were moved to anger, for they hoped for some bloody quest;but the old lords chamberlain said, as they muttered among themselvesin a far, dark end of the chamber, that the quest was hard and wise, for that if she could ever weep she might also love. They had knownher all her childhood; she had never sighed. Many men had she seen, suitors and courtiers, and had never turned her head after one wentby. Her beauty was as still sunsets of bitter evenings when all theworld is frore, a wonder and a chill. She was as a sun-strickenmountain uplifted alone, all beautiful with ice, a desolate and lonelyradiance late at evening far up beyond the comfortable world, notquite to be companioned by the stars, the doom of the mountaineer. 

If she could weep, they said, she could love, they said. 

And she smiled pleasantly on those ardent princes, and troubadoursconcealing kingly names. 

Then one by one they told, each suitor prince the story of his love, with outstretched hands and kneeling on the knee; and very sorry andpitiful were the tales, so that often up in the galleries some maid ofthe palace wept. And very graciously she nodded her head like alistless magnolia in the deeps of the night moving idly to all thebreezes its glorious bloom. 

And when the princes had told their desperate loves and had departedaway with no other spoil than of their own tears only, even then therecame the unknown troubadours and told their tales in song, concealingtheir gracious names. 

And there was one, Ackronnion, clothed with rags, on which was thedust of roads, and underneath the rags was war-scarred armour whereonwere dints of blows; and when he stroked his harp and sang his song, in the gallery above maidens wept, and even old lords chamberlainwhimpered among themselves and thereafter laughed through their tearsand said: "It is easy to make old people weep and to bring idle tearsfrom lazy girls; but he will not set a-weeping the Queen of theWoods. "

And graciously she nodded, and he was the last. And disconsolate wentaway those dukes and princes, and troubadours in disguise. YetAckronnion pondered as he went away. 

King he was of Afarmah, Lool and Haf, over-lord of Zeroora and hillyChang, and duke of the dukedoms of Molong and Mlash, none of themunfamiliar with romance or unknown or overlooked in the making ofmyth. He pondered as he went in his thin disguise. 

Now by those that do not remember their childhood, having other thingsto do, be it understood that underneath fairyland, which is, as allmen know, at the edge of the world, there dwelleth the Gladsome Beast. A synonym he for joy. 

It is known how the lark in its zenith, children at play out-of-doors, good witches and jolly old parents have all been compared--howaptly!--with this very same Gladsome Beast. Only one "crab" he has (ifI may use slang for a moment to make myself perfectly clear), only onedrawback, and that is that in the gladness of his heart he spoils thecabbages of the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland, --and of course heeats men. 

It must further be understood that whoever may obtain the tears of theGladsome Beast in a bowl, and become drunken upon them, may move allpersons to shed tears of joy so long as he remains inspired by thepotion to sing or to make music. 

Now Ackronnion pondered in this wise: that if he could obtain thetears of the Gladsome Beast by means of his art, withholding him fromviolence by the spell of music, and if a friend should slay theGladsome Beast before his weeping ceased--for an end must come toweeping even with men--that so he might get safe away with the tears, and drink them before the Queen of the Woods and move her to tears ofjoy. He sought out therefore a humble knightly man who cared not forthe beauty of Sylvia, Queen of the Woods, but had found a woodlandmaiden of his own once long ago in summer. And the man's name wasArrath, a subject of Ackronnion, a knight-at-arms of the spear-guard:and together they set out through the fields of fable until they cameto Fairyland, a kingdom sunning itself (as all men know) for leaguesalong the edges of the world. And by a strange old pathway they cameto the land they sought, through a wind blowing up the pathway sheerfrom space with a kind of metallic taste from the roving stars. Evenso they came to the windy house of thatch where dwells the Old Man WhoLooks After Fairyland sitting by parlour windows that look away fromthe world. He made them welcome in his star-ward parlour, telling themtales of Space, and when they named to him their perilous quest hesaid it would be a charity to kill the Gladsome Beast; for he wasclearly one of these that liked not its happy ways. And then he tookthem out through his back door, for the front door had no pathway noreven a step--from it the old man used to empty his slops sheer on tothe Southern Cross--and so they came to the garden wherein hiscabbages were, and those flowers that only blow in Fairyland, turningtheir faces always towards the comet, and he pointed them out the wayto the place he called Underneath, where the Gladsome Beast had hislair. Then they manoeuvered. Ackronnion was to go by the way of thesteps with his harp and an agate bowl, while Arrath went round by acrag on the other side. Then the Old Man Who Looks After Fairylandwent back to his windy house, muttering angrily as he passed hiscabbages, for he did not love the ways of the Gladsome Beast; and thetwo friends parted on their separate ways. 

Nothing perceived them but that ominous crow glutted overlong alreadyupon the flesh of man. 

The wind blew bleak from the stars. 

At first there was dangerous climbing, and then Ackronnion gained thesmooth, broad steps that led from the edge to the lair, and at thatmoment heard at the top of the steps the continuous chuckles of theGladsome Beast. 

He feared then that its mirth might be insuperable, not to be saddenedby the most grievous song; nevertheless he did not turn back then, butsoftly climbed the stairs and, placing the agate bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt called Dolorous. It told of desolate, regrettedthings befallen happy cities long since in the prime of the world. Ittold of how the gods and beasts and men had long ago loved beautifulcompanions, and long ago in vain. It told of the golden host of happyhopes, but not of their achieving. It told how Love scorned Death, buttold of Death's laughter. The contented chuckles of the Gladsome Beastsuddenly ceased in his lair. He rose and shook himself. He was stillunhappy. Ackronnion still sang on the chaunt called Dolorous. TheGladsome Beast came mournfully up to him. Ackronnion ceased not forthe sake of his panic, but still sang on. He sang of the malignity oftime. Two tears welled large in the eyes of the Gladsome Beast. Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a suitable spot with his foot. Hesang of autumn and of passing away. The the beast wept as the frorehills weep in the thaw, and the tears splashed big into the agatebowl. Ackronnion desperately chaunted on; he told of the gladunnoticed things men see and do not see again, of sunlight beheldunheeded on faces now withered away. The bowl was full. Ackronnion wasdesperate: the Beast was so close. Once he thought that its mouth waswatering!--but it was only the tears that had run on the lips of theBeast. He felt as a morsel! The Beast was ceasing to weep! He sang ofworlds that had disappointed the gods. And all of a sudden, crash! andthe staunch spear of Arrath went home behind the shoulder, and thetears and the joyful ways of the Gladsome Beast were ended and overfor ever. 

And carefully they carried the bowl of tears away leaving the body ofthe Gladsome Beast as a change of diet for the ominous crow; and goingby the windy house of thatch they said farewell to the Old Man WhoLooks After Fairyland, who when he heard of the deed rubbed his handstogether and mumbled again and again, "And a very good thing, too. Mycabbages! My cabbages!"

