A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT

by

MARK TWAIN(Samuel L. Clemens)

PREFACE

The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale arehistorical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate themare also historical. It is not pretended that these laws andcustoms existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is onlypretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and othercivilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it isno libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been inpractice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferringthat whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in thatremote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one. 

The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine rightof kings is not settled in this book. It was found too difficult. That the executive head of a nation should be a person of loftycharacter and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable;that none but the Deity could select that head unerringly, wasalso manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make thatselection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind;these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that itwas judged better to take the other tack in this book (whichmust be issued this fall), and then go into training and settlethe question in another book. It is, of course, a thing whichought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particularto do next winter anyway. 

MARK TWAIN

HARTFORD, July 21, 1889

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT

A WORD OF EXPLANATION

It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious strangerwhom I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things:his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company--for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herdthat was being shown through, and he at once began to say thingswhich interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this worldand time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country;and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemedto move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a grayantiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as I wouldspeak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiarneighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelotof the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of theTable Round--and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dryand musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! Presentlyhe turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other common matter--

"You know about transmigration of souls; do you know abouttransposition of epochs--and bodies?"

I said I had not heard of it. He was so little interested--justas when people speak of the weather--that he did not noticewhether I made him any answer or not. There was half a momentof silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of thesalaried cicerone:

"Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthurand the Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramorle Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail inthe left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have beendone with a bullet since invention of firearms--perhaps maliciouslyby Cromwell's soldiers. "

My acquaintance smiled--not a modern smile, but one that musthave gone out of general use many, many centuries ago--and mutteredapparently to himself:

"Wit ye well, _I saw it done_. " Then, after a pause, added:"I did it myself. "

By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of thisremark, he was gone. 

All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steepedin a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time totime I dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, andfed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed inthe fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnightbeing come at length, I read another tale, for a nightcap--thiswhich here follows, to wit:

HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A CASTLE FREE

 Anon withal came there upon him two great giants, well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible clubs in their hands. Sir Launcelot put his shield afore him, and put the stroke away of the one giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder. When his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were wood [*demented], for fear of the horrible strokes, and Sir Launcelot after him with all his might, and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to the middle. Then Sir Launcelot went into the hall, and there came afore him three score ladies and damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said they, the most part of us have been here this seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time, knight, that ever thou wert born; for thou hast done the most worship that ever did knight in the world, that will we bear record, and we all pray you to tell us your name, that we may tell our friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair damsels, he said, my name is Sir Launcelot du Lake. And so he departed from them and betaught them unto God. And then he mounted upon his horse, and rode into many strange and wild countries, and through many waters and valleys, and evil was he lodged. And at the last by fortune him happened against a night to come to a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will, and there he had good cheer for him and his horse. And when time was, his host brought him into a fair garret over the gate to his bed. There Sir Launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on sleep. So, soon after there came one on horseback, and knocked at the gate in great haste. And when Sir Launcelot heard this he rose up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the moonlight three knights come riding after that one man, and all three lashed on him at once with swords, and that one knight turned on them knightly again and defended him. Truly, said Sir Launcelot, yonder one knight shall I help, for it were shame for me to see three knights on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his death. And therewith he took his harness and went out at a window by a sheet down to the four knights, and then Sir Launcelot said on high, Turn you knights unto me, and leave your fighting with that knight. And then they all three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Launcelot, and there began great battle, for they alight all three, and strake many strokes at Sir Launcelot, and assailed him on every side. Then Sir Kay dressed him for to have holpen Sir Launcelot. Nay, sir, said he, I will none of your help, therefore as ye will have my help let me alone with them. Sir Kay for the pleasure of the knight suffered him for to do his will, and so stood aside. And then anon within six strokes Sir Launcelot had stricken them to the earth. 

 And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As to that, said Sir Launcelot, I will not take your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant I will save your lives and else not. Fair knight, said they, that were we loath to do; for as for Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto him it were no reason. Well, as to that, said Sir Launcelot, advise you well, for ye may choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be yielden, it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair knight, then they said, in saving our lives we will do as thou commandest us. Then shall ye, said Sir Launcelot, on Whitsunday next coming go unto the court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield you unto Queen Guenever, and put you all three in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morn Sir Launcelot arose early, and left Sir Kay sleeping; and Sir Launcelot took Sir Kay's armor and his shield and armed him, and so he went to the stable and took his horse, and took his leave of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Launcelot; and then he espied that he had his armor and his horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will grieve some of the court of King Arthur; for on him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I, and that will beguile them; and because of his armor and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace. And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and thanked his host. 

As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and mystranger came in. I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made himwelcome. I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave himanother one; then still another--hoping always for his story. After a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quitesimple and natural way:

THE STRANGER'S HISTORY

I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the Stateof Connecticut--anyway, just over the river, in the country. SoI am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical; yes, and nearlybarren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words. Myfather was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I wasboth, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factoryand learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learnedto make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, allsorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make anythinga body wanted--anything in the world, it didn't make any differencewhat; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, I could invent one--and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I becamehead superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me. 

Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight--that goeswithout saying. With a couple of thousand rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At lastI met my match, and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstandingconducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everythingcrack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made itoverlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, andI didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all--at least for a while. 

When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on thegrass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape allto myself--nearly. Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me--a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He wasin old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on hishead the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeousred and green silk trappings that hung down all around him likea bedquilt, nearly to the ground. 

"Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow. 

"Will I which?"

"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for--"

"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus, or I'll report you. "

Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yardsand then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with hisnail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spearpointed straight ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was upthe tree when he arrived. 

He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. There was argument on his side--and the bulk of the advantage--so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreementwhereby I was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. I camedown, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse. We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks whichI could not remember to have seen before--which puzzled me andmade me wonder--and yet we did not come to any circus or sign ofa circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he wasfrom an asylum. But we never came to an asylum--so I was upa stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw afar-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyondit on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture. 

"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing. 

"Camelot, " said he. 

My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caughthimself nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsoletesmiles of his, and said:

"I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got it all writtenout, and you can read it if you like. "

In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal; then by and by, after years, I took the journal and turned it into a book. Howlong ago that was!"

He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place whereI should begin:

"Begin here--I've already told you what goes before. " He wassteeped in drowsiness by this time. As I went out at his doorI heard him murmur sleepily: "Give you good den, fair sir. "

I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first partof it--the great bulk of it--was parchment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared tracesof a penmanship which was older and dimmer still--Latin wordsand sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated by my stranger and began to read--as follows:

THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND

CHAPTER I

CAMELOT

"Camelot--Camelot, " said I to myself. "I don't seem to rememberhearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely. "

It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell offlowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-printsin it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side inthe grass--wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. 

Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataractof golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was assweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walkedindolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in herinnocent face. The circus man paid no attention to her; didn'teven seem to see her. And she--she was no more startled at hisfantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day ofher life. She was going by as indifferently as she might have goneby a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, _then_there was a change! Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, shewas the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. Andthere she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, tillwe turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. Thatshe should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was toomany for me; I couldn't make head or tail of it. And that sheshould seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook herown merits in that respect, was another puzzling thing, and adisplay of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young. There was food for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream. 

As we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. Atintervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, andabout it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state ofcultivation. There were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them looklike animals. They and the women, as a rule, wore a coarsetow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort ofsandal, and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girlswere always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of thesepeople stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetchedout their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed thatother fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get noresponse for their pains. 

In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stonescattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets weremere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude childrenplayed in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rootedcontentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow inthe middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. Presently there was a distant blare of military music; it camenearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting bannersand rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads; andthrough the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, andshabby huts, it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed. Followed through one winding alley and then another, --and climbing, always climbing--till at last we gained the breezy height wherethe huge castle stood. There was an exchange of bugle blasts;then a parley from the walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk andmorion, marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder underflapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed uponthem; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridgewas lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward underthe frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves ina great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up intothe blue air on all the four sides; and all about us the dismountwas going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to andfro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, andan altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion. 

CHAPTER II

KING ARTHUR'S COURT

The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touchedan ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in aninsinuating, confidential way:

"Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or areyou just on a visit or something like that?"

He looked me over stupidly, and said:

"Marry, fair sir, me seemeth--"

"That will do, " I said; "I reckon you are a patient. "

I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eyeout for any chance passenger in his right mind that might comealong and give me some light. I judged I had found one, presently;so I drew him aside and said in his ear:

"If I could see the head keeper a minute--only just a minute--"

"Prithee do not let me. "

"Let you _what_?"

"_Hinder_ me, then, if the word please thee better. Then he wenton to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time; for it would comfort hisvery liver to know where I got my clothes. As he started away hepointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy slim boyin shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles;and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin captilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was good-natured;by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enoughto frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudentcuriosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. 

"Go 'long, " I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph. "

It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However, it never phazedhim; he didn't appear to know he was hurt. He began to talk andlaugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sortsof questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waitedfor an answer--always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn'tknow he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply, untilat last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginningof the year 513. 

It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped and said, a little faintly:

"Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again--and say itslow. What year was it?"

"513. "

"513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger andfriendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are you in yourright mind?"

He said he was. 

"Are these other people in their right minds?"

He said they were. 

"And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place where theycure crazy people?"

He said it wasn't. 

"Well, then, " I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something justas awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?"

"IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. "

I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said:

"And according to your notions, what year is it now?"

"528--nineteenth of June. "

I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shallnever see my friends again--never, never again. They will notbe born for more than thirteen hundred years yet. "

I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. _Something_ in meseemed to believe him--my consciousness, as you may say; but myreason didn't. My reason straightway began to clamor; that wasnatural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it, becauseI knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve--my reason wouldsay they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But allof a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knewthat the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of thesixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A. D. 528, O. S. , andbegan at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also knew that no total eclipseof the sun was due in what to _me_ was the present year--i. E. , 1879. So, if I could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heartout of me for forty-eight hours, I should then find out for certainwhether this boy was telling me the truth or not. 

Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved thiswhole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hourshould come, in order that I might turn all my attention to thecircumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready tomake the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time, is my motto--and just play that thing for all it is worth, evenif it's only two pair and a jack. I made up my mind to two things:if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunaticsand couldn't get away, I would presently boss that asylum or knowthe reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixthcentury, all right, I didn't want any softer thing: I would bossthe whole country inside of three months; for I judged I wouldhave the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matterof thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man to wastetime after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so I saidto the page:

"Now, Clarence, my boy--if that might happen to be your name--I'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. What isthe name of that apparition that brought me here?"

"My master and thine? That is the good knight and great lordSir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king. "

"Very good; go on, tell me everything. "

He made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interestfor me was this: He said I was Sir Kay's prisoner, and thatin the due course of custom I would be flung into a dungeon andleft there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me--unlessI chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had the bestshow, but I didn't waste any bother about that; time was tooprecious. The page said, further, that dinner was about endedin the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociabilityand the heavy drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in andexhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated atthe Table Round, and would brag about his exploit in capturingme, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but itwouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either; and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for thedungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and see me everynow and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends. 

Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't do less; andabout this time a lackey came to say I was wanted; so Clarenceled me in and took me off to one side and sat down by me. 

Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting. It wasan immense place, and rather naked--yes, and full of loud contrasts. It was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending fromthe arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort oftwilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. The floor was of big stone flags laid in black andwhite squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair. As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though onthe walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxedas works of art; battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped likethose which children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread;with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented byround holes--so that the man's coat looks as if it had been donewith a biscuit-punch. There was a fireplace big enough to camp in;and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared stonework, had the look of a cathedral door. Along the walls stood men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon--rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like. 

In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oakentable which they called the Table Round. It was as large asa circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressedin such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to lookat them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, except thatwhenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he liftedhis hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark. 

Mainly they were drinking--from entire ox horns; but a few werestill munching bread or gnawing beef bones. There was aboutan average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectantattitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they wentfor it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensueda fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos ofplunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm ofhowlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but thatwas no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interestanyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and beton it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves outover their balusters with the same object; and all broke intodelighted ejaculations from time to time. In the end, the winningdog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between hispaws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and greasethe floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing; and therest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments. 

As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were graciousand courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listenerswhen anybody was telling anything--I mean in a dog-fightlessinterval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot;telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle andwinning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else'slie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them withanything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of bloodand suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forgetto shudder. 

I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightfulway; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked withblack and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were sufferingsharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and hunger andthirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfortof a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds;yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them showany sign of restlessness, or any disposition to complain. Thethought was forced upon me: "The rascals--_they_ have served otherpeople so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they werenot expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophicalbearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white Indians. "

CHAPTER III

KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND

Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues--narrative accountsof the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and theirfriends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. As a general thing--as far as I could make out--these murderousadventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor tosettle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they weresimply duels between strangers--duels between people who had nevereven been introduced to each other, and between whom existed nocause of offense whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you, "and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until now thatthat sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign andmark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to itand taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet therewas something very engaging about these great simple-heartedcreatures, something attractive and lovable. There did not seemto be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to baita fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a societylike that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiledits symmetry--perhaps rendered its existence impossible. 

There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; andin some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked yourbelittling criticisms and stilled them. A most noble benignityand purity reposed in the countenance of him they called Sir Galahad, and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and greatnessin the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Launcelot of the Lake. 

There was presently an incident which centered the general interestupon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign from a sort of master ofceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forwardin a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands towardthe ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower-bedof feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and hisfellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, hewas doing by command of Sir Kay the Seneschal, whose prisonersthey were, he having vanquished them by his single might andprowess in sturdy conflict in the field. 

Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all overthe house; the queen's gratified smile faded out at the name ofSir Kay, and she looked disappointed; and the page whispered inmy ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision--

"Sir _Kay_, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dearest, call mea marine! In twice a thousand years shall the unholy inventionof man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!"

Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir Kay. But hewas equal to the occasion. He got up and played his hand likea major--and took every trick. He said he would state the caseexactly according to the facts; he would tell the simplestraightforward tale, without comment of his own; "and then, "said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto himwho is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare shield orstrake with sword in the ranks of Christian battle--even him thatsitteth there!" and he pointed to Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetchedthem; it was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and toldhow Sir Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundredand forty-two captive maidens free; and then went further, stillseeking adventures, and found him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperatefight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battlesolely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that nightSir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in Sir Kay's armor andtook Sir Kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, andvanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-fourin another; and all these and the former nine he made to swearthat about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's court and yieldthem to Queen Guenever's hands as captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal, spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed oftheir desperate wounds. 

Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and lookembarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at Sir Launcelotthat would have got him shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty. 

Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Launcelot; andas for me, I was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself, should have been able to beat down and capture such battalionsof practiced fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mockingfeatherhead only said:

"An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him, ye had seen the accompt doubled. "

I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw the cloud ofa deep despondency settle upon his countenance. I followed thedirection of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-beardedman, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standingat the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancienthead and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. The same suffering look that was in the page's face was observablein all the faces around--the look of dumb creatures who know thatthey must endure and make no moan. 

"Marry, we shall have it again, " sighed the boy; "that same oldweary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words, and that he _will_ tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten hisbarrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. WouldGod I had died or I saw this day!"

"Who is it?"

"Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him forthe weariness he worketh with his one tale! But that men fearhim for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all thedevils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dughis entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale andsquelch it. He telleth it always in the third person, makingbelieve he is too modest to glorify himself--maledictions lightupon him, misfortune be his dole! Good friend, prithee call mefor evensong. "

The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to goto sleep. The old man began his tale; and presently the lad wasasleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a softsnoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subduedaccompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed uponfolded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconsciousmusic; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmedsoftly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and madethemselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like asquirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its handsand nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face withnaive and impudent irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, andrestful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit. 

This was the old man's tale. He said:

"Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermitthat was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searchedall his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was therethree days, and then were his wounds well amended that he mightride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said, I have no sword. No force, * [*Footnote from M. T. : No matter. ]said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may. So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair waterand broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an armclothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With thatthey saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that?said Arthur. That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and withinthat lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and thenspeak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. Anonwithal came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he heragain. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonderthe arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I haveno sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourselfto the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will askmy gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, andtied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthurtook it up by the handles, and took it with him. And the armand the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the landand rode forth. And then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion. Whatsignifieth yonder pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, saidMerlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is out, he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hightEgglame, and they have fought together, but at the last Egglamefled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him evento Carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. Thatis well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will I wagebattle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir, ye shall not so, said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, sothat ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he willnot lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is mycounsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in shorttime, and his sons, after his days. Also ye shall see that dayin short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sisterto wed. When I see him, I will do as ye advise me, said Arthur. Then Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard?Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for whileye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be yenever so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard alwayswith you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way they met withSir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore sawnot Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, saidArthur, that the knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he sawyou not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. Sothey came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad. And when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he wouldjeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it wasmerry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person inadventure as other poor knights did. "

CHAPTER IV

SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST

It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifullytold; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference;it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt. 

Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon rousedthe rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering andcrashing against everything that came in their way and makingaltogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din andturmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughedtill the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs andwallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keepfrom telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortalidea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humoristsof his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else hadgot through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech--of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many oldplayed-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse thanthe minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemedpeculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I wasborn, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that hadgiven me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred yearsafterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thingas a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities--but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No, he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He saidthe most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest werepetrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself, that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some ofthose jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hitthe boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educatethe commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no useto throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet. 

Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with mefor fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kaytold how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, whoall wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a workof enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurtby human hands. However he had nullified the force of theenchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights ina three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my lifein order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibitedto the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spokeof me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant, "and "this horrible sky-towering monster, " and "this tusked andtaloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this boshin the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice thatthere was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top ofa tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodgedme with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the mostof my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court forsentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st;and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn beforehe named the date. 

I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enoughin my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up asto how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing beingdoubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yetit was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops. Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many ofthe terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this greatassemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land wouldhave made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to conveythe idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones, " and "Roderick Random, "and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and firstladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleanerin their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talkimplies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into ourown nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverablein English history--or in European history, for that matter--may besaid to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, insteadof putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We shouldhave had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowenawhich would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to theunconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur'speople were not aware that they were indecent and I had presenceof mind enough not to mention it. 

They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they weremightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficultyaway for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why theywere so dull--why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half aminute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to thinkof it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussedme; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and saidshe had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It wasthe only compliment I got--if it was a compliment. 

Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothesin another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end of rats for company. 

CHAPTER V

AN INSPIRATION

I was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long. 

When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been asleep a verylong time. My first thought was, "Well, what an astonishing dreamI've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep frombeing hanged or drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap againtill the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms factoryand have it out with Hercules. "

But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stoodbefore me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me. 

"What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with the rest ofthe dream! scatter!"

But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to makingfun of my sorry plight. 

"All right, " I said resignedly, "let the dream go on; I'm in no hurry. "

"Prithee what dream?"

"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court--a personwho never existed; and that I am talking to you, who are nothingbut a work of the imagination. "

"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burnedto-morrow? Ho-ho--answer me that!"

The shock that went through me was distressing. I now beganto reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dreamor no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensityof dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would bevery far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by anymeans, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said beseechingly:

"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got, --for you _are_ myfriend, aren't you?--don't fail me; help me to devise some wayof escaping from this place!"

"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors arein guard and keep of men-at-arms. "

"No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?"

"Full a score. One may not hope to escape. " After a pause--hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons--and weightier. "

"Other ones? What are they?"

"Well, they say--oh, but I daren't, indeed daren't!"

"Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why doyou tremble so?"

"Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you, but--"

"Come, come, be brave, be a man--speak out, there's a good lad!"

He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear;then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finallycrept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me hisfearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehensionof one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of thingswhose very mention might be freighted with death. 

"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, andthere bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperateenough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me, I have told it! Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy whomeans thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"

I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time;and shouted:

"Merlin has wrought a spell! _Merlin_, forsooth! That cheap oldhumbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest boshin the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev--oh, damn Merlin!"

But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind with fright. 

"Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these wallsmay crumble upon us if you say such things. Oh call them backbefore it is too late!"

Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me tothinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerelyafraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainlya superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrivesome way to take advantage of such a state of things. I wenton thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:

"Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the eye. Do youknow why I laughed?"

"No--but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no more. "

"Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a magician myself. "

"Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, forthe thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he tookon was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; itindicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in thisasylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. I resumed. 

"I've known Merlin seven hundred years, and he--"

"Seven hun--"

"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteentimes, and traveled under a new name every time: Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin--a new alias everytime he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago;I knew him in India five hundred years ago--he is always bletheringaround in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don'tamount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old commontricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. He is well enough for the provinces--one-night stands and thatsort of thing, you know--but dear me, _he_ oughtn't to set up foran expert--anyway not where there's a real artist. Now look here, Clarence, I am going to stand your friend, right along, and inreturn you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I wantyou to get word to the king that I am a magician myself--and theSupreme Grand High-yu-Muck-amuck and head of the tribe, at that;and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietlyarranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in theserealms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm comesto me. Will you get that to the king for me?"

The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, sodemoralized. But he promised everything; and on my side he mademe promise over and over again that I would remain his friend, andnever turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. Thenhe worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along thewall, like a sick person. 

Presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless I have been!When the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like meshould have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place;he will put this and that together, and will see that I am a humbug. 

I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myselfa great many hard names, meantime. But finally it occurred to meall of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that _they_ neverput this and that together; that all their talk showed that theydidn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then. 

But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes onsomething else to worry about. It occurred to me that I had madeanother blunder: I had sent the boy off to alarm his betters witha threat--I intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; nowthe people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest toswallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see youperform them; suppose I should be called on for a sample? SupposeI should be asked to name my calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder;I ought to have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble again;in the deepest kind of trouble... 

"There's a footstep!--they're coming. If I had only just a momentto think.... Good, I've got it. I'm all right. "

You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nickof time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, playedan eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw mychance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be anyplagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousandyears ahead of those parties. 

Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said:

"I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway hehad me to his presence. He was frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, andthat you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one sogreat; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he persuadedthe king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; andsaid your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. Theydisputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Whereforehath he not _named_ his brave calamity? Verily it is because hecannot. ' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king'smouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayethyou to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name the calamity--if so be you have determined the natureof it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay not; to delayat such a time were to double and treble the perils that alreadycompass thee about. Oh, be thou wise--name the calamity!"

I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressivenesstogether, and then said:

"How long have I been shut up in this hole?"

"Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent. It is 9 ofthe morning now. "

"No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine in the morningnow! And yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade. This is the 20th, then?"

"The 20th--yes. "

"And I am to be burned alive to-morrow. " The boy shuddered. 

"At what hour?"

"At high noon. "

"Now then, I will tell you what to say. " I paused, and stood overthat cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voicedeep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramaticallygraded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublimeand noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go backand tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole worldin the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and heshall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lackof light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famishand die, to the last man!"

I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse. I handed him over to the soldiers, and went back. 

CHAPTER VI

THE ECLIPSE

In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began tosupplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; butwhen you come to _realize_ your fact, it takes on color. It isall the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed tothe heart, and seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself deeperand deeper meaning all the time; a something which was realizationcrept inch by inch through my veins and turned me cold. 

But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point therecomes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulnessalong with it, and then he is in good shape to do something forhimself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came witha bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightwaymy mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudesall vanished. I was as happy a man as there was in the world. I was even impatient for to-morrow to come, I so wanted to gatherin that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonderand reverence. Besides, in a business way it would be the makingof me; I knew that. 

Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the backgroundof my mind. That was the half-conviction that when the natureof my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitiouspeople, it would have such an effect that they would want tocompromise. So, by and by when I heard footsteps coming, thatthought was recalled to me, and I said to myself, "As sure asanything, it's the compromise. Well, if it is good, all right, I will accept; but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and playmy hand for all it is worth. "

The door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared. The leader said:

"The stake is ready. Come!"

The stake! The strength went out of me, and I almost fell down. It is hard to get one's breath at such a time, such lumps come intoone's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said:

"But this is a mistake--the execution is to-morrow. "

"Order changed; been set forward a day. Haste thee!"

I was lost. There was no help for me. I was dazed, stupefied;I had no command over myself, I only wandered purposely about, like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, andpulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze ofunderground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylightand the upper world. As we stepped into the vast enclosed courtof the castle I got a shock; for the first thing I saw was the stake, standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. On all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rankabove rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. The king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuousfigures there, of course. 

To note all this, occupied but a second. The next second Clarencehad slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring newsinto my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. He said:

"Tis through _me_ the change was wrought! And main hard have I workedto do it, too. But when I revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I alsothat this was the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the suncould not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would savethe sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while yourenchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. Odsbodikins, it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you shouldhave seen them seize it and swallow it, in the frenzy of theirfright, as it were salvation sent from heaven; and all the whilewas I laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so cheaplydeceived, and glorifying God the next, that He was content to letthe meanest of His creatures be His instrument to the saving ofthy life. Ah how happy has the matter sped! You will not needto do the sun a _real_ hurt--ah, forget not that, on your soul forgetit not! Only make a little darkness--only the littlest littledarkness, mind, and cease with that. It will be sufficient. Theywill see that I spoke falsely, --being ignorant, as they will fancy--and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness youshall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free andmake you great! Go to thy triumph, now! But remember--ah, goodfriend, I implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessedsun no hurt. For _my_ sake, thy true friend. "

I choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much asto say I would spare the sun; for which the lad's eyes paid me backwith such deep and loving gratitude that I had not the heartto tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent meto my death. 

As the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness wasso profound that if I had been blindfold I should have supposedI was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. There was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity;they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread satupon every countenance. This hush continued while I was beingchained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots werecarefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body. Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitudestrained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seatswithout knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, andhis eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; inthis attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. I waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standingthere petrified. With a common impulse the multitude rose slowlyup and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling throughmy veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly intothe sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still theassemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knewthat this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I wasready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a nobleeffect. You could _see_ the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other:

"Apply the torch!"

"I forbid it!"

The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin startedfrom his place--to apply the torch himself, I judged. I said:

"Stay where you are. If any man moves--even the king--beforeI give him leave, I will blast him with thunder, I will consumehim with lightnings!"

The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expectingthey would. Merlin hesitated a moment or two, and I was on pinsand needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I tooka good breath; for I knew I was master of the situation now. The king said:

"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, lest disaster follow. It was reported to us that your powers couldnot attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but--"

"Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? It _was_ a lie. "

That made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications thatI might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was eager to comply. He said:

"Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom;but banish this calamity, spare the sun!"

My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, butI couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. SoI asked time to consider. The king said:

"How long--ah, how long, good sir? Be merciful; look, it growethdarker, moment by moment. Prithee how long?"

"Not long. Half an hour--maybe an hour. "

There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn't shorten upany, for I couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. I wasin a puzzled condition, anyway, and wanted to think. Somethingwas wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling. If this wasn't the one I was after, how was I to tell whether thiswas the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? Dear me, if I couldonly prove it was the latter! Here was a glad new hope. If the boywas right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it _wasn't_the sixth century. I reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerableexcitement, and asked him what day of the month it was. 