And not long after Ackronnion sang again in the sylvan palace of theQueen of the Woods, having first drunk all the tears in his agatebowl. And it was a gala night, and all the court were there andambassadors from the lands of legend and myth, and even some fromTerra Cognita. 

And Ackronnion sang as he never sang before, and will not sing again. O, but dolorous, dolorous, are all the ways of man, few and fierce arehis days, and the end trouble, and vain, vain his endeavor: andwoman--who shall tell of it?--her doom is written with man's bylistless, careless gods with their faces to other spheres. 

Somewhat thus he began, and then inspiration seized him, and all thetrouble in the beauty of his song may not be set down by me: there wasmuch of gladness in it, and all mingled with grief: it was like theway of man: it was like our destiny. 

Sobs arose at his song, sighs came back along echoes: seneschals, soldiers, sobbed, and a clear cry made the maidens; like rain thetears came down from gallery to gallery. 

All round the Queen of the Woods was a storm of sobbing and sorrow. 

But no, she would not weep. 

THE HOARD OF THE GIBBELINS

The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Theirevil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by abridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; theyhave a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar forsapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when theyneed it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth isto attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times offamine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a littletrail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders wouldsoon be full again. 

Their tower stands on the other side of that river known to Homer--_horhoos okeanoio_, as he called it--which surrounds the world. And wherethe river is narrow and fordable the tower was built by the Gibbelins'gluttonous sires, for they liked to see burglars rowing easily totheir steps. Some nourishment that common soil has not the huge treesdrained there with their colossal roots from both banks of the river. 

There the Gibbelins lived and discreditably fed. Alderic, Knight ofthe Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of theKing's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed ithis. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken atdead of night by a valourous man, that its motive was sheer avarice!Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men tosee how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the towersaying that all was well. 

It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearfulends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to theGibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise. 

Not in the folly and frivolity of his youth did Alderic come to thetower, but he studied carefully for several years the manner in whichburglars met their doom when they went in search of the treasure thathe considered his. _In every case they had entered by the door_. 

He consulted those who gave advice on this quest; he noted everydetail and cheerfully paid their fees, and determined to do nothingthat they advised, for what were their clients now? No more thanexamples of the savoury art, and mere half-forgotten memories of ameal; and many, perhaps, no longer even that. 

These were the requisites for the quest that these men used to advise:a horse, a boat, mail armour, and at least three men-at-arms. Somesaid, "Blow the horn at the tower door"; others said, "Do not touchit. "

Alderic thus decided: he would take no horse down to the river's edge, he would not row along it in a boat, and he would go alone and by wayof the Forest Unpassable. 

How pass, you may say, the unpassable? This was his plan: there was adragon he knew of who if peasants' prayers are heeded deserved to die, not alone because of the number of maidens he cruelly slew, butbecause he was bad for the crops; he ravaged the very land and was thebane of a dukedom. 

Now Alderic determined to go up against him. So he took horse andspear and pricked till he met the dragon, and the dragon came outagainst him breathing bitter smoke. And to him Alderic shouted, "Hathfoul dragon ever slain true knight?" And well the dragon knew thatthis had never been, and he hung his head and was silent, for he wasglutted with blood. "Then, " said the knight, "if thou would'st evertaste maiden's blood again thou shalt be my trusty steed, and if not, by this spear there shall befall thee all that the troubadours tell ofthe dooms of thy breed. "

And the dragon did not open his ravening mouth, nor rush upon theknight, breathing out fire; for well he knew the fate of those thatdid these things, but he consented to the terms imposed, and swore tothe knight to become his trusty steed. 

It was on a saddle upon this dragon's back that Alderic afterwardssailed above the unpassable forest, even above the tops of thosemeasureless trees, children of wonder. But first he pondered thatsubtle plan of his which was more profound than merely to avoid allthat had been done before; and he commanded a blacksmith, and theblacksmith made him a pickaxe. 

Now there was great rejoicing at the rumour of Alderic's quest, forall folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that hewould succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in thecities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men inAlderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, whofeared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also becausemen hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, theywould shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains thatbound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to themoon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged. There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied theirhoard. 

So they all cheered, that day when he mounted his dragon, as though hewas already a conqueror, and what pleased them more than the good thatthey hoped he would do to the world was that he scattered gold as herode away; for he would not need it, he said, if he found theGibbelins' hoard, and he would not need it more if he smoked on theGibbelins' table. 

When they heard that he had rejected the advice of those that gave it, some said that the knight was mad, and others said he was greater thanthose what gave the advice, but none appreciated the worth of hisplan. 

He reasoned thus: for centuries men had been well advised and had goneby the cleverest way, while the Gibbelins came to expect them to comeby boat and to look for them at the door whenever their larder wasempty, even as a man looketh for a snipe in a marsh; but how, saidAlderic, if a snipe should sit in the top of a tree, and would menfind him there? Assuredly never! So Alderic decided to swim the riverand not to go by the door, but to pick his way into the tower throughthe stone. Moreover, it was in his mind to work below the level of theocean, the river (as Homer knew) that girdles the world, so that assoon as he made a hole in the wall the water should pour in, confounding the Gibbelins, and flooding the cellars, rumoured to betwenty feet in depth, and therein he would dive for emeralds as adiver dives for pearls. 

And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his homescattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed through manykingdoms, the dragon snapping at maidens as he went, but being unableto eat them because of the bit in his mouth, and earning no gentlerreward than a spurthrust where he was softest. And so they came to theswart arboreal precipice of the unpassable forest. The dragon rose atit with a rattle of wings. Many a farmer near the edge of the worldssaw him up there where yet the twilight lingered, a faint, black, wavering line; and mistaking him for a row of geese going inland fromthe ocean, went into their houses cheerily rubbing their hands andsaying that winter was coming, and that we should soon have snow. Sooneven there the twilight faded away, and when they descended at theedge of the world it was night and the moon was shining. Ocean, theancient river, narrow and shallow there, flowed by and made no murmur. Whether the Gibbelins banqueted or whether they watched by the door, they also made no murmur. And Alderic dismounted and took his armouroff, and saying one prayer to his lady, swam with his pickaxe. He didnot part from his sword, for fear that he meet with a Gibbelin. Landedthe other side, he began to work at once, and all went well with him. Nothing put out its head from any window, and all were lighted so thatnothing within could see him in the dark. The blows of his pickaxewere dulled in the deep walls. All night he worked, no sound came tomolest him, and at dawn the last rock swerved and tumbled inwards, andthe river poured in after. Then Alderic took a stone, and went to thebottom step, and hurled the stone at the door; he heard the echoesroll into the tower, then he ran back and dived through the hole inthe wall. 