Hang him, he said it was the _twenty-first_! It made me turn coldto hear him. I begged him not to make any mistake about it; buthe was sure; he knew it was the 21st. So, that feather-headedboy had botched things again! The time of the day was rightfor the eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning, by the dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King Arthur's court, and I might as well make the most out of it I could. 

The darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more andmore distressed. I now said:

"I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will let this darknessproceed, and spread night in the world; but whether I blot outthe sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. These arethe terms, to wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship;but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one per cent of such actual increaseof revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeedin creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I sha'n't askanybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?"

There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midstof it the king's voice rose, saying:

"Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, highand low, rich and poor, for he is become the king's right hand, is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the higheststep of the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and bringthe light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee. "

But I said:

"That a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing;but it were dishonor to the _king_ if any that saw his minister nakedshould not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might askthat my clothes be brought again--"

"They are not meet, " the king broke in. "Fetch raiment of anothersort; clothe him like a prince!"

My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they were till theeclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to getme to dismiss the darkness, and of course I couldn't do it. Sendingfor the clothes gained some delay, but not enough. So I had to makeanother excuse. I said it would be but natural if the king shouldchange his mind and repent to some extent of what he had doneunder excitement; therefore I would let the darkness grow a while, and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mindthe same, the darkness should be dismissed. Neither the king noranybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I hadto stick to my point. 

It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggledwith those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the colduncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the starscome out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; whichwas quite natural. I said:

"The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms. " ThenI lifted up my hands--stood just so a moment--then I said, withthe most awful solemnity: "Let the enchantment dissolve andpass harmless away!"

There was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness andthat graveyard hush. But when the silver rim of the sun pusheditself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose witha vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother mewith blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the last ofthe wash, to be sure. 

CHAPTER VII

MERLIN'S TOWER

Inasmuch as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as faras political power and authority were concerned, much was madeof me. My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. But habitwould soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was aware of that. I wasgiven the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, afterthe king's. They were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. I mean_little_ conveniences; it is the little conveniences that makethe real comfort of life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rudecarvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass--except a metalone, about as powerful as a pail of water. And not a chromo. I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that withoutmy suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabricof my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesickto look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrennessand remember that in our house in East Hartford, all unpretendingas it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find aninsurance-chromo, or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Homeover the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even inmy grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature ofa picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was eitherwoven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in itwas the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebratedHampton Court cartoons. " Raphael was a bird. We had severalof his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes, " wherehe puts in a miracle of his own--puts three men into a canoe whichwouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admiredto study R. 's art, it was so fresh and unconventional. 

There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. I hada great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in theanteroom; and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him. There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half fullof boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it wasthe thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot ofthese hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned itdown enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night, yourservants carried torches. There were no books, pens, paper orink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. It is a little thing--glass is--until it is absent, then it becomesa big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn'tany sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just anotherRobinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no societybut some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make lifebearable I must do as he did--invent, contrive, create, reorganizethings; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well, that was in my line. 

One thing troubled me along at first--the immense interest whichpeople took in me. Apparently the whole nation wanted a lookat me. It soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the Britishworld almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, andthe churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with prayingand weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world wascome. Then had followed the news that the producer of this awfulevent was a stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that hecould have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just goingto do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolvedhis enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the manwho had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction andits peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that everybodybelieved that, and not only believed it, but never even dreamedof doubting it, you will easily understand that there was nota person in all Britain that would not have walked fifty milesto get a sight of me. Of course I was all the talk--all othersubjects were dropped; even the king became suddenly a person ofminor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-four hours thedelegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnightthey kept coming. The village was crowded, and all the countryside. I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to thesereverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same timecompensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a centerof homage. It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, whichwas a great satisfaction to me. But there was one thing I couldn'tunderstand--nobody had asked for an autograph. I spoke to Clarenceabout it. By George! I had to explain to him what it was. Thenhe said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozenpriests. Land! think of that. 

There was another thing that troubled me a little. Those multitudespresently began to agitate for another miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that theyhad seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seenhim work a miracle themselves--why, people would come a distanceto see _them_. The pressure got to be pretty strong. There wasgoing to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. Two years. I would have given a gooddeal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there wasa big market for it. It seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have anyuse for it, as like as not. If it had been booked for only a monthaway, I could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, I couldn'tseem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I gave uptrying. Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himselfbusy on the sly among those people. He was spreading a report thatI was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accommodate the peoplewith a miracle was because I couldn't. I saw that I must dosomething. I presently thought out a plan. 

By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison--the samecell I had occupied myself. Then I gave public notice by heraldand trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state fora fortnight, but about the end of that time I would take a moment'sleisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven;in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let himbeware. Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle atthis time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. Quiet ensued. 

I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and wewent to work privately. I told him that this was a sort of miraclethat required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be suddendeath to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. That madehis mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few bushels offirst-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers whilethey constructed a lightning-rod and some wires. This old stonetower was very massive--and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman, and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome, after a rudefashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirtof scale mail. It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view fromthe castle, and about half a mile away. 

Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower--dug stonesout, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peckat a time, in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Towerof London with these charges. When the thirteenth night was comewe put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches ofpowder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. Everybodyhad shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, buton the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away--a quarter of a mile away. Then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-fourhours I would consummate the miracle, but would first give a briefnotice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, bytorch-baskets in the same places if at night. 

Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I wasnot much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't have cared fora delay of a day or two; I should have explained that I was busywith affairs of state yet, and the people must wait. 

Of course, we had a blazing sunny day--almost the first one withouta cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to timeand said the public excitement was growing and growing all thetime, and the whole country filling up with human masses as faras one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang upand a cloud appeared--in the right quarter, too, and just atnightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spreadand blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I orderedthe torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there foundthe king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darknesstoward Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy thatone could not see far; these people and the old turrets, beingpartly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the greattorch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture. 

Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:

"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to injure my professionalreputation. Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow upyour tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if youthink you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, stepto the bat, it's your innings. "

"I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not. "

He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnta pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromaticsmoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselvesand get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passesin the air with his hands. He worked himself up slowly andgradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around withhis arms like the sails of a windmill. By this time the storm hadabout reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches andmaking the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rainwere falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightningbegan to wink fitfully. Of course, my rod would be loading itselfnow. In fact, things were imminent. So I said:

"You have had time enough. I have given you every advantage, and not interfered. It is plain your magic is weak. It is onlyfair that I begin now. "

I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awfulcrash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, alongwith a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the groundin a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained mortar andmasonry the rest of the week. This was the report; but probablythe facts would have modified it. 

It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporarypopulation vanished. There were a good many thousand tracksin the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. If I had advertised another miracle I couldn't have raised anaudience with a sheriff. 

Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop his wages; heeven wanted to banish him, but I interfered. I said he would beuseful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that, and I would give him a lift now and then when his poor littleparlor-magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower left, but I had the government rebuild it for him, and advised himto take boarders; but he was too high-toned for that. And as forbeing grateful, he never even said thank you. He was a ratherhard lot, take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairlyexpect a man to be sweet that had been set back so. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOSS

To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to havethe on-looking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episodesolidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were perchancedisposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienceda change of heart, now. There was not any one in the kingdomwho would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters. 

I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances. For a time, I used to wake up, mornings, and smile at my "dream, "and listen for the Colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thingplayed itself out, gradually, and at last I was fully able to realizethat I was actually living in the sixth century, and in Arthur'scourt, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I was just as muchat home in that century as I could have been in any other; andas for preference, I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. The grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor;not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities;whereas, what would I amount to in the twentieth century? I shouldbe foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could drag a seinedown street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself. 

What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one does who has struck oil. Therewas nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might beJoseph's case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equalit, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendidfinancial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the generalpublic must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereasI had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and waspopular by reason of it. 

I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance; the king himselfwas the shadow. My power was colossal; and it was not a merename, as such things have generally been, it was the genuinearticle. I stood here, at the very spring and source of the secondgreat period of the world's history; and could see the tricklingstream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and rollits mighty tides down the far centuries; and I could note theupspringing of adventurers like myself in the shelter of its longarray of thrones: De Montforts, Gavestons, Mortimers, Villierses;the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of France, and Charlesthe Second's scepter-wielding drabs; but nowhere in the processionwas my full-sized fellow visible. I was a Unique; and glad to knowthat that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteencenturies and a half, for sure. Yes, in power I was equal tothe king. At the same time there was another power that wasa trifle stronger than both of us put together. That was the Church. I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't, if I wanted to. But never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its properplace, later on. It didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning--at least any of consequence. 

Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. And thepeople! They were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race;why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a personborn in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humbleand hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Churchand nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honorking and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honorthe lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him!Why, dear me, _any_ kind of royalty, howsoever modified, _any_ kindof aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if youare born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probablynever find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebodyelse tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his raceto think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its throneswithout shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate peoplethat have always figured as its aristocracies--a company of monarchsand nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty andobscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions. 

The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure andsimple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on theirnecks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name;they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselvesso. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for oneobject, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble;to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they mightbe fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs thatthey might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks andjewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and posturesof adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselvesthe gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got werecuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they tookeven this sort of attention as an honor. 

Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observeand examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reasonand argument would have had a long contract on his hands. Forinstance, those people had inherited the idea that all men withouttitle and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural giftsand acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more considerationthan so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the ideathat human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shamsof inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good butto be laughed at. The way I was looked upon was odd, but it wasnatural. You know how the keeper and the public regard the elephantin the menagerie: well, that is the idea. They are full ofadmiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength; theyspeak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvelswhich are far and away beyond their own powers; and they speakwith the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is ableto drive a thousand men before him. But does that make him oneof _them_? No; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile atthe idea. He couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn'tin any remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, I wasjust that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. I was admired, also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared. The animal is not reverenced, neither was I; I was not evenrespected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king'sand nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the people regarded me withwonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; throughthe force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive ofanything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship. There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman CatholicChurch. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nationof men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the Church'ssupremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and whatof greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, not by birth. But then the Church came to the front, with an axeto grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one wayto skin a cat--or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings, "and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the Beatitudes--wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortifyan evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedienceto superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to thecommoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistanceunder oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks andaristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earthto bow down to them and worship them. Even down to my birth-centurythat poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the bestof English commoners was still content to see his inferiorsimpudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such aslordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his countrydid not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contentedwith this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuadehimself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn'tanything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it. Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had beenin our American blood, too--I know that; but when I left Americait had disappeared--at least to all intents and purposes. Theremnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. Whena disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairlybe said to be out of the system. 

But to return to my anomalous position in King Arthur's kingdom. Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a masterintelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurementthe one and only actually great man in that whole British world;and yet there and then, just as in the remote England of mybirth-time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descentfrom a king's leman, acquired at second-hand from the slums ofLondon, was a better man than I was. Such a personage was fawnedupon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as his lineage. There were times when_he_ could sit down in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I couldhave got a title easily enough, and that would have raised mea large step in everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giverof it. But I didn't ask for it; and I declined it when it wasoffered. I couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions;and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, because as far back asI could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. I couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proudand set-up over any title except one that should come from the nationitself, the only legitimate source; and such an one I hoped to win;and in the course of years of honest and honorable endeavor, I didwin it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This titlefell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouthwith a laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had sweptthe kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's name. I wasnever known by any other designation afterward, whether in thenation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at thecouncil-board of the sovereign. This title, translated into modernspeech, would be THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me. And it was a pretty high title. There were very few THE'S, andI was one of them. If you spoke of the duke, or the earl, orthe bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? But ifyou spoke of The King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different. 

Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him--respectedthe office; at least respected it as much as I was capable ofrespecting any unearned supremacy; but as MEN I looked down uponhim and his nobles--privately. And he and they liked me, andrespected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title, they looked down upon me--and were not particularly private about it, either. I didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn'tcharge for their opinion about me: the account was square, thebooks balanced, everybody was satisfied. 

CHAPTER IX

THE TOURNAMENT

They were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot; andvery stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bull-fightsthey were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind. However, I was generally on hand--for two reasons: a man mustnot hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and hiscommunity have at heart if he would be liked--especially asa statesman; and both as business man and statesman I wantedto study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improvementon it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very firstofficial thing I did, in my administration--and it was on the veryfirst day of it, too--was to start a patent office; for I knewthat a country without a patent office and good patent laws wasjust a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways. 

Things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and thenthe boys used to want me to take a hand--I mean Sir Launcelot andthe rest--but I said I would by and by; no hurry yet, and too muchgovernment machinery to oil up and set to rights and start a-going. 

We had one tournament which was continued from day to day duringmore than a week, and as many as five hundred knights took partin it, from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They cameon horseback from everywhere; from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and allbrought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy andgorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of thecountry and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocentindecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. It was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble, dance, carouse half the night every night. They had a most noblegood time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautifulladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knightsprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thicknessof your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and insteadof fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for abetter view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could laytwo to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she wasafraid the public hadn't found it out. 

The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, butI didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept mefrom hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day'scripples. They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me, and broke the saw-buck, too, but I let it pass. And as for myaxe--well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axeto a surgeon I would pick my century. 

I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailedan intelligent priest from my Department of Public Morals andAgriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purposeby and by, when I should have gotten the people along far enough, to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper. A newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them, but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don'tyou forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation without it; thereisn't any way. So I wanted to sample things, and be finding outwhat sort of reporter-material I might be able to rake together outof the sixth century when I should come to need it. 

Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got in allthe details, and that is a good thing in a local item: you see, he had kept books for the undertaker-department of his churchwhen he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details;the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers--everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enoughyou mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your billshows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in thecomplimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likelyto advertise--no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he alsohad a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept doorfor a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles. 