He was in the emerald-cellar. There was no light in the lofty vaultabove him, but, diving through twenty feet of water, he felt the floorall rough with emeralds, and open coffers full of them. By a faint rayof the moon he saw that the water was green with them, and easilyfilling a satchel, he rose again to the surface; and there were theGibbelins waist-deep in the water, with torches in their hands! And, without saying a word, _or even smiling_, they neatly hanged him onthe outer wall--and the tale is one of those that have not a happyending. 

HOW NUTH WOULD HAVE PRACTISED HIS ART UPON THE GNOLES

Despite the advertisements of rival firms, it is probable that everytradesman knows that nobody in business at the present time has aposition equal to that of Mr. Nuth. To those outside the magic circleof business, his name is scarcely known; he does not need toadvertise, he is consummate. He is superiour even to moderncompetition, and, whatever claims they boast, his rivals know it. Histerms are moderate, so much cash down when when the goods aredelivered, so much in blackmail afterwards. He consults yourconvenience. His skill may be counted upon; I have seen a shadow on awindy night move more noisily than Nuth, for Nuth is a burglar bytrade. Men have been known to stay in country houses and to send adealer afterwards to bargain for a piece of tapestry that they sawthere--some article of furniture, some picture. This is bad taste: butthose whose culture is more elegant invariably send Nuth a night ortwo after their visit. He has a way with tapestry; you would scarcelynotice that the edges had been cut. And often when I see some huge, new house full of old furniture and portraits from other ages, I sayto myself, "These mouldering chairs, these full-length ancestors andcarved mahogany are the produce of the incomparable Nuth. "

It may be urged against my use of the word incomparable that in theburglary business the name of Slith stands paramount and alone; and ofthis I am not ignorant; but Slith is a classic, and lived long ago, and knew nothing at all of modern competition; besides which thesurprising nature of his doom has possibly cast a glamour upon Sliththat exaggerates in our eyes his undoubted merits. 

It must not be thought that I am a friend of Nuth's; on the contrarysuch politics as I have are on the side of Property; and he needs nowords from me, for his position is almost unique in trade, being amongthe every few that do not need to advertise. 

At the time that my story begins Nuth lived in a roomy house inBelgrave Square: in his inimitable way he had made friends with thecaretaker. The place suited Nuth, and, whenever anyone came to inspectit before purchase, the caretaker used to praise the house in thewords that Nuth had suggested. "If it wasn't for the drains, " shewould say, "it's the finest house in London, " and when they pounced onthis remark and asked questions about the drains, she would answerthem that the drains also were good, but not so good as the house. They did not see Nuth when they went over the rooms, but Nuth wasthere. 

Here in a neat black dress on one spring morning came an old womanwhose bonnet was lined with red, asking for Mr. Nuth; and with hercame her large and awkward son. Mrs. Eggins, the caretaker, glanced upthe street, and then she let them in, and left them to wait in thedrawing-room amongst furniture all mysterious with sheets. For a longwhile they waited, and then there was a smell of pipe-tobacco, andthere was Nuth standing quite close to them. 

"Lord, " said the old woman whose bonnet was lined with red, "you didmake me start. " And then she saw by his eyes that that was not the wayto speak to Mr. Nuth. 

And at last Nuth spoke, and very nervously the old woman explainedthat her son was a likely lad, and had been in business already butwanted to better himself, and she wanted Mr. Nuth to teach him alivelihood. 

First of all Nuth wanted to see a business reference, and when he wasshown one from a jeweller with whom he happened to be hand-in-glovethe upshot of it was that he agreed to take young Tonker (for this wasthe surname of the likely lad) and to make him his apprentice. And theold woman whose bonnet was lined with red went back to her littlecottage in the country, and every evening said to her old man, "Tonker, we must fasten the shutters of a night-time, for Tommy's aburglar now. "

The details of the likely lad's apprenticeship I do not propose togive; for those that are in the business know those details already, and those that are in other businesses care only for their own, whilemen of leisure who have no trade at all would fail to appreciate thegradual degrees by which Tommy Tonker came first to cross bare boards, covered with little obstacles in the dark, without making any sound, and then to go silently up creaky stairs, and then to open doors, andlastly to climb. 

Let it suffice that the business prospered greatly, while glowingreports of Tommy Tonker's progress were sent from time to time to theold woman whose bonnet was lined with red in the labourioushandwriting of Nuth. Nuth had given up lessons in writing very early, for he seemed to have some prejudice against forgery, and thereforeconsidered writing a waste of time. And then there came thetransaction with Lord Castlenorman at his Surrey residence. Nuthselected a Saturday night, for it chanced that Saturday was observedas Sabbath in the family of Lord Castlenorman, and by eleven o'clockthe whole house was quiet. Five minutes before midnight Tommy Tonker, instructed by Mr. Nuth, who waited outside, came away with onepocketful of rings and shirt-studs. It was quite a light pocketful, but the jewellers in Paris could not match it without sendingspecially to Africa, so that Lord Castlenorman had to borrow boneshirt-studs. 

Not even rumour whispered the name of Nuth. Were I to say that thisturned his head, there are those to whom the assertion would givepain, for his associates hold that his astute judgment was unaffectedby circumstance. I will say, therefore, that it spurred his genius toplan what no burglar had ever planned before. It was nothing less thanto burgle the house of the gnoles. And this that abstemious manunfolded to Tonker over a cup of tea. Had Tonker not been nearlyinsane with pride over their recent transaction, and had he not beenblinded by a veneration for Nuth, he would have--but I cry over spiltmilk. He expostulated respectfully; he said he would rather not go; hesaid it was not fair; he allowed himself to argue; and in the end, onewindy October morning with a menace in the air found him and Nuthdrawing near to the dreadful wood. 

Nuth, by weighing little emeralds against pieces of common rock, hadascertained the probable weight of those house-ornaments that thegnoles are believed to possess in the narrow, lofty house wherein theyhave dwelt from of old. They decided to steal two emeralds and tocarry them between them on a cloak; but if they should be too heavyone must be dropped at once. Nuth warned young Tonker against greed, and explained that the emeralds were worth less than cheese until theywere safe away from the dreadful wood. 

Everything had been planned, and they walked now in silence. 

No track led up to the sinister gloom of the trees, either of men orcattle; not even a poacher had been there snaring elves for over ahundred years. You did not trespass twice in the dells of the gnoles. And, apart from the things that were done there, the trees themselveswere a warning, and did not wear the wholesome look of those that weplant ourselves. 

The nearest village was some miles away with the backs of all itshouses turned to the wood, and without one window at all facing inthat direction. They did not speak of it there, and elsewhere it isunheard of. 

Into this wood stepped Nuth and Tommy Tonker. They had no firearms. Tonker had asked for a pistol, but Nuth replied that the sound of ashot "would bring everything down on us, " and no more was said aboutit. 