Of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and luriddescription, and therefore wanted the true ring; but its antiquewording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrancesand flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measurefor its more important lacks. Here is an extract from it:

 Then Sir Brian de les Isles and Grummore Grummorsum, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Aglovale and Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grummore Grummorsum to the earth. Then came Sir Carados of the dolorous tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and there encountered with them Sir Percivale de Galis and Sir Lamorak de Galis, that were two brethren, and there encountered Sir Percivale with Sir Carados, and either brake their spears unto their hands, and then Sir Turquine with Sir Lamorak, and either of them smote down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either parties rescued other and horsed them again. And Sir Arnold, and Sir Gauter, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Brandiles and Sir Kay, and these four knights encountered mightily, and brake their spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel, and there Sir Pertolope the green knight smote down Sir Lionel, brother to Sir Launcelot. All this was marked by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names. Then Sir Bleobaris brake his spear upon Sir Gareth, but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth. When Sir Galihodin saw that, he bad Sir Gareth keep him, and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galihud gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadan and his brother La Cote Male Taile, and Sir Sagramore le Disirous, and Sir Dodinas le Savage; all these he bare down with one spear. When King Aswisance of Ireland saw Sir Gareth fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue. And thus at every course that he rode to and fro he changed his color, so that there might neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him. Then Sir Agwisance the King of Ireland encountered with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all. And then came King Carados of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man. And in the same wise he served King Uriens of the land of Gore. And then there came in Sir Bagdemagus, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth. And Bagdemagus's son Meliganus brake a spear upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly. And then Sir Galahault the noble prince cried on high, Knight with the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee ready that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him, and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered together, and there the prince brake his spear; but Sir Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that knight with the many colors is a good knight. Wherefore the king called unto him Sir Launcelot, and prayed him to encounter with that knight. Sir, said Launcelot, I may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great labour; for peradventure, said Sir Launcelot, his quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great deeds, and therefore, said Sir Launcelot, as for me, this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my power to put him from it, I would not. 

There was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasonsof state I struck out of my priest's report. You will have noticedthat Garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. WhenI say Garry I mean Sir Gareth. Garry was my private pet namefor him; it suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and thatwas the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spokenaloud to any one, much less to him; being a noble, he would nothave endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to proceed:I sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister. While Sir Dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was alwaysmaking up to me, because I was a stranger and he liked to havea fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached thatstage of wear where the teller has to do the laughing himself whilethe other person looks sick. I had always responded to his effortsas well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the oneparticular anecdote which I had heard oftenest and had most hatedand most loathed all my life, he had at least spared it me. It wasone which I had heard attributed to every humorous person whohad ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to Artemus Ward. It was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audiencewith the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; andthen when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefullyby the hand and said it had been the funniest thing they had everheard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' rightout in meetin'. " That anecdote never saw the day that it wasworth the telling; and yet I had sat under the telling of ithundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, andcried and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope to knowwhat my feelings were, to hear this armor-plated ass start in onit again, in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn ofhistory, while even Lactantius might be referred to as "the lateLactantius, " and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundredyears yet? Just as he finished, the call-boy came; so, haw-hawinglike a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate ofloose castings, and I knew nothing more. It was some minutesbefore I came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to seeSir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I unconsciously out withthe prayer, "I hope to gracious he's killed!" But by ill-luck, before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashedinto Sir Sagramor le Desirous and sent him thundering over hishorse's crupper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and thoughtI meant it for _him_. 

Well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved mybreath, and offered no explanations. As soon as Sir Sagramorgot well, he notified me that there was a little account to settlebetween us, and he named a day three or four years in the future;place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was goingfor the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grailnow and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put inthe long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, orwould have known what to do with it if he _had_ run across it. You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that day, as you maysay; that was all. Every year expeditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for _them_. Therewas worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actuallywanted _me_ to put in! Well, I should smile. 

CHAPTER X

BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION

The Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it wasa good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. The king thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I might gain renown and be the more worthy to meetSir Sagramor when the several years should have rolled away. I excused myself for the present; I said it would take me threeor four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly;then I should be ready; all the chances were that at the end ofthat time Sir Sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuabletime would be lost by the postponement; I should then have beenin office six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinerywould be so well developed that I could take a holiday withoutits working any harm. 

I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of allsorts of industries under way--nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In thesewere gathered together the brightest young minds I could find, and I kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts--expertsin every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseriesof mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in theirobscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into theirprecincts without a special permit--for I was afraid of the Church. 

I had started a teacher-factory and a lot of Sunday-schools thefirst thing; as a result, I now had an admirable system of gradedschools in full blast in those places, and also a complete varietyof Protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growingcondition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wantedto; there was perfect freedom in that matter. But I confined publicreligious teaching to the churches and the Sunday-schools, permittingnothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could havegiven my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterianwithout any trouble, but that would have been to affront a lawof human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various inthe human family as are physical appetites, complexions, andfeatures, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he isequipped with the religious garment whose color and shape andsize most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets intoselfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death tohuman liberty and paralysis to human thought. 

All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. They had formerly been worked as savages always work mines--holesgrubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide byhand, at the rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to put the miningon a scientific basis as early as I could. 

Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramor'schallenge struck me. 

Four years rolled by--and then! Well, you would never imagineit in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is insafe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfectgovernment. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfectearthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, thedespot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his leaseof life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, andleave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, anearthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it isthe worst form that is possible. 

My works showed what a despot could do with the resources ofa kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I hadthe civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its verynose! It was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact--and to be heard from, yet, ifI lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a fact and as substantiala fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its smokelesssummit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in itsbowels. My schools and churches were children four years before;they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factoriesnow; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now;where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stoodwith my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on andflood the midnight world with light at any moment. But I was notgoing to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy. The people could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should havehad the Established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute. 

No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidentialagents trickling through the country some time, whose office wasto undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnawa little at this and that and the other superstition, and so preparethe way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning onmy light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so. 

I had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. I meant to work this racket moreand more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest secrets was my West Point--my military academy. I kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the same with mynaval academy which I had established at a remote seaport. Bothwere prospering to my satisfaction. 

Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my righthand. He was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn'tanything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been traininghim for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a startin the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly forexperimental circulation in my civilization-nurseries. He tookto it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth centuryand wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing, steadily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that regioneither by matter or flavor. 

We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraphand a telephone; our first venture in this line. These wires werefor private service only, as yet, and must be kept private untila riper day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, workingmainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraidto put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Groundwires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires wereprotected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, andestablishing connection with any considerable towns whose lightsbetrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobodycould tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobodyever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it byaccident in his wanderings, and then generally left it withoutthinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and anotherwe had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map thekingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poorwisdom to antagonize the Church. 

As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had beenwhen I arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. I had madechanges, but they were necessarily slight, and they were notnoticeable. Thus far, I had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I hadsystematized those, and put the service on an effective andrighteous basis. As a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed thanbefore, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praisesof my administration were hearty and general. 

Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it, it could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it couldhave annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimmingright along. The king had reminded me several times, of late, thatthe postponement I had asked for, four years before, had aboutrun out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seekadventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthyof the honor of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was stillout grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. So you see I was expectingthis interruption; it did not take me by surprise. 

CHAPTER XI

THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES

There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they wereof both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these trampsarriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess orother wanting help to get her out of some far-away castle whereshe was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think that the first thing the king would do afterlistening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would beto ask for credentials--yes, and a pointer or two as to localityof castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thoughtof so simple and common-sense a thing at that. No, everybodyswallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a questionof any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was notaround, one of these people came along--it was a she one, thistime--and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress wasa captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four otheryoung and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses;they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-sixyears; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye--the eye in the center of theforehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not mentioned;their usual slovenliness in statistics. 

Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table werein raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every knight of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it;but to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all. 

By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news. But he--he could not contain his. His mouth gushed delight andgratitude in a steady discharge--delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouettedabout the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. 

On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that conferred uponme this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surfacefor policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I _said_ I was glad. And in a way it was true; I was asglad as a person is when he is scalped. 

Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time withuseless fretting, but get down to business and see what can bedone. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff; I must get atthe wheat in this case: so I sent for the girl and she came. Shewas a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signswent for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. I said:

"My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?"

She said she hadn't. 

"Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask, to makesure; it's the way I've been raised. Now you mustn't take itunkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you, we must goa little slow. You may be all right, of course, and we'll hopethat you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. _You_understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions; justanswer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. Where do youlive, when you are at home?"

"In the land of Moder, fair sir. "

"Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of it before. Parents living?"

"As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sith it is manyyears that I have lain shut up in the castle. "

"Your name, please?"

"I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an it please you. "

"Do you know anybody here who can identify you?"

"That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hither now forthe first time. "

"Have you brought any letters--any documents--any proofs thatyou are trustworthy and truthful?"

"Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? Have I not a tongue, and cannot I say all that myself?"

"But _your_ saying it, you know, and somebody else's saying it, is different. "

"Different? How might that be? I fear me I do not understand. "

"Don't _understand_? Land of--why, you see--you see--why, great Scott, can't you understand a little thing like that? Can't you understandthe difference between your--_why_ do you look so innocent and idiotic!"

"I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will of God. "

"Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind myseeming excited; I'm not. Let us change the subject. Now asto this castle, with forty-five princesses in it, and three ogresat the head of it, tell me--where is this harem?"

"Harem?"

"The _castle_, you understand; where is the castle?"

"Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen, andlieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues. "

"_How_ many?"

"Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and being made all in thesame image and tincted with the same color, one may not knowthe one league from its fellow, nor how to count them exceptthey be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to dothat, being not within man's capacity; for ye will note--"

"Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; _whereabouts_does the castle lie? What's the direction from here?"

"Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reasonthat the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; whereforethe direction of its place abideth not, but is some time underthe one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded thatit is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe thatthe way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the spaceof half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet again andstill again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanitiesof the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of Him thatgiveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleasethHim, and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all castlesand all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving theplaces wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning Hiscreatures that where He will He will, and where He will not He--"

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mindabout the direction, _hang_ the direction--I beg pardon, I bega thousand pardons, I am not well to-day; pay no attention whenI soliloquize, it is an old habit, an old, bad habit, and hardto get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eatingfood that was raised forever and ever before he was born; goodland! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickensthirteen hundred years old. But come--never mind about that;let's--have you got such a thing as a map of that region aboutyou? Now a good map--"

"Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievershave brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto, doth--"

"What, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know whata map is? There, there, never mind, don't explain, I hateexplanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anythingabout it. Run along, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence. "

Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn'tprospect these liars for details. It may be that this girl hada fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluicedit out with a hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms ofblasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfectass; and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as ifshe had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up thewhole party. And think of the simple ways of this court: thiswandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the kingin his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhousein my day and country. In fact, he was glad to see her, gladto hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she wasas welcome as a corpse is to a coroner. 

Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarence came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl;hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to findthe castle. The youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himselfwhat I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. 

"Why, great guns, " I said, "don't I want to find the castle? Andhow else would I go about it?"

"La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, I ween. She will go with thee. They always do. She will ride with thee. "

"Ride with me? Nonsense!"

"But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee. Thou shalt see. "

"What? She browse around the hills and scour the woods with me--alone--and I as good as engaged to be married? Why, it's scandalous. Think how it would look. "

My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy was eager to knowall about this tender matter. I swore him to secrecy and thenwhispered her name--"Puss Flanagan. " He looked disappointed, and said he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was forthe little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me where she lived. 

"In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped, a little confused;then I said, "Never mind, now; I'll tell you some time. "

And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day?

It was but a little thing to promise--thirteen hundred yearsor so--and he so eager; so I said Yes. But I sighed; I couldn'thelp it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn'tborn yet. But that is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel. 

My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and theboys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to haveforgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be asanxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virginsloose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they_were_ good children--but just children, that is all. And theygave me no end of points about how to scout for giants, and howto scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms againstenchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on mywounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that ifI was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to need salves or instructions, or charms againstenchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of anykind--even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot fromperdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. 

I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that wasthe usual way; but I had the demon's own time with my armor, and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, andthere is so much detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanketaround your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the coldiron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail--theseare made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabricso flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumpsinto a pile like a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy andis nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a nightshirt, yet plenty used it for that--tax collectors, and reformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts ofpeople; then you put on your shoes--flat-boats roofed over withinterleaving bands of steel--and screw your clumsy spurs intothe heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and yourcuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplatethe half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangsdown in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, eitherfor looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belton your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto yourhead, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the backof your neck--and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away likethat is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little ofthe meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell. 

The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as wefinished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as notI hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. Howstately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. He had on hishead a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, andfor visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to hisupper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him, fromneck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. Butpretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, whichof course was of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from hisshoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, bothbefore and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let theskirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it wasjust the outfit for it, too. I would have given a good deal forthat ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sunwas just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me offand wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it youwould get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carrya sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help getyou to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the whileyou do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else--likesomebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, andis sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then theystood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by my leftfoot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shieldaround my neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchorand get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. There wasnothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me ona pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. 

And so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved theirhandkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met, going down the hilland through the village was respectful to us, except some shabbylittle boys on the outskirts. They said:

"Oh, what a guy!" And hove clods at us. 

In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respectanything, they don't care for anything or anybody. They say"Go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way inthe gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of theMiddle Ages; and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan'sadministration; I remember, because I was there and helped. Theprophet had his bears and settled with his boys; and I wantedto get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, becauseI couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without a derrick. 

CHAPTER XII

SLOW TORTURE

Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely andpleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morningin the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fairgreen valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding throughthem, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonelyoaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyondthe valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretchingaway in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervalsa dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew wasa castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no soundof footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of greenlight that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leavesoverhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runletswent frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort ofwhispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left theworld behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and richgloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurriedby and were gone before you could even get your eye on the placewhere the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turningout and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonderand a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms ona tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses ofthe woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare. 