Into the wood they went all day, deeper and deeper. They saw theskeleton of some early Georgian poacher nailed to a door in an oaktree; sometimes they saw a fairy scuttle away from them; once Tonkerstepped heavily on a hard, dry stick, after which they both lay stillfor twenty minutes. And the sunset flared full of omens through thetree trunks, and night fell, and they came by fitful starlight, asNuth had foreseen, to that lean, high house where the gnoles sosecretly dwelt. 

All was so silent by that unvalued house that the faded courage ofTonker flickered up, but to Nuth's experienced sense it seemed toosilent; and all the while there was that look in the sky that wasworse than a spoken doom, so that Nuth, as is often the case when menare in doubt, had leisure to fear the worst. Nevertheless he did notabandon the business, but sent the likely lad with the instruments ofhis trade by means of the ladder to the old green casement. And themoment that Tonker touched the withered boards, the silence that, though ominous, was earthly, became unearthly like the touch of aghoul. And Tonker heard his breath offending against that silence, andhis heart was like mad drums in a night attack, and a string of one ofhis sandals went tap on a rung of a ladder, and the leaves of theforest were mute, and the breeze of the night was still; and Tonkerprayed that a mouse or a mole might make any noise at all, but not acreature stirred, even Nuth was still. And then and there, while yethe was undiscovered, the likely lad made up his mind, as he shouldhave done long before, to leave those colossal emeralds where theywere and have nothing further to do with the lean, high house of thegnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retirefrom business at once and buy a place in the country. Then hedescended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched himthough knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and theunearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapidscreams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind--screams that camefaster and faster until they were incoherent. And where they took himit is not good to ask, and what they did with him I shall not say. 

Nuth looked on for a while from the corner of the house with a mildsurprise on his face as he rubbed his chin, for the trick of the holesin the trees was new to him; then he stole nimbly away through thedreadful wood. 

"And did they catch Nuth?" you ask me, gentle reader. 

"Oh, no, my child" (for such a question is childish). "Nobody evercatches Nuth. "

HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER

The child that played about the terraces and gardens in sight of theSurrey hills never knew that it was he that should come to theUltimate City, never knew that he should see the Under Pits, thebarbicans and the holy minarets of the mightiest city known. I thinkof him now as a child with a little red watering-can going about thegardens on a summer's day that lit the warm south country, hisimagination delighted with all tales of quite little adventures, andall the while there was reserved for him that feat at which menwonder. 

Looking in other directions, away from the Surrey hills, through allhis infancy he saw that precipice that, wall above wall and mountainabove mountain, stands at the edge of the World, and in perpetualtwilight alone with the Moon and the Sun holds up the inconceivableCity of Never. To read its streets he was destined; prophecy knew it. He had the magic halter, and a worn old rope it was; an old wayfaringwoman had given it to him: it had the power to hold any animal whoserace had never known captivity, such as the unicorn, the hippogriffPegasus, dragons and wyverns; but with a lion, giraffe, camel orhorse, it was useless. 

How often we have seen that City of Never, that marvel of the Nations!Not when it is night in the World, and we can see no further than thestars; not when the sun is shining where we dwell, dazzling our eyes;but when the sun has set on some stormy days, all at once repentant atevening, and those glittering cliffs reveal themselves which we almosttake to be clouds, and it is twilight with us as it is for ever withthem, then on their gleaming summits we see those golden domes thatoverpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity andcalm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder's native haunt. Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at hersister the World. 

It had been prophecied that he should come there. They knew it whenthe pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were givenunto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passedinto history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it asit goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. Thehippogriffs dance before dawn in the upper air; long before sunriseflashes upon our lawns they go to glitter in light that has not yetcome to the World, and as the dawn works up from the ragged hills andthe stars feel it they go slanting earthwards, till sunlight touchesthe tops of the tallest trees, and the hippogriffs alight with arattle of quills and fold their wings and gallop and gambol away tillthey come to some prosperous, wealthy, detestable town, and they leapat once from the fields and soar away from the sight of it, pursued bythe horrible smoke of it until they come again to the pure blue air. 

He whom prophecy had named from of old to come to the City of Never, went down one midnight with his magic halter to a lake-side where thehippogriffs alighted at dawn, for the turf was soft there and theycould gallop far before they came to a town, and there he waitedhidden near their hoofmarks. And the stars paled a little and grewindistinct; but there was no other sign as yet of the dawn, when thereappeared far up in the deeps of the night two little saffron specks, then four and five: it was the hippogriffs dancing and twirling aroundin the sun. Another flock joined them, there were twelve of them now;they danced there, flashing their colours back to the sun, theydescended in wide curves slowly; trees down on earth revealed againstthe sky, jet-black each delicate twig; a star disappeared from acluster, now another; and dawn came on like music, like a new song. Ducks shot by to the lake from still dark fields of corn, far voicesuttered, a colour grew upon water, and still the hippogriffs gloriedin the light, revelling up in the sky; but when pigeons stirred on thebranches and the first small bird was abroad, and little coots fromthe rushes ventured to peer about, then there came down on a suddenwith a thunder of feathers the hippogriffs, and, as they landed fromtheir celestial heights all bathed with the day's first sunlight, theman whose destiny it was as from of old to come to the City of Never, sprang up and caught the last with the magic halter. It plunged, butcould not escape it, for the hippogriffs are of the uncaptured races, and magic has power over the magical, so the man mounted it, and itsoared again for the heights whence it had come, as a wounded beastgoes home. But when they came to the heights that venturous rider sawhuge and fair to the left of him the destined City of Never, and hebeheld the towers of Lel and Lek, Neerid and Akathooma, and the cliffsof Toldenarba a-glistening in the twilight like an alabaster statue ofthe Evening. Towards them he wrenched the halter, towards Toldenarbaand the Under Pits; the wings of the hippogriff roared as the halterturned him. Of the Under Pits who shall tell? Their mystery is secret. It is held by some that they are the sources of night, and thatdarkness pours from them at evening upon the world; while others hintthat knowledge of these might undo our civilization. 

There watched him ceaselessly from the Under Pits those eyes whoseduty it is; from further within and deeper, the bats what dwell therearose when they saw the surprise in the eyes; the sentinels on thebulwarks beheld that stream of bats and lifted up their spears as itwere for war. Nevertheless when they perceived that that war for whichthey watched was not now come upon them, they lowered their spears andsuffered him to enter, and he passed whirring through the earthwardgateway. Even so he came, as foretold, to the City of Never perchedupon Toldenarba, and saw late twilight on those pinnacles that know noother light. All the domes were of copper, but the spires on theirsummits were gold. Little steps of onyx ran all this way and that. With cobbled agates were its streets a glory. Through small squarepanes of rose-quartz the citizens looked from their houses. To them asthey looked abroad the World far-off seemed happy. Clad though thatcity was in one robe always, in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy ofeven so lovely a wonder: city and twilight were both peerless but foreach other. Built of a stone unknown in the world we tread were itsbastions, quarried we known not where, but called by the gnomes_abyx_, it so flashed back to the twilight its glories, colour forcolour, that none can say of them where their boundary is, and whichthe eternal twilight, and which the City of Never; they are thetwin-born children, the fairest daughters of Wonder. Time had beenthere, but not to the domes that were made of copper, the rest he hadleft untouched, even he, the destroyer of cities, by what bribe I knownot averted. Nevertheless they often wept in Never for change andpassing away, mourning catastrophes in other worlds, and they builttemples sometimes to ruined stars that had fallen flaming down fromthe Milky Way, giving them worship still when by us long sinceforgotten. Other temples they have--who knows to what divinities?

And he that was destined alone of men to come to the City of Never waswell content to behold it as he trotted down its agate street, withthe wings of his hippogriff furled, seeing at either side of himmarvel on marvel of which even China is ignorant. Then as he nearedthe city's further rampart by which no inhabitant stirred, and lookedin a direction to which no houses faced with any rose-pink windows, hesuddenly saw far-off, dwarfing the mountains, an even greater city. Whether that city was built upon the twilight or whether it rose fromthe coasts of some other world he did not know. He saw it dominate theCity of Never, and strove to reach it; but at this unmeasured home ofunknown colossi the hippogriff shied frantically, and neither themagic halter nor anything that he did could make the monster face it. At last, from the City of Never's lonely outskirts where noinhabitants walked, the rider turned slowly earthward. He knew now whyall the windows faced this way--the denizens of the twilight gazed atthe world and not at a greater than them. Then from the last step ofthe earthward stairway, like lead past the Under Pits and down theglittering face of Toldenarba, down from the overshadowed glories ofthe gold-tipped City of Never and out of perpetual twilight, swoopedthe man on his winged monster: the wind that slept at the time leapedup like a dog at their onrush, it uttered a cry and ran past them. Down on the World it was morning; night was roaming away with hiscloak trailed behind him, with mists turned over and over as he went, the orb was grey but it glittered, lights blinked surprisingly inearly windows, forth over wet, dim fields went cows from their houses:even in this hour touched the fields again the feet of the hippogriff. And the moment that the man dismounted and took off his magic halterthe hippogriff flew slanting away with a whirr, going back to someairy dancing-place of his people. 

And he that surmounted glittering Toldenarba and came alone of men tothe City of Never has his name and his fame among nations; but he andthe people of that twilit city well know two things unguessed by othermen, they that there is another city fairer than theirs, and he--adeed unaccomplished. 

THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP

It was the occupation of Mr. Thomas Shap to persuade customers thatthe goods were genuine and of an excellent quality, and that asregards the price their unspoken will was consulted. And in order tocarry on this occupation he went by train very early every morningsome few miles nearer to the City from the suburb in which he slept. This was the use to which he put his life. 

From the moment when he first perceived (not as one reads a thing in abook, but as truths are revealed to one's instinct) the verybeastliness of his occupation, and of the house that he slept in, itsshape, make and pretensions, and even the clothes that he wore; fromthat moment he withdrew his dreams from it, his fancies, hisambitions, everything in fact except that ponderable Mr. Shap thatdressed in a frock-coat, bought tickets and handled money and could inturn be handled by the statistician. The priest's share in Mr. Shap, the share of the poet, never caught the early train to the City atall. 

He used to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in hisdreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikesthe world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imaginebutterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples theybuilt to their gods. 

They noticed that he was silent, and even absent at times, but theyfound no fault with his behaviour with customers, to whom he remainedas plausible as of old. So he dreamed for a year, and his fancy gainedstrength as he dreamed. He still read halfpenny papers in the train, still discussed the passing day's ephemeral topic, still voted atelections, though he no longer did these things with the wholeShap--his soul was no longer in them. 

He had had a pleasant year, his imagination was all new to him still, and it had often discovered beautiful things away where it went, southeast at the edge of the twilight. And he had a matter-of-fact andlogical mind, so that he often said, "Why should I pay my twopence atthe electric theatre when I can see all sorts of things quite easilywithout?" Whatever he did was logical before anything else, and thosethat knew him always spoke of Shap as "a sound, sane, level-headedman. "

On far the most important day of his life he went as usual to town bythe early train to sell plausible articles to customers, while thespiritual Shap roamed off to fanciful lands. As he walked from thestation, dreamy but wide awake, it suddenly struck him that the realShap was not the one walking to Business in black and ugly clothes, but he who roamed along a jungle's edge near the ramparts of an oldand Eastern city that rose up sheer from the sand, and against whichthe desert lapped with one eternal wave. He used to fancy the name ofthat city was Larkar. "After all, the fancy is as real as the body, "he said with perfect logic. It was a dangerous theory. 

For that other life that he led he realized, as in Business, theimportance and value of method. He did not let his fancy roam too faruntil it perfectly knew its first surroundings. Particularly heavoided the jungle--he was not afraid to meet a tiger there (after allit was not real), but stranger things might crouch there. Slowly hebuilt up Larkar: rampart by rampart, towers for archers, gateway ofbrass, and all. And then one day he argued, and quite rightly, thatall the silk-clad people in its streets, their camels, their waresthat come from Inkustahn, the city itself, were all the things of hiswill--and then he made himself King. He smiled after that when peopledid not raise their hats to him in the street, as he walked from thestation to Business; but he was sufficiently practical for recognizethat it was better not to talk of this to those that only knew him asMr. Shap. 

Now that he was King in the city of Larkar and in all the desert thatlay to the East and North he sent his fancy to wander further afield. He took the regiments of his camel-guard and went jingling out ofLarkar, with little silver bells under the camels' chins, and came toother cities far-off on the yellow sand, with clear white walls andtowers, uplifting themselves in the sun. Through their gates he passedwith his three silken regiments, the light-blue regiment of thecamel-guards being upon his right and the green regiment riding at hisleft, the lilac regiment going on before. When he had gone through thestreets of any city and observed the ways of its people, and had seenthe way that the sunlight struck its towers, he would proclaim himselfKing there, and then ride on in fancy. So he passed from city to cityand from land to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap was, I think heoverlooked the lust of aggrandizement to which kings have so oftenbeen victims; and so it was that when the first few cities had openedtheir gleaming gates and he saw peoples prostrate before his camel, and spearmen cheering along countless balconies, and priests come outto do him reverence, he that had never had even the lowliest authorityin the familiar world became unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy rideat inordinate speed, he forsook method, scarce was he king of a landbut he yearned to extend his borders; so he journeyed deeper anddeeper into the wholly unknown. The concentration that he gave to thisinordinate progress through countries of which history is ignorant andcities so fantastic in their bulwarks that, though their inhabitantswere human, yet the foe that they feared seemed something less ormore; the amazement with which he beheld gates and towers unknown evento art, and furtive people thronging intricate ways to acclaim him astheir sovereign--all these things began to affect his capacity forBusiness. He knew as well as any that his fancy could not rule thesebeautiful lands unless that other Shap, however unimportant, were wellsheltered and fed: and shelter and food meant money, and money, Business. His was more like the mistake of some gambler with cunningschemes who overlooks human greed. One day his fancy, riding in themorning, came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise, in whose opalescentwall were gates of gold, so huge that a river poured between the bars, floating in, when the gates were opened, large galleons under sail. Thence there came dancing out a company with instruments, and made amelody all around the wall; that morning Mr. Shap, the bodily Shap inLondon, forgot the train to town. 