About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out intothe glare--it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or soafter sun-up--it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It wasbeginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a verylong pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious howprogressively little frets grow and multiply after they once geta start. Things which I didn't mind at all, at first, I beganto mind now--and more and more, too, all the time. The firstten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care;I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and droppedit out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it allthe time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn'tget it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and saidhang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pocketsin it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some otherthings; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take offby yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there;and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularlyconvenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all theworse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't getis the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and itwas bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep tricklingdown into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a littlething, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it wasthe most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of coursethese iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise Sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfortfirst, and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and thenwe struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds andget into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I saidthings I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that. I am notbetter than others. 

We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, noteven an ogre; and, in the mood I was in then, it was well forthe ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knightswould have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so I gothis bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me. 

Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and moreall the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every little thingirritates you. When I trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand thatshield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around myback; and if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screechedin that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn'tcreate any breeze at that gait, I was like to get fried in thatstove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the ironsettled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weighevery minute. And you had to be always changing hands, and passingyour spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one handto hold it long at a time. 

Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comesa time when you--when you--well, when you itch. You are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is oneplace; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading andspreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobodycan imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. Andwhen it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I couldnot stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settledon my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and Icouldn't get the visor up; and I could only shake my head, whichwas baking hot by this time, and the fly--well, you know how a flyacts when he has got a certainty--he only minded the shaking enoughto change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzzall around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a waythat a person, already so distressed as I was, simply could notstand. So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet andrelieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of itand fetched it full of water, and I drank and then stood up, andshe poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think howrefreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I waswell soaked and thoroughly comfortable. 

It was good to have a rest--and peace. But nothing is quiteperfect in this life, at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but whatsome of the Indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again, but no matches. 

Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne inupon my understanding--that we were weather-bound. An armed novicecannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy wasnot enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait untilsomebody should come along. Waiting, in silence, would have beenagreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, andwanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think outhow it was that rational or even half-rational men could everhave learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; andhow they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generationswhen it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had hadto suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out;and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this eviland persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; butthinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn'tthink, where Sandy was. 

She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she hada flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your headsore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a corkshe would have been a comfort. But you can't cork that kind;they would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would thinksomething would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up forwords. She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was justnothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a foghas. She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as shecould be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account ofhaving that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than oncein the afternoon I had to say:

"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it'sa low enough treasury without that. "

CHAPTER XIII

FREEMEN

Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can becontented. Only a little while back, when I was riding andsuffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenityin this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would haveseemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the timeby pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yetalready I was getting dissatisfied; partly because I could notlight my pipe--for, although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches with me--and partly because wehad nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlikeimprovidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trustedto chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalizedat the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. Therewas probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination whowould not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thingas that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything moresensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwichesinto my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to makean excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. 

Night approached, and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselleunder a rock, and went off and found another for myself. ButI was obliged to remain in my armor, because I could not get it offby myself and yet could not allow Alisande to help, because itwould have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would nothave amounted to that in reality, because I had clothes onunderneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gottenrid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to strippingoff that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed. 

With the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the windblew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colderit got. Pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and wormsand things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down insidemy armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough, and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majoritywere of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisomeprocession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and area kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again. It would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not rollor thrash around, because this excites the interest of all thedifferent sorts of animals and makes every last one of them wantto turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worsethan they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash aroundhe would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other;there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I couldstill distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he istaking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armorafter this trip. 

All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a livingfire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, thatsame unanswerable question kept circling and circling through mytired head: How do people stand this miserable armor? How havethey managed to stand it all these generations? How can they sleepat night for dreading the tortures of next day?

When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid ofthe animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it faredwith the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle Alisandela Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had sleptlike the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor anyother noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was notmissing it. Measured by modern standards, they were merely modifiedsavages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to getto breakfast--and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeysthose Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them;and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting, after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not, Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. 

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping alongbehind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poorcreatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regardedas a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when Iproposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, sooverwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine thatat first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she saidin their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with theother cattle--a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merelybecause it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offendedthem, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenthsof the free population of the country were of just their class anddegree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc. ; which isto say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were aboutall of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation andleave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly withthe arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or valuein any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingeniouscontrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tailof the procession where it belonged, was marching head up andbanners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to bethe Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so longthat they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not onlythat, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priestshad told their fathers and themselves that this ironical stateof things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon howunlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especiallysuch poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matterthere and become respectfully quiet. 

The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound ina formerly American ear. They were freemen, but they could notleave the estates of their lord or their bishop without hispermission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must havetheir corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of theirown property without paying him a handsome percentage of theproceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without rememberinghim in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for himgratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving theirown crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to lethim plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignationto themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grainaround the trees; they had to smother their anger when his huntingparties galloped through their fields laying waste the result oftheir patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their cropsthey must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful wouldthe penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then camethe procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: firstthe Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissionertook his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroadupon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had libertyto bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble;there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxesagain, and yet other taxes--upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon thewasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church; if the baron wouldsleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day'swork and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman'sdaughter--but no, that last infamy of monarchical government isunprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with histortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, andsacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentleChurch condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried himat midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his propertyand turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. 

And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to workon their lord the bishop's road three days each--gratis; everyhead of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it waslike reading about France and the French, before the ever memorableand blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of suchvillany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlementof that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood foreach hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out ofthat people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong andshame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror, " if we would but remember itand consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the otherin heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other hadlasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousandpersons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders areall for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared withdeath by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain thecoffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been sodiligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France couldhardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us hasbeen taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. 

These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfastand their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for theirking and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked themif they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a freevote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and itsdescendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families--including the voter's; andwould also elect that a certain hundred families should be raisedto dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissibleglories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation'sfamilies--_including his own_. 

They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they hadnever thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to themthat a nation could be so situated that every man _could_ havea say in the government. I said I had seen one--and that it wouldlast until it had an Established Church. Again they were allunhit--at first. But presently one man looked up and asked meto state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it couldsoak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he hadthe idea, and he brought his fist down and said _he_ didn't believea nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get downin the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nationits will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes. I said to myself:

"This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I wouldmake a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to provemyself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in itssystem of government. "

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not toits institutions or its office-holders. The country is the realthing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thingto watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions areextraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the bodyfrom winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shoutfor rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyaltyof unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was inventedby monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whoseConstitution declares "that all political power is inherent inthe people, and all free governments are founded on their authorityand instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form ofgovernment_ in such a manner as they may think expedient. "

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that thecommonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds hispeace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he isa traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees thisdecay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, andit is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not seethe matter as he does. 

And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how thecountry should be governed was restricted to six persons in eachthousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-fourto express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and proposeto change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid blacktreason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporationwhere nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished allthe money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselvesa permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemedto me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed wasa new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus sideof my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get upan insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that theJack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without firsteducating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutelycertain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had beenfor some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite differentpattern from the Cade-Tyler sort. 

So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who satmunching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of humansheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from hisveins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark--

 Put him in the Man-factory--

and gave it to him, and said:

"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands ofAmyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand. "

"He is a priest, then, " said the man, and some of the enthusiasmwent out of his face. 

"How--a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn'tI tell you that _you_ couldn't enter unless your religion, whateverit might be, was your own free property?"

"Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there. "

"But he isn't a priest, I tell you. "

The man looked far from satisfied. He said:

"He is not a priest, and yet can read?"

"He is not a priest and yet can read--yes, and write, too, for thatmatter. I taught him myself. " The man's face cleared. "And it isthe first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory--"

"I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why, I will be your slave, your--"

"No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your familyand go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your smallproperty, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right. "

CHAPTER XIV

"DEFEND THEE, LORD"

I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagantprice it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozenpersons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, andI had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then thesepeople had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant astheir provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasizemy appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financiallift where the money would do so much more good than it wouldin my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and notstinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of aburden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got theproportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so longa sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able toabsolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple ofdollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: justtwins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start fromCamelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paidthese people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and thatwould have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adoptedthe American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle ofgold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all throughthe commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see thisnew blood freshen up its life. 

The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offsetmy liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flintand steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandyand me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smokeshot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people brokefor the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the groundwith a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belchingdragons they had heard so much about from knights and otherprofessional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those peopleto venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them thatthis was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to nonebut my enemies. And I promised, with my hand on my heart, thatif all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and passbefore me they should see that only those who remained behind wouldbe struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness. There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enoughto remain behind to see what would happen. 

I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworksthat I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out beforethey would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the newthing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up herconversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that wasa gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learnedsomething. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might comealong, now. 

We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunitycame about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossinga vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupteda remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:

"Defend thee, lord!--peril of life is toward!"

And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozenarmed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustleamong them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipewas ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost inthinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restoreto all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliginganybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good headof reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none ofthose chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fairplay. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It wasa handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laidmy lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the ironwave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column ofwhite smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seenthe wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight thanthe other one. 

But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, andthis troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came;I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was goingto be eloquent--but I stopped her, and told her my magic hadmiscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch, and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that myenchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on, because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddlespresently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could notdeceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a mistake; thatwhen my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the menwould not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus, I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for thosepeople would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said:

"Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot willgive battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assailthem again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquerand destroy them; and so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovaleand Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else thatwill venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, but yet desire more?"

"Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave?Nobody's hindering. Good land, I'm willing to let bygones bebygones, I'm sure. "

"Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dreamnot of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them. "

"Come--really, is that 'sooth'--as you people say? If they want to, why don't they?"

"It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come. "

"Well, then, suppose I go to them instead, and--"

"Ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. I will go. "

And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. I presentlysaw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That wasa relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings--I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't havebeen so short. But it turned out that she had managed the businesswell; in fact, admirably. She said that when she told those peopleI was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sorewith fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready toput up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appearat Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse andharness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. How much better she managed that thing than I should have doneit myself! She was a daisy. 

CHAPTER XV

SANDY'S TALE

"And so I'm proprietor of some knights, " said I, as we rode off. "Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assetsof that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I rafflethem off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"

"Seven, please you, sir, and their squires. "

"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?"

"Where do they hang out?"

"Yes, where do they live?"

"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons. " Then shesaid musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over hertongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do theyhang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth thephrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily wordedwithal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, wherebyI may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so!already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--"

"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy. "

"Cowboys?"

"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them. A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called. "

"Game--"

"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on yourstatistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your firestarted. Tell me about the knights. "

"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed androde into a great forest. And--"

"Great Scott!"

You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her worksa-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting downto those facts. And she generally began without a preface andfinished without a result. If you interrupted her she would eithergo right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptionsonly did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt prettyfrequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die ifhe let her monotony drip on him right along all day. 

"Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back andbegan over again:

"So they two departed and rode into a great forest. And--"

"_Which_ two?"

"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their massesin the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a greatforest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, oftwelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, andthe damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaineware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as thedamsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire uponthe shield--"

"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see thosecreatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, andI mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblesthello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land. "

"Hello-girl?"

"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl;they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them whenthey are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feelingsorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've gotto confess--"

"Peradventure she--"

"Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explainher so you would understand. "

"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine andSir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did thatdespite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield, and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth allladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite tothe shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evila good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventurethough he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he lovethin some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--"

"Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. Youwould have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in frontof your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bringabout a new distribution of the married princesses and duchessesof the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is justa sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squawin it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desertto the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt. "

"--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine. Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus theking's son of Ireland. "

"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't meananything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jumpthis gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs inthe circus; he is born before his time. "

"I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight asany is on live. "

"_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is thatyou are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter. "

"--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights weregathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, saidSir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is tosuppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that ismore your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to seea knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine andSir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they warewhere Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight towardthem. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled intothe turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, andsaid on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran togetherthat the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smotehim so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--"

"Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things, it ruins so many horses. "

"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him towardMarhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight ofthe turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--"

"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to bebroken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaudand support it. "

 . . . . 

"So these two knights came together with great random--"

I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn'tsay anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble withthe visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. 

"--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieceson the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse andman he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--"

"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple;the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptionssuffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharasof fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws aboutthem a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are allalike: a couple of people come together with great random--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, andso is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together withgreat random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shieldand the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tailand brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down_he_ goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck, and then there's another elected, and another and another and stillanother, till the material is all used up; and when you come tofigure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor whowhipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiestspectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance?Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boybrast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!"

It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturbSandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again, the minute I took off the lid:

"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine withhis spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their spears, and they came together with allthe might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hardin the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--"

"I knew it would. "

--"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine andhis horse rushed down to the earth--"

"Just so--and brake his back. "

--"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled outhis sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus on foot, and therewitheither came unto other eagerly, and smote together with theirswords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised theirhelms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hoursever stronger and stronger and thrice his might was increased. All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his mightincreased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then whenit was come noon--"

The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes andsounds of my boyhood days:

"N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strikethe gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers forthe Shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yardon't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners, _s-a-n-d_'ches, p--_op_-corn!"

--"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine'sstrength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he mightdure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger--"

"Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would oneof these people mind a small thing like that. "

--"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt thatye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as everI felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, andtherefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passingfeeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the wordthat I should say. And therewith they took off their helms andeither kissed other, and there they swore together either to loveother as brethren--"

But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinkingabout what a pity it was that men with such superb strength--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensomeiron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bangeach other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been bornat a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Takea jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, andputs it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world becausehe is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he isa jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and shouldnever have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once youstart a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what isgoing to come of it. 

When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived thatI had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a longway off with her people. 