Until a year ago he had never imagined at all; it is not to bewondered at that all these things now newly seen by his fancy shouldplay tricks at first with the memory of even so sane a man. He gave upreading the papers altogether, he lost all interest in politics, hecared less and less for things that were going on around him. Thisunfortunate missing of the morning train even occurred again, and thefirm spoke to him severely about it. But he had his consolation. Werenot Arathrion and Argun Zeerith and all the level coasts of Oora his?And even as the firm found fault with him his fancy watched the yakson weary journeys, slow specks against the snow-fields, bringingtribute; and saw the green eyes of the mountain men who had looked athim strangely in the city of Nith when he had entered it by the desertdoor. Yet his logic did not forsake him; he knew well that his strangesubjects did not exist, but he was prouder of having created them withhis brain, than merely of ruling them only; thus in his pride he felthimself something more great than a king, he did not dare to thinkwhat! He went into the temple of the city of Zorra and stood some timethere alone: all the priests kneeled to him when he came away. 

He cared less and less for the things we care about, for the affairsof Shap, the business-man in London. He began to despise the man witha royal contempt. 

One day when he sat in Sowla, the city of the Thuls, throned on oneamethyst, he decided, and it was proclaimed on the moment by silvertrumpets all along the land, that he would be crowned as king over allthe lands of Wonder. 

By that old temple where the Thuls worshipped, year in, year out, forover a thousand years, they pitched pavilions in the open air. Thetrees that blew there threw out radiant scents unknown in anycountries that know the map; the stars blazed fiercely for that famousoccasion. A fountain hurled up, clattering, ceaselessly into the airarmfuls on armfuls of diamonds. A deep hush waited for the goldentrumpets, the holy coronation night was come. At the top of those old, worn steps, going down we know not whither, stood the king in theemerald-and-amethyst cloak, the ancient garb of the Thuls; beside himlay that Sphinx that for the last few weeks had advised him in hisaffairs. 

Slowly, with music when the trumpets sounded, came up towards him fromwe know not where, one-hundred-and-twenty archbishops, twenty angelsand two archangels, with that terrific crown, the diadem of the Thuls. They knew as they came up to him that promotion awaited them allbecause of this night's work. Silent, majestic, the king awaited them. 

The doctors downstairs were sitting over their supper, the warderssoftly slipped from room to room, and when in that cosy dormitory ofHanwell they saw the king still standing erect and royal, his faceresolute, they came up to him and addressed him:

"Go to bed, " they said--"pretty bed. " So he lay down and soon was fastasleep: the great day was over. 

CHU-BU AND SHEEMISH

It was the custom on Tuesdays in the temple of Chu-bu for the prieststo enter at evening and chant, "There is none but Chu-bu. "

And all the people rejoiced and cried out, "There is none but Chu-bu. "And honey was offered to Chu-bu, and maize and fat. Thus was hemagnified. 

Chu-bu was an idol of some antiquity, as may be seen from the colourof the wood. He had been carved out of mahogany, and after he wascarved he had been polished. Then they had set him up on the dioritepedestal with the brazier in front of it for burning spices and theflat gold plates for fat. Thus they worshipped Chu-bu. 

He must have been there for over a hundred years when one day thepriests came in with another idol into the temple of Chu-bu and set itup on a pedestal near Chu-bu's and sang, "There is also Sheemish. "

And all the people rejoiced and cried out, "There is also Sheemish. "

Sheemish was palpably a modern idol, and although the wood was stainedwith a dark-red dye, you could see that he had only just been carved. And honey was offered to Sheemish as well as Chu-bu, and also maizeand fat. 

The fury of Chu-bu knew no time-limit: he was furious all that night, and next day he was furious still. The situation called for immediatemiracles. To devastate the city with a pestilence and kill all hispriests was scarcely within his power, therefore he wiselyconcentrated such divine powers as he had in commanding a littleearthquake. "Thus, " thought Chu-bu, "will I reassert myself as theonly god, and men shall spit upon Sheemish. "

Chu-bu willed it and willed it and still no earthquake came, whensuddenly he was aware that the hated Sheemish was daring to attempt amiracle too. He ceased to busy himself about the earthquake andlistened, or shall I say felt, for what Sheemish was thinking; forgods are aware of what passes in the mind by a sense that is otherthan any of our five. Sheemish was trying to make an earthquake too. 

The new god's motive was probably to assert himself. I doubt if Chu-buunderstood or cared for his motive; it was sufficient for an idolalready aflame with jealousy that his detestable rival was on theverge of a miracle. All the power of Chu-bu veered round at once andset dead against an earthquake, even a little one. It was thus in thetemple of Chu-bu for some time, and then no earthquake came. 

To be a god and to fail to achieve a miracle is a despairingsensation; it is as though among men one should determine upon ahearty sneeze and as though no sneeze should come; it is as though oneshould try to swim in heavy boots or remember a name that is utterlyforgotten: all these pains were Sheemish's. 

And upon Tuesday the priests came in, and the people, and they didworship Chu-bu and offered fat to him, saying, "O Chu-bu who madeeverything, " and then the priests sang, "There is also Sheemish"; andChu-bu was put to shame and spake not for three days. 

Now there were holy birds in the temple of Chu-bu, and when the thirdday was come and the night thereof, it was as it were revealed to themind of Chu-bu, that there was dirt upon the head of Sheemish. 

And Chu-bu spake unto Sheemish as speak the gods, moving no lips noryet disturbing the silence, saying, "There is dirt upon thy head, OSheemish. " All night long he muttered again and again, "there is dirtupon Sheemish's head. " And when it was dawn and voices were heard faroff, Chu-bu became exultant with Earth's awakening things, and criedout till the sun was high, "Dirt, dirt, dirt, upon the head ofSheemish, " and at noon he said, "So Sheemish would be a god. " Thus wasSheemish confounded. 

And with Tuesday one came and washed his head with rose-water, and hewas worshipped again when they sang "There is also Sheemish. " And yetwas Chu-bu content, for he said, "The head of Sheemish has beendefiled, " and again, "His head was defiled, it is enough. " And oneevening lo! there was dirt on the head of Chu-bu also, and the thingwas perceived of Sheemish. 

It is not with the gods as it is with men. We are angry one withanother and turn from our anger again, but the wrath of the gods isenduring. Chu-bu remembered and Sheemish did not forget. They spake aswe do not speak, in silence yet heard of each other, nor were theirthoughts as our thoughts. We should not judge them merely by humanstandards. All night long they spake and all night said these wordsonly: "Dirty Chu-bu, " "Dirty Sheemish. " "Dirty Chu-bu, " "DirtySheemish, " all night long. Their wrath had not tired at dawn, andneither had wearied of his accusation. And gradually Chu-bu came torealize that he was nothing more than the equal of Sheemish. All godsare jealous, but this equality with the upstart Sheemish, a thing ofpainted wood a hundred years newer than Chu-bu, and this worship givento Sheemish in Chu-bu's own temple, were particularly bitter. Chu-buwas jealous even for a god; and when Tuesday came again, the third dayof Sheemish's worship, Chu-bu could bear it no longer. He felt thathis anger must be revealed at all costs, and he returned with all thevehemence of his will to achieving a little earthquake. Theworshippers had just gone from his temple when Chu-bu settled his willto attain this miracle. Now and then his meditations were disturbed bythat now familiar dictum, "Dirty Chu-bu, " but Chu-bu willedferociously, not even stopping to say what he longed to say and hadalready said nine hundred times, and presently even theseinterruptions ceased. 

They ceased because Sheemish had returned to a project that he hadnever definitely abandoned, the desire to assert himself and exalthimself over Chu-bu by performing a miracle, and the district beingvolcanic he had chosen a little earthquake as the miracle most easilyaccomplished by a small god. 

Now an earthquake that is commanded by two gods has double the chanceof fulfilment than when it is willed by one, and an incalculablygreater chance than when two gods are pulling different ways; as, totake the case of older and greater gods, when the sun and the moonpull in the same direction we have the biggest tides. 

Chu-bu knew nothing of the theory of tides, and was too much occupiedwith his miracle to notice what Sheemish was doing. And suddenly themiracle was an accomplished thing. 

It was a very local earthquake, for there are other gods than Chu-buor even Sheemish, and it was only a little one as the gods had willed, but it loosened some monoliths in a colonnade that supported one sideof the temple and the whole of one wall fell in, and the low huts ofthe people of that city were shaken a little and some of their doorswere jammed so that they would not open; it was enough, and for amoment it seemed that it was all; neither Chu-bu nor Sheemishcommanded there should be more, but they had set in motion an old lawolder than Chu-bu, the law of gravity that that colonnade had heldback for a hundred years, and the temple of Chu-bu quivered and thenstood still, swayed once and was overthrown, on the heads of Chu-buand Sheemish. 

No one rebuilt it, for nobody dared to near such terrible gods. Somesaid that Chu-bu wrought the miracle, but some said Sheemish, andthereof schism was born. The weakly amiable, alarmed by the bitternessof rival sects, sought compromise and said that both had wrought it, but no one guessed the truth that the thing was done in rivalry. 

And a saying arose, and both sects held this belief in common, thatwhoso toucheth Chu-bu shall die or whoso looketh upon Sheemish. 

That is how Chu-bu came into my possession when I travelled oncebeyond the hills of Ting. I found him in the fallen temple of Chu-buwith his hands and toes sticking up out of the rubbish, lying upon hisback, and in that attitude just as I found him I keep him to this dayon my mantlepiece, as he is less liable to be upset that way. Sheemishwas broken, so I left him where he was. 

And there is something so helpless about Chu-bu with his fat handsstuck up in the air that sometimes I am moved out of compassion to bowdown to him and pray, saying, "O Chu-bu, thou that made everything, help thy servant. "

Chu-bu cannot do much, though once I am sure that at a game of bridgehe sent me the ace of trumps after I had not held a card worth havingfor the whole of the evening. And chance alone could have done as muchas that for me. But I do not tell this to Chu-bu. 

THE WONDERFUL WINDOW

The old man in the Oriental-looking robe was being moved on by thepolice, and it was this that attracted to him and the parcel under hisarm the attention of Mr. Sladden, whose livelihood was earned in theemporium of Messrs. Mergin and Chater, that is to say in theirestablishment. 

Mr. Sladden had the reputation of being the silliest young man inBusiness; a touch of romance--a mere suggestion of it--would send hiseyes gazing away as though the walls of the emporium were of gossamerand London itself a myth, instead of attending to customers. 

Merely the fact that the dirty piece of paper that wrapped the oldman's parcel was covered with Arabic writing was enough to give Mr. Sladden the ideas of romance, and he followed until the little crowdfell off and the stranger stopped by the kerb and unwrapped his parceland prepared to sell the thing that was inside it. It was a littlewindow in old wood with small panes set in lead; it was not much morethan a foot in breadth and was under two feet long. Mr. Sladden hadnever before seen a window sold in the street, so he asked the priceof it. 

"Its price is all you possess, " said the old man. 

"Where did you get it?" said Mr. Sladden, for it was a strange window. 

"I gave all that I possessed for it in the streets of Baghdad. "

"Did you possess much?" said Mr. Sladden. 

"I had all that I wanted, " he said, "except this window. "

"It must be a good window, " said the young man. 

"It is a magical window, " said the old one. 

"I have only ten shillings on me, but I have fifteen-and-six at home. "

The old man thought for a while. 

"Then twenty-five-and-sixpence is the price of the window, " he said. 

It was only when the bargain was completed and the ten shillings paidand the strange old man was coming for his fifteen-and-six and to fitthe magical window into his only room that it occurred to Mr. Sladden's mind that he did not want a window. And then they were atthe door of the house in which he rented a room, and it seemed toolate to explain. 

The stranger demanded privacy when he fitted up the window, so Mr. Sladden remained outside the door at the top of a little flight ofcreaky stairs. He heard no sound of hammering. 

And presently the strange old man came out with his faded yellow robeand his great beard, and his eyes on far-off places. "It is finished, "he said, and he and the young man parted. And whether he remained aspot of colour and an anachronism in London, or whether he ever cameagain to Baghdad, and what dark hands kept on the circulation of histwenty-five-and-six, Mr. Sladden never knew. 