"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby wasthe head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sittingthereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knightsince it was christened, but he found strange adventures--"

"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son ofIreland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one wouldrecognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a common literary device with the great authors. You shouldmake him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight sinceit was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers. 'You see how much better that sounds. "

--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers. Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hardto say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speedwith usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either salutedother, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, andshe was threescore winter of age or more--"

"The _damsel_ was?"

"Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--"

"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fitkind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, andfall out when you laugh. "

"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet ofgold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--"

Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice fadedout of my hearing!

Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her agewho was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whomI shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me backover wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summermornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. 

I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who ourcaptured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever getto explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughtswere far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vagueway that each of these three knights took one of these three damselsup behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, afteryear and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was ofa piece with the general simplicity of the country. 

The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon whenAlisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had madepretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some timeor other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. 

We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements werecharmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass wasdrenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was thelargest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the onewe were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it;she said she had passed it without calling, when she went downto Camelot. 

CHAPTER XVI

MORGAN LE FAY

If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirableplaces to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errantwere _not_ persons to be believed--that is, measured by modernstandards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their owntime, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was verysimple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the restwas fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remainedthat if I could find out something about a castle before ringingthe door-bell--I mean hailing the warders--it was the sensiblething to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horsemanmaking the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. 

As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curiousaddition also--a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearerand read this sign on his tabard:

 "Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It. "

That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposesin view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In thefirst place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsenseof knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I hadstarted a number of these people out--the bravest knights I couldget--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one deviceor another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerousenough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even thesteel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to lookridiculous because he was out of the fashion. 

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creatingsuspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanlinessamong the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction thatany Established Church is an established crime, an establishedslave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it inany way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in myown former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the wombof time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had beenborn in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Actand the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men'sliberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an EstablishedAnachronism with. 

My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on theirtabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got theking to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaricsplendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain tothe lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladieswere afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary'snext move was to get the family together and try it on himself;he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that couldconvince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubtremained, he must catch a hermit--the woods were full of them;saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybodystood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and thatfailed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone. 

Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the roadthey washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go andget a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the restof his days. As a consequence the workers in the field wereincreasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only twohands; but before I had left home I was already employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was gettingso pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gaspingaround and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk upand down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse upthere than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; andhe was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soapfactory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his househe would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladiespresent, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they wouldswear before children, if the wind was their way when the factorywas going. 

This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he saidthat this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister ofKing Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm aboutas big as the District of Columbia--you could stand in the middleof it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and "Kingdoms"were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine inJoshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled upbecause they couldn't stretch out without a passport. 

La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worstfailure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake; yet he hadtried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit;but the hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for thisanimal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his placeamong the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. Andso my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I said:

"Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We havebrains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disasterinto an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and thebiggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisementthat will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhornvictory. We will put on your bulletin-board, '_Patronized by theelect_. ' How does that strike you?"

"Verily, it is wonderly bethought!"

"Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest littleone-line ad, it's a corker. "

So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a bravefellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chiefcelebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this oneof mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a differentway, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereasSandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and soI knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when hebade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it. 

Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she saidthat La Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of thattrip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to theconqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterwardin sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, supposethe victor should decline to accept his spoil? She said that thatwouldn't answer--he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't beregular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be tooburdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chancethat she would desert to him. 

In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castlewalls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant totell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knewMrs. Le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybodybelieve she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, allher instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with coldmalice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimesmurder was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious asI could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she was beautiful;black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, agehad failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness. She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she couldhave been mistaken for sister to her own son. 

As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were orderedinto her presence. King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old manwith a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the traditionthat he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also onaccount of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandyhad been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, theconspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask mequestions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have beenmisrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, andas easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with somethingon a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdidhis graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against herknee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way asanother person would have harpooned a rat!

Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs inone great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of theold king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The lookhe got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphensin it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroomand called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetlyalong with her talk. 

I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked shekept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they madeno balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they camewith fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; andwhen they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicateda crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes hadoverlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failedto see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearerthan any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. 

Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman. And what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon thoseservants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when thelightning flashes out of a cloud. I could have got the habitmyself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he wasalways on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turntoward him but he winced. 

In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word aboutKing Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated herbrother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded uplike storm; she called for her guards, and said:

"Hale me these varlets to the dungeons. "

That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say--or do. But not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilestconfidence, and said:

"God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It isThe Boss!"

Now what a happy idea that was!--and so simple; yet it would neverhave occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots;and this was one of the spots. 

The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenanceand brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces andblandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover upwith them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said:

"La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powerslike to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one whohas vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantmentsI foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you enteredhere. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise youinto some display of your art, as not doubting you would blastthe guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have longbeen childishly curious to see. "

The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission. 

CHAPTER XVII

A ROYAL BANQUET

Madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged thatI was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, andshe was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and killsomebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However, to myrelief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. I willsay this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply andenthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from theregular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by theChurch. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten hisenemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat;more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatchinghis enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly givethanks, without even waiting to rob the body. There was to benothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Benvenuto Cellini, that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. All the nobles ofBritain, with their families, attended divine service morning andnight daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of themhad family worship five or six times a day besides. The creditof this belonged entirely to the Church. Although I was no friendto that Catholic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often, in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What would this countrybe without the Church?"

After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which waslighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine andlavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of thehosts. At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of theking, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching down the hallfrom this, was the general table, on the floor. At this, abovethe salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of theirfamilies, of both sexes, --the resident Court, in effect--sixty-onepersons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, withtheir principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteenpersons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standingbehind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It wasa very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to bethe crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to latercenturies as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye. " It was new, and oughtto have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or otherthe queen had the composer hanged, after dinner. 

After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table saida noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion ofwaiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no wordsanywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chopsopened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like tothe muffled burr of subterranean machinery. 

The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was thedestruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast--the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposingat the start--nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt;and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to allthe other dishes. 

With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began--and the talk. Gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybodygot comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous--both sexes, --and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrificto hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, theassemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress. Ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have madeQueen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth of Englandhide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed--howled, you may say. In pretty much all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry thechaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, uponinvitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort asany that was sung that night. 

By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, somehilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table. Of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whosewedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough. Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of theyoung daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner whenceshe was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed, in the lost and lamented days of the Ancient Regime. 

Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and allconscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the comingblessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door atthe bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady, leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed ittoward the queen and cried out:

"The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity, who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate thisold heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort inall this world but him!"

Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was anawful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, withthe death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command:

"Lay hands on her! To the stake with her!"

The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame; it was acruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy gave me a look;I knew she had another inspiration. I said:

"Do what you choose. "

She was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. She indicatedme, and said:

"Madame, _he_ saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or hewill dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instablefabric of a dream!"

Confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! What ifthe queen--

But my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off;for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance butgave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. When she reachedit she was sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob;overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding--anything to get out before I should changemy mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies ofspace. Well, well, well, they _were_ a superstitious lot. It isall a body can do to conceive of it. 

The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraidto hang the composer without first consulting me. I was very sorryfor her--indeed, any one would have been, for she was reallysuffering; so I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, andhad no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I thereforeconsidered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having themusicians ordered into our presence to play that Sweet Bye andBye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, andgave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxationof sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gainslittle by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon alloccasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of hissubordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A littleconcession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy. 

Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurablyhappy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it gota little the start of her. I mean it set her music going--her silverbell of a tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would notbecome me to suggest that it was pretty late and that I was a tiredman and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I hadthe chance. Now I must stick it out; there was no other way. Soshe tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostlyhush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as iffrom deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek--with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. The queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tiltedher graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound boredits way up through the stillness again. 

"What is it?" I said. 

"It is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. It is many hours now. "

"Endureth what?"

"The rack. Come--ye shall see a blithe sight. An he yield nothis secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder. "

What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene, when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with thatman's pain. Conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dankand dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night--a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorteror the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about thissufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymousinformer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. I said:

"Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your Highness. It were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser. "

"I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. But an I would, I could not, for that the accuser came masked bynight, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so the forester knoweth him not. "

"Then is this Unknown the only person who saw the stag killed?"

"Marry, _no_ man _saw_ the killing, but this Unknown saw this hardywretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with rightloyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester. "

"So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too? Isn't it just possiblethat he did the killing himself? His loyal zeal--in a mask--looksjust a shade suspicious. But what is your highness's idea forracking the prisoner? Where is the profit?"

"He will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. For hiscrime his life is forfeited by the law--and of a surety will I seethat he payeth it!--but it were peril to my own soul to let himdie unconfessed and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling meinto hell for _his_ accommodation. "

"But, your Highness, suppose he has nothing to confess?"

"As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to death and heconfess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naughtto confess--ye will grant that that is sooth? Then shall I not bedamned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess--wherefore, I shall be safe. "

It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless toargue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrifiedtraining; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. Andher training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the landwould not have been able to see that her position was defective. 

As we entered the rack-cell I caught a picture that will not gofrom me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty orthereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with hiswrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at eitherend. There was no color in him; his features were contorted andset, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent overhim on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty;smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a cornercrouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a littlechild asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold theexecutioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cryfrom both the prisoner and the woman; but I shouted, and theexecutioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke. I could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me tosee it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place and speakto the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object I spokein a low voice and said I did not want to make a scene beforeher servants, but I must have my way; for I was King Arthur'srepresentative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she hadto yield. I asked her to indorse me to these people, and thenleave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill;and even went further than I was meaning to require. I only wantedthe backing of her own authority; but she said:

"Ye will do in all things as this lord shall command. It is The Boss. "

It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see itby the squirming of these rats. The queen's guards fell into line, and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and wokethe echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of theirretreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack andplaced upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, andwine given him to drink. The woman crept near and looked on, eagerly, lovingly, but timorously, --like one who fears a repulse;indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumpedback, the picture of fright, when I turned unconsciously towardher. It was pitiful to see. 

"Lord, " I said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. Do anythingyou're a mind to; don't mind me. "

Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do ita kindness that it understands. The baby was out of her way andshe had her cheek against the man's in a minute and her handsfondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. The manrevived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all hecould do. I judged I might clear the den, now, and I did; clearedit of all but the family and myself. Then I said:

"Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; I knowthe other side. "

The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But the woman lookedpleased--as it seemed to me--pleased with my suggestion. I went on--

"You know of me?"

"Yes. All do, in Arthur's realms. "

"If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you shouldnot be afraid to speak. "

The woman broke in, eagerly:

"Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! Thou canst an thou wilt. Ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me--for _me_! And how can I bear it?I would I might see him die--a sweet, swift death; oh, my Hugo, I cannot bear this one!"

And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and stillimploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I could not quiteget the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said:

"Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve whom I love, to win a gentle death? I wend thou knewest me better. "

"Well, " I said, "I can't quite make this out. It is a puzzle. Now--"

"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider howthese his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will not speak!--whereas, the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death--"

"What _are_ you maundering about? He's going out from here a freeman and whole--he's not going to die. "

The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at mein a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out:

"He is saved!--for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king'sservant--Arthur, the king whose word is gold!"

"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Whydidn't you before?"

"Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she. "

"Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?"

"Ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise. "

"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all. You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plainenough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothingto confess--"

"I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the deer!"

"You _did_? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever--"

"Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but--"

"You _did_! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want himto do that for?"

"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all thiscruel pain. "

"Well--yes, there is reason in that. But _he_ didn't want thequick death. "

"He? Why, of a surety he _did_. "

"Well, then, why in the world _didn't_ he confess?"

"Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?"

"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convictedman's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They couldtorture you to death, but without conviction or confession theycould not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man;and _you_--true wife and the woman that you are--you would havebought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slowstarvation and death--well, it humbles a body to think what yoursex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you bothfor my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm goingto turn groping and grubbing automata into _men_. "

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS

Well, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home. I had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he wasa good, painstaking and paingiving official, --for surely it wasnot to his discredit that he performed his functions well--but topay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing thatyoung woman. The priests told me about this, and were generouslyhot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sortwas turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showedthat not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that were down on the groundamong the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, anddevoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom frettedabout it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been myway to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I didnot like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep peoplereconciled to an Established Church. We _must_ have a religion--it goes without saying--but my idea is, to have it cut up intoforty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had beenthe case in the United States in my time. Concentration of powerin a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church isonly a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, anddoes no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scatteredcondition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was onlyan opinion--my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn'tworth any more than the pope's--or any less, for that matter. 

Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlookthe just complaint of the priests. The man must be punishedsomehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made himleader of the band--the new one that was to be started. He beggedhard, and said he couldn't play--a plausible excuse, but too thin;there wasn't a musician in the country that could. 

The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she foundshe was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. ButI told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and customshe certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the king'sname I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and hehad carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might makedetection of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn'tmake her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstancein the killing of venison--or of a person--so I gave it up and lether sulk it out. I _did_ think I was going to make her see it byremarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the pagemodified that crime. 

"Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth!Man, I am going to _pay_ for him!"

Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training--training iseverything; training is all there is _to_ a person. We speak ofnature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what wecall by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they aretransmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can becovered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all therest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a processionof ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clamor grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediouslyand ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, thispathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humblylive a pure and high and blameless life, and save that onemicroscopic atom in me that is truly _me_: the rest may land inSheol and welcome for all I care. 

No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough, but her training made her an ass--that is, from a many-centuries-laterpoint of view. To kill the page was no crime--it was her right;and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined andunassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subjectwhen she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one. 

Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved a complimentfor one thing; and I tried to pay it, but the words stuck in mythroat. She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wiseobliged to pay for him. That was law for some other people, butnot for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a large andgenerous thing to pay for that lad, and that I ought in commonfairness to come out with something handsome about it, but Icouldn't--my mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair youngcreature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanitieslaced with his golden blood. How could she _pay_ for him! _Whom_could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman, trainedas she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet notable to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do wasto fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak--and the pityof it was, that it was true:

"Madame, your people will adore you for this. "

Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived. Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. A mastermight kill his slave for nothing--for mere spite, malice, orto pass the time--just as we have seen that the crowned head coulddo it with _his_ slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman couldkill a free commoner, and pay for him--cash or garden-truck. A noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law wasconcerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. _Any_bodycould kill _some_body, except the commoner and the slave; these hadno privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn'tstand murder. It made short work of the experimenter--and ofhis family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up amongthe ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so muchas a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens'dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatterswith horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crackjokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of thebest people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in hischapter about the dismemberment of Louis XV's poor awkward enemy. 

I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wantedto leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind thatmy conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person;and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannotbe said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to haveless good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, andI am only one man; others, with less experience, may thinkdifferently. They have a right to their view. I only standto this: I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I knowit is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I startedwith. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because weprize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so. If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if I hadan anvil in me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when youcome to think, there is no real difference between a conscienceand an anvil--I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousandtimes. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when youcouldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you canwork off a conscience--at least so it will stay worked off; notthat I know of, anyway. 

There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it wasa disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it botheredme all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king, but what would be the use?--he was but an extinct volcano; he hadbeen active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindlyenough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. He wasnothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there. And she was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to warma flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that veryopportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. However, I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expectingthe worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all. 

So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness. I said I had been having a general jail-delivery at Camelot andamong neighboring castles, and with her permission I would liketo examine her collection, her bric-a-brac--that is to say, herprisoners. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she finallyconsented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That aboutended my discomfort. She called her guards and torches, andwe went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castle'sfoundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the livingrock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of them wasa woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answera question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thingit might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaninglessdull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gaveno further sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middleage, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nineyears, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner, and had been sent here on her bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite, a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which saidlord she had refused what has since been called le droit duseigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilthalf a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband hadinterfered at that point, believing the bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble andtrembling wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him thereastonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embitteredagainst both bride and groom. The said lord being cramped fordungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals, and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had neverseen each other since. Here they were, kenneled like toads in thesame rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feetof each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not. All the first years, their only question had been--asked withbeseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?"But they had never got an answer; and at last that question wasnot asked any more--or any other. 

I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirty-fouryears old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block ofstone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he wasmuttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowlyover, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of thetorchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering againand took no further notice of us. There were some patheticallysuggestive dumb witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles werecicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on whichhe sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but thisapparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chainscease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner. 

I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take him to her, and see--to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him, once--roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voicelike no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, andbeauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams--as hethought--and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnantblood leaping; the sight of her--

But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground andlooked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with asort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again andwandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we knownothing about. 

I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did notlike it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter, but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However, I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I would fix himso that he could. 

I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes, and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killedanother lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lordhad ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got thebest of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that thatI left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only publicwell in one of his wretched villages. The queen was bound to hanghim for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was nocrime to kill an assassin. But I said I was willing to let herhang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up withthat, as it was better than nothing. 

Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-sevenmen and women were shut up there! Indeed, some were there forno distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite;and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newestprisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He saidhe believed that men were about all alike, and one man as goodas another, barring clothes. He said he believed that if you wereto strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, hecouldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotelclerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reducedto an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose andsent him to the Factory. 

Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind theface of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had beenpierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thinray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one ofthese poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow'shole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer outthrough the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in thevalley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartacheand longing, through that crack. He could see the lights shinethere at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in andcome out--his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, thoughhe could not make out at that distance. In the course of yearshe noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wonderedif they were weddings or what they might be. And he noted funerals;and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin, but hecould not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it waswife or child. He could see the procession form, with priestsand mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret withthem. He had left behind him five children and a wife; and innineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of themhumble enough in pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost fiveof his treasures; there must still be one remaining--one nowinfinitely, unspeakably precious, --but _which_ one? wife, or child?That was the question that tortured him, by night and by day, asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest, of some sort, andhalf a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great supportto the body and preserver of the intellect. This man was in prettygood condition yet. By the time he had finished telling me hisdistressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that you wouldhave been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity;that is to say, I was as burning up as he was to find out whichmember of the family it was that was left. So I took him overhome myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too--typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole Niagaras of happytears; and by George! we found the aforetime young matron grayingtoward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies allmen and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywisethemselves--for not a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of theingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred forthis prisoner, and she had _invented_ all those funerals herself, to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius ofthe whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral _short_, so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing. 

But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated himwith her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him. And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness thandeliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, shehad; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed peopleare above a certain social grade their hair is auburn. 

Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were fivewhose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longerknown! One woman and four men--all bent, and wrinkled, andmind-extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgottenthese details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the sameway. The succession of priests whose office it had been to praydaily with the captives and remind them that God had put themthere, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppression was what He loved to seein parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poorold human ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went butlittle way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only, and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help oftradition the only thing that could be proven was that none ofthe five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longerthis privation has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queenknew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they wereheirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the formerfirm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with theirpersons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of novalue, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:

"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"

The question was a puzzler. She didn't know _why_ she hadn't, thething had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecastingthe veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If, without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with hertraining, those inherited prisoners were merely property--nothingmore, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property, it does notoccur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it. 

When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open worldand the glare of the afternoon sun--previously blindfolding them, in charity for eyes so long untortured by light--they were aspectacle to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, patheticfrights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchyby the Grace of God and the Established Church. I muttered absently:

"I _wish_ I could photograph them!"

You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that theydon't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant theyare, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven'tshot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, andwas always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. Shehesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with suddencomprehension, and she said she would do it for me. 

I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography?But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, shewas moving on the procession with an axe!

Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I haveseen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over themall for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episodewas. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photographa procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to tryto do it with an axe. 

CHAPTER XIX

KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE

Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early. It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole lusciousbarrels-ful of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned, woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for twodays and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerableold buzzard-roost! I mean, for me: of course the place was allright and agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used tohigh life all her days. 

Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while, and I was expecting to get the consequences. I was right; but shehad stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightilysupported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which wereworth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; soI thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she started it up:

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirtywinter of age southward--"

"Are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch onthe trail of the cowboys, Sandy?"

"Even so, fair my lord. "

"Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it. Begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, andI will load my pipe and give good attention. "

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirtywinter of age southward. And so they came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the dukeof South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And on the mornthe duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad him make him ready. Andso Sir Marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sungafore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback inthe court of the castle, there they should do the battle. So therewas the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sonsby him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so theyencountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spearsupon him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched none ofthem. Then came the four sons by couples, and two of them braketheir spears, and so did the other two. And all this whileSir Marhaus touched them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke, and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth. And so he served his sons. And then Sir Marhaus alight down, andbad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. And then someof his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhaus. ThenSir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will dothe uttermost to you all. When the duke saw he might not escapethe death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield themto Sir Marhaus. And they kneeled all down and put the pommelsof their swords to the knight, and so he received them. And thenthey holp up their father, and so by their common assent promisedunto Sir Marhaus never to be foes unto King Arthur, and thereuponat Whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them inthe king's grace. *

[*Footnote: The story is borrowed, language and all, from theMorte d'Arthur. --M. T. ]

"Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now ye shall witthat that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few dayspast you also did overcome and send to Arthur's court!"

"Why, Sandy, you can't mean it!"

"An I speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me. "

"Well, well, well, --now who would ever have thought it? Onewhole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it was an elegant haul. Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedioushard work, too, but I begin to see that there _is_ money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in itas a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate businesscan be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirlin the knight-errantry line--now what is it when you blow awaythe nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a cornerin pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. You're rich--yes, --suddenly rich--for about a day, maybe a week;then somebody corners the market on _you_, and down goes yourbucket-shop; ain't that so, Sandy?"

"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simplelanguage in such sort that the words do seem to come endlongand overthwart--"

"There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get aroundit that way, Sandy, it's _so_, just as I say. I _know_ it's so. And, moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantryis _worse_ than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, andso somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in aknight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in hischecks, what have you got for assets? Just a rubbish-pile ofbattered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can youcall _those_ assets? Give me pork, every time. Am I right?"

"Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matterswhereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps andfortunings whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us, meseemeth--"

"No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far asit goes, but you don't know business; that's where the troubleis. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrongto be always trying. However, that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur'scourt. And speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country thisis for women and men that never get old. Now there's Morgan le Fay, as fresh and young as a Vassar pullet, to all appearances, andhere is this old duke of the South Marches still slashing away withsword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a familyas he has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawaine killed sevenof his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhaus and me totake into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winterof age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom--How oldare you, Sandy?"

It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her. The millhad shut down for repairs, or something. 

CHAPTER XX

THE OGRE'S CASTLE

Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for ahorse carrying triple--man, woman, and armor; then we stoppedfor a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook. 

Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near hemade dolorous moan, and by the words of it I perceived that hewas cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of hiscoming, for that I saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in lettersall of shining gold was writ:

 "USE PETERSON'S PROPHYLACTIC TOOTH-BRUSH--ALL THE GO. "

I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him forknight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly greatfellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an aceof sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He wasnever long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretextor other to let out that great fact. But there was another factof nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason hedidn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent downover horse-tail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not seeany particular difference between the two facts. I liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was sofine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grandleonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaintdevice of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush, with motto: "Try Noyoudont. " This was a tooth-wash that I wasintroducing. 

He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would notalight. He said he was after the stove-polish man; and with thishe broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarderreferred to was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and ofconsiderable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusionsin a tournament once, with no less a Mogul than Sir Gaherishimself--although not successfully. He was of a light and laughingdisposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It wasfor this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polishsentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothingserious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do wasto deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections toward neatness againstthe time when the stove should appear upon the stage. 

Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. Hesaid he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get downfrom his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to anycomfort, until he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled thisaccount. It appeared, by what I could piece together of theunprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced uponSir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he wouldmake a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills andglades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rarecustomers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With characteristiczeal Sir Madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and afterthree hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. Andbehold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from thedungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all oftwenty years since any one of them had known what it was to beequipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth. 

"Blank-blank-blank him, " said Sir Madok, "an I do not stove-polishhim an I may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight thathight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bideon live, an I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn agreat oath this day. "

And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear andgat him thence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon oneof those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. He was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had notseen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were alsodescendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now;but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mindwas stagnant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast halfa century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his oldwife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could rememberhim as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's handsand went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castlecould not tell within half a generation the length of time the manhad been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense;but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood thereamong her married sons and daughters trying to realize a fatherwho had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual fleshand blood and set before her face. 

It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account thatI have made room for it here, but on account of a thing whichseemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matterbrought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage againstthese oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of crueltyand outrage so long that nothing could have startled them buta kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of thedepth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entirebeing was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them inthis life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can saythat of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lowerdeep for him. 

I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sortof experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning outa peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringingup the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizingto the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever didachieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion:it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must_begin_ in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teachesanything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was aReign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them. 

Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitementand feverish expectancy. She said we were approaching the ogre'scastle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The objectof our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this suddenresurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thingfor a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy'sexcitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sortof thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reasonwith your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things whichthe intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse, motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her headbent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordereda declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And theykept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpseover the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side onmy knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with herfinger, and said in a panting whisper:

"The castle! The castle! Lo, where it looms!"

What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said:

"Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattledfence around it. "

She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out ofher face; and during many moments she was lost in thought andsilent. Then:

"It was not enchanted aforetime, " she said in a musing fashion, as if to herself. "And how strange is this marvel, and how awful--that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a baseand shameful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is notenchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and statelystill, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue airfrom its towers. And God shield us, how it pricks the heart tosee again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in theirsweet faces! We have tarried along, and are to blame. "

I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to _me_, not to her. It wouldbe wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn'tbe done; I must just humor it. So I said:

"This is a common case--the enchanting of a thing to one eye andleaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of itbefore, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If theseladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would benecessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossibleif one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. And hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without thetrue key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end byreducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gaswhich you can't follow--which, of course, amounts to the samething. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are underthe enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and toeverybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no wayfrom my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is alady, that is enough for me, I know how to treat her. "

"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I knowthat thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to greatdeeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to willand to do, as any that is on live. "

"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those threeyonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds--"

"The ogres, Are _they_ changed also? It is most wonderful. Nowam I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five oftheir nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily, fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than I wend. "

"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how _much_ of an ogreis invisible; then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you beafraid, I will make short work of these bunco-steerers. Staywhere you are. "

I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with theswine-herds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogsat the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latestquotations. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of themanor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been alongnext day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving theswine-herds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. Butnow the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would bea stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and hesaid that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs tookthe fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offeredhim a child and said:

"Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yetrob me of the wherewithal to feed it?"

How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day, under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by manyto have changed its nature when it changed its disguise. 

I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckonedSandy to come--which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rushof a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon thosehogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain themto her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call themreverently by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamedof the human race. 

We had to drive those hogs home--ten miles; and no ladies wereever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road, no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowedaway in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughestplaces they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughlyaccosted; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecomingtheir rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be calledmy Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying anddifficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. There was onesmall countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hairon her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a raceof an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right wherewe had started from, having made not a rod of real progress. I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing. When I overtook Sandy she was horrified, and said it was in thelast degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train. 

We got the hogs home just at dark--most of them. The princessNerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting:namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white starin her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and aslight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side--a coupleof the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also amongthe missing were several mere baronesses--and I wanted them tostay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; soservants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hillsto that end. 

Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, greatguns!--well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anythinglike it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like aninsurrection in a gasometer. 