Mr. Sladden entered the bare-boarded room in which he slept and spentall his indoor hours between closing-time and the hour at whichMessrs. Mergin and Chater commenced. To the Penates of so dingy a roomhis neat frock-coat must have been a continual wonder. Mr. Sladdentook it off and folded it carefully; and there was the old man'swindow rather high up in the wall. There had been no window in thatwall hitherto, nor any ornament at all but a small cupboard, so whenMr. Sladden had put his frock-coat safely away he glanced through hisnew window. It was where his cupboard had been in which he kept histea-things: they were all standing on the table now. When Mr. Sladdenglanced through his new window it was late in a summer's evening; thebutterflies some while ago would have closed their wings, though thebat would scarcely yet be drifting abroad--but this was in London: theshops were shut and street-lamps not yet lighted. 

Mr. Sladden rubbed his eyes, then rubbed the window, and still he sawa sky of blazing blue, and far, far down beneath him, so that no soundcame up from it or smoke of chimneys, a mediaeval city set withtowers; brown roofs and cobbled streets, and then white walls andbuttresses, and beyond them bright green fields and tiny streams. Onthe towers archers lolled, and along the walls were pikemen, and nowand then a wagon went down some old-world street and lumbered throughthe gateway and out to the country, and now and then a wagon drew upto the city from the mist that was rolling with evening over thefields. Sometimes folks put their heads out of lattice windows, sometimes some idle troubadour seemed to sing, and nobody hurried ortroubled about anything. Airy and dizzy though the distance was, forMr. Sladden seemed higher above the city than any cathedral gargoyle, yet one clear detail he obtained as a clue: the banners floating fromevery tower over the idle archers had little golden dragons all over apure white field. 

He heard motor-buses roar by his other window, he heard the newsboyshowling. 

Mr. Sladden grew dreamier than ever after that on the premises, in theestablishment of Messrs. Mergin and Chater. But in one matter he waswise and wakeful: he made continuous and careful inquiries about thegolden dragons on a white flag, and talked to no one of his wonderfulwindow. He came to know the flags of every king in Europe, he evendabbled in history, he made inquiries at shops that understoodheraldry, but nowhere could he learn any trace of little dragons _or_on a field _argent_. And when it seemed that for him alone thosegolden dragons had fluttered he came to love them as an exile in somedesert might love the lilies of his home or as a sick man might loveswallows when he cannot easily live to another spring. 

As soon as Messrs. Mergin and Chater closed, Mr. Sladden used to goback to his dingy room and gaze though the wonderful window until itgrew dark in the city and the guard would go with a lantern round theramparts and the night came up like velvet, full of strange stars. Another clue he tried to obtain one night by jotting down the shapesof the constellations, but this led him no further, for they wereunlike any that shone upon either hemisphere. 

Each day as soon as he woke he went first to the wonderful window, andthere was the city, diminutive in the distance, all shining in themorning, and the golden dragons dancing in the sun, and the archersstretching themselves or swinging their arms on the tops of the windytowers. The window would not open, so that he never heard the songsthat the troubadours sang down there beneath the gilded balconies; hedid not even hear the belfries' chimes, though he saw the jackdawsrouted every hour from their homes. And the first thing that he alwaysdid was to cast his eye round all the little towers that rose up fromthe ramparts to see that the little golden dragons were flying thereon their flags. And when he saw them flaunting themselves on whitefolds from every tower against the marvelous deep blue of the sky hedressed contentedly, and, taking one last look, went off to his workwith a glory in his mind. It would have been difficult for thecustomers of Messrs. Mergin and Chater to guess the precise ambitionof Mr. Sladden as he walked before them in his neat frock-coat: it wasthat he might be a man-at-arms or an archer in order to fight for thelittle golden dragons that flew on a white flag for an unknown king inan inaccessible city. At first Mr. Sladden used to walk round andround the mean street that he lived in, but he gained no clue fromthat; and soon he noticed that quite different winds blew below hiswonderful window from those that blew on the other side of the house. 

In August the evenings began to grow shorter: this was the very remarkthat the other employees made to him at the emporium, so that healmost feared that they suspected his secret, and he had much lesstime for the wonderful window, for lights were few down there and theyblinked out early. 

One morning late in August, just before he went to Business, Mr. Sladden saw a company of pikemen running down the cobbled road towardsthe gateway of the mediaeval city--Golden Dragon City he used to callit alone in his own mind, but he never spoke of it to anyone. The nextthing that he noticed was that the archers were handling round bundlesof arrows in addition to the quivers which they wore. Heads werethrust out of windows more than usual, a woman ran out and called somechildren indoors, a knight rode down the street, and then more pikemenappeared along the walls, and all the jack-daws were in the air. Inthe street no troubadour sang. Mr. Sladden took one look along thetowers to see that the flags were flying, and all the golden dragonswere streaming in the wind. Then he had to go to Business. He took abus back that evening and ran upstairs. Nothing seemed to be happeningin Golden Dragon City except a crowd in the cobbled street that leddown to the gateway; the archers seemed to be reclining as usuallazily in their towers, and then a white flag went down with all itsgolden dragons; he did not see at first that all the archers weredead. The crowd was pouring towards him, towards the precipitous wallfrom which he looked; men with a white flag covered with goldendragons were moving backwards slowly, men with another flag werepressing them, a flag on which there was one huge red bear. Anotherbanner went down upon a tower. Then he saw it all: the golden dragonswere being beaten--his little golden dragons. The men of the bear werecoming under the window; what ever he threw from that height wouldfall with terrific force: fire-irons, coal, his clock, whatever hehad--he would fight for his little golden dragons yet. A flame brokeout from one of the towers and licked the feet of a reclining archer;he did not stir. And now the alien standard was out of sight directlyunderneath. Mr. Sladden broke the panes of the wonderful window andwrenched away with a poker the lead that held them. Just as the glassbroke he saw a banner covered with golden dragons fluttering still, and then as he drew back to hurl the poker there came to him the scentof mysterious spices, and there was nothing there, not even thedaylight, for behind the fragments of the wonderful window was nothingbut that small cupboard in which he kept his tea-things. 

And though Mr. Sladden is older now and knows more of the world, andeven has a Business of his own, he has never been able to buy suchanother window, and has not ever since, either from books or men, heard any rumour at all of Golden Dragon City. 

EPILOGUE

Here the fourteenth Episode of the Book of Wonder endeth and here therelating of the Chronicles of Little Adventures at the Edge of theWorld. I take farewell of my readers. But it may be we shall even meetagain, for it is still to be told how the gnomes robbed the fairies, and of the vengeance that the fairies took, and how even the godsthemselves were troubled thereby in their sleep; and how the King ofOol insulted the troubadours, thinking himself safe among his scoresof archers and hundreds of halberdiers, and how the troubadours stoleto his towers by night, and under his battlements by the light of themoon made that king ridiculous for ever in song. But for this I mustfirst return to the Edge of the World. Behold, the caravans start.