CHAPTER XXI

THE PILGRIMS

When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretchingout, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out ofthe question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealingof the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemoniumcome again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughtswere busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy'scurious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdomcould produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting likea crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. I hadto put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not alunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it isto seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you havebeen taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon, uninfluencedby enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man, unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out ofsight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer'shelp, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred milesaway, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, shewould have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed inenchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle couldbe turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have beenthe same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actualityof the telephone and its wonders, --and in both cases would beabsolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandywas sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane--to Sandy--I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculouslocomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believedthat the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to supportit, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water thatoccupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdomafflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognizedthat it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybodyas a madman. 

The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room andgave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally andmanifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives ofher island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let itsoutward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching mylofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidableslight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast atthe second table. The family were not at home. I said:

"How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?"

"Family?"

"Yes. "

"Which family, good my lord?"

"Why, this family; your own family. "

"Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family. "

"No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?"

"Now how indeed might that be? I have no home. "

"Well, then, whose house is this?"

"Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew myself. "

"Come--you don't even know these people? Then who invited us here?"

"None invited us. We but came; that is all. "

"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. Theeffrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march intoa man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobilitythe sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns outthat we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever ventureto take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it wasyour home. What will the man say?"

"What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?"

"Thanks for what?"

Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:

"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twicein his life to entertain company such as we have brought to gracehis house withal?"

"Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that thisis the first time he has had a treat like this. "

"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speechand due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestorof dogs. "

To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so. It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:

"The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility togetherand be moving. "

"Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"

"We want to take them to their home, don't we?"

"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth!Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all thesejourneys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that createdlife, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sindone through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought uponand bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, thatserpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto thatevil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heartthrough fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erstso white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudesits brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven whereinall such as native be to that rich estate and--"

"Great Scott!"

"My lord?"

"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don'tyou see, we could distribute these people around the earth in lesstime than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. Wemustn't talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn'tlet your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take thearistocracy home?"

"Even their friends. These will come for them from the far partsof the earth. "

This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and therelief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain todeliver the goods, of course. 

"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfullyended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--"

"I also am ready; I will go with thee. "

This was recalling the pardon. 

"How? You will go with me? Why should you?"

"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor. I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the fieldsome overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap. "

"Elected for the long term, " I sighed to myself. "I may as wellmake the best of it. " So then I spoke up and said:

"All right; let us make a start. "

While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave thatwhole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to takea duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainlylodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would behardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departurefrom custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure fromcustom--that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing anycrime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they wouldscatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then theevidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method, the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family ina stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it andtell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the familyhad introduced successively for a hundred years. 

The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for itwas hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would governthis country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life, and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny. 

This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that ithad in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professionsthe country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. There were young men and old men, young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, andthere was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty wasto remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet. 

It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry andfull of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. Whatthey regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and causedno more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best Englishsociety twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of theEnglish wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth centurywere sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelledthe delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark wasmade at one end of the procession and started on its travels towardthe other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparklingspray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake. 

Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she postedme. She said:

"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of thegodly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansedfrom sin. "

"Where is this watering place?"

"It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land thathight the Cuckoo Kingdom. "

"Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?"

"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time therelived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the worldmore holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of piousbooks, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, andate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayedmuch, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until itfell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came theyto be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced. "

"Proceed. "

"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time, the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clearwater burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were thefickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with theirabbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would constructa bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more, he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked. Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the whichHe loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed aswhite as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, inmiraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters ceased to flow, andutterly vanished away. "

"They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crimeis regarded in this country. "

"Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfectlife for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers, tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that waterto flow again. Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votivecandles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all inthe land did marvel. "

"How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy. "

"And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humblesurrender and destroyed the bath. And behold, His anger was in thatmoment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and evenunto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure. "

"Then I take it nobody has washed since. "

"He that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, andswiftly would he need it, too. "

"The community has prospered since?"

"Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroadinto all lands. From every land came monks to join; they cameeven as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added buildingto building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its armsand took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yetmore; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of thevale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery. And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their lovinglabors together, and together they built a fair great foundlingasylum midway of the valley between. "

"You spoke of some hermits, Sandy. "

"These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermitthriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. Ye shall notfind no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermitof a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some farstrange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves andswamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be hisbreed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there. "

I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humoredface, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some furthercrumbs of fact; but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintancewith him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in theimmemorial way, to that same old anecdote--the one Sir Dinadantold me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagramor and waschallenged of him on account of it. I excused myself and droppedto the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hencefrom this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day ofbroken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonousdefeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how longeternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote. 

Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims;but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playfulways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet bothwere here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong menand women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boysand girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children weresmileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundredpeople but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessnesswhich is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance withdespair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feetand their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists;and all except the children were also linked together in a filesix feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collarall down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped threehundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and endsof food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in thesechains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upontheir bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to beclothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles andmade sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet weretorn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been ahundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold onthe trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carrieda whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided intoseveral knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut theshoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, andstraightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed hisdesire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up aswe rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence. And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clankof their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-threeburdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloudof its own making. 

All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seenthe like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, andhas written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was remindedof this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, youngmothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, howa something in their hearts was written in the dust upon theirfaces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was thetrack of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, andit hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that itwas come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that oughtnot to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning oflife; and no doubt--

She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lashand flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung meas if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file andjumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, andsaid she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as thiswas the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg, and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gaveno attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made themen-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her onthe ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then helaid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, sheshrieking and struggling the while piteously. One of the men whowas holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he wasreviled and flogged. 

All our pilgrims looked on and commented--on the expert way inwhich the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelongeveryday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anythingelse in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slaverycould do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superiorlobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that. 

I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but thatwould not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a namefor riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rightsroughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death ofslavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it sothat when I became its executioner it should be by command ofthe nation. 

Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landedproprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverablehere where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; thenthere was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as towhich should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl was deliveredfrom her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings, into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when shewas whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered herface and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rainof his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it washusband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girlhad to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shriekedlike one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; andeven after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of thosereceding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife andchild gone, never to be seen by him again in life?--well, the lookof him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knewI should never get his picture out of my mind again, and thereit is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it. 

We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and whenI rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knightcame riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized himfor knight of mine--Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in thegentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty wasplug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armorof the time--up to where his helmet ought to have been; but hehadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculousa spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of mysurreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making itgrotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's saddle was hung about withleather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knighthe swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and madehim wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana andget his news. 

"How is trade?" I asked. 

"Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteenwhenas I got me from Camelot. "

"Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have youbeen foraging of late?"

"I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness, please you sir. "

"I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirringin the monkery, more than common?"

"By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightlyto the stable and do even as I bid.... Sir, it is parlous newsI bring, and--be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, goodfolk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith itconcerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for myword, and my word and message being these, namely: That a haphas happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but oncethis two hundred years, which was the first and last time thatthat said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form bycommandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causesthereunto contributing, wherein the matter--"

"The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This shout burst fromtwenty pilgrim mouths at once. 

"Ye say well, good people. I was verging to it, even when ye spake. "

"Has somebody been washing again?"

"Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to besome other sin, but none wit what. "

"How are they feeling about the calamity?"

"None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry. The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackclothand ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceasednor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlingsbe all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment, sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at lastthey sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; andif you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin, and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch thatwater though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplishit; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon hishellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisturehath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upona copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweatethbetwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye--"

Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozanathese words which I had written on the inside of his hat: "ChemicalDepartment, Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two offirst size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the propercomplementary details--and two of my trained assistants. " And I said:

"Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, andshow the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these requiredmatters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch. "

"I will well, Sir Boss, " and he was off. 

CHAPTER XXII

THE HOLY FOUNTAIN

The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acteddifferently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and nowwhen the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the mainthing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do ashorses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done--turn backand get at something profitable--no, anxious as they had beforebeen to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as fortytimes as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings. 

We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stoodupon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness, and our eyesswept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, itslarge features. These were the three masses of buildings. Theywere distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructionsin the lonely waste of what seemed a desert--and was. Such a sceneis always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks sosteeped in death. But there was a sound here which interruptedthe stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faintfar sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on thepassing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knewwhether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits. 

We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males weregiven lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. Thebells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smoteupon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despairpossessed the heart of every monk and published itself in hisghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny. 

The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to tears; buthe did the shedding himself. He said:

"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring notthe water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good workof two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantmentsthat be holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her causebe done by devil's magic. "

"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's workconnected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil, and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlinworking strictly on pious lines?"

"Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oathto make his promise good. "

"Well, in that case, let him proceed. "

"But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?"

"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it beprofessional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid eachother. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it wouldarrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract; no othermagician can touch it till he throws it up. "

"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and theact is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will givelaw to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what shewills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. I will take itfrom him; you shall begin upon the moment. "

"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power issupreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poormagicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magicianin a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. Heis struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not beetiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it. "

The abbot's face lighted. 

"Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade him to abandon it. "

"No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he werepersuaded against his will, he would load that well with a maliciousenchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret. It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment ofmine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out itssecret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block mefor a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?"

"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have itthy way, my son. But my heart is heavy with this disappointment. Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thusthe thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward signof repose where inwardly is none. "

Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waiveetiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never beable to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time;which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him hisreputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody butMerlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowdaround to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle inthat day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there wassure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucialmoment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retirefrom the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectivelymyself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, and that would take two or three days. 

My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal;insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first timein ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforcedwith food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began togo round they rose faster. By the time everybody was half-seas over, the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so westayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters gotto be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that madethe tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the roundbellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed outin a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells. 

At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it. Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands doesnot, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorousthing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places;the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfthrepetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth theydisintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This languageis figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the endthey make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast. 

I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchantingaway like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not ina pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contractwas a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue andcursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean. 

Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" wasan ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned upin the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the liethat had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could havetold it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in adark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whosewalls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that wouldhave made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorativeof curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters whennobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are alwayson deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put inthe picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company;look at the old masters. 

The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawnwith a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs whichdelivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--whenthere was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enterthe well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authorityto do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations;he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and usedhis eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have curedthe well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle inthe customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician whobelieved in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who ishandicapped with a superstition like that. 

I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of thewall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures thatallowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. ThenI called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, andmade them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of thewall was gone, exposing a good big fissure. 

I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble wascorrect, because I had another one that had a showy point or twoabout it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, manycenturies later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used toblast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this welldry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people mostnobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamitebomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it wasplain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot haveeverything the way he would like it. A man has no business tobe depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up hismind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in nohurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too. 

When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let downa fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and therewas forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:

"How deep is the well?"

"That, sir, I wit not, having never been told. "

"How does the water usually stand in it?"

"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors. "

It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witnessto it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirtyfeet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unwornand rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that othertime? Without doubt some practical person had come along andmended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he haddiscovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyedthe well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, andthese children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolledtheir bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blewaway, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to dropa fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what wasreally the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest thingsto get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physicalform and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an ideathat his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicionof being illegitimate. I said to the monk:

"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but wewill try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a verypassable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he maynot succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that shouldbe nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind ofmiracle knows enough to keep hotel. "

"Hotel? I mind not to have heard--"

"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do thismiracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do thismiracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracleto tax the occult powers to the last strain. "

"None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; forit is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and tooka year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that endwill we pray. "

As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion aroundthat the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been madelarge by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled upwith the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others. In two days the solicitude would be booming. 

On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling thehermits. I said:

"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is therea matinee?"

"A which, please you, sir?"

"Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?"

"Who?"

"The hermits, of course. "

"Keep open?"

"Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon?"

"Knock off?"

"Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off?I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all?In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--"

"Shut up shop, draw--"

"There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seemto understand the simplest thing. "

"I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrowthat I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught ofnone, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters oflearning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh ofthat most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state tothe mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of thatgreat consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbolof that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to thepitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of griefdo lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in thedarkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery, these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it isbut by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind thatcan beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-soundingmiracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humblermind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, thenif so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true, wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage andmay not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted thiscomplexion of mood and mind and understood that that I wouldI could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantageturned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, goodmy master and most dear lord. "

I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got thegeneral idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was notfair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon theuntutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because shecouldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest bestdrive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn'tfetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meanderedpleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable conversetogether, and better friends than ever. 

I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverencefor this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the stationand got her train fairly started on one of those horizonlesstranscontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me thatI was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the GermanLanguage. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when shebegan to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously tookthe very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if wordshad been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly theGerman way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether amere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literaryGerman dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to seeof him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with hisverb in his mouth. 

We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a moststrange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be, to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperouswith vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expressionof complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's prideto lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blisterhim unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all daylong, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrimsand pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down whenhe slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when therewere pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair ofage, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel withforty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazingpilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lostin reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity whichthese pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven. 

By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He wasa mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; thenoble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globeto pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest partof the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds. 

His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform onthe top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every dayfor twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidlyalmost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with astop watch, and he made 1, 244 revolutions in 24 minutes and46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedalmovement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing someday to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewingmachine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and gotfive years' good service out of him; in which time he turned outupward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, whichwas ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays, the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power. These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for thematerials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been rightto make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at adollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows ora blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfectprotection against sin, and advertised as such by my knightseverywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch thatthere was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England butyou could read on it at a mile distance:

"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility. Patent applied for. "

There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles downthe forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitchto leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up witha half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets. Yes, it was a daisy. 

But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken tostanding on one leg, and I found that there was something the matterwith the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, takingSir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of hisfriends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saintgot him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him. 

When I saw him that first time--however, his personal conditionwill not quite bear description here. You can read it in theLives of the Saints. *

[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are fromLecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history butonly a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were toostrong for reproduction in it. --_Editor_]

CHAPTER XXIII

RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN

Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlinwas still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and mutteringgibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, forof course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. Finally I said:

"How does the thing promise by this time, partner?"

"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulestenchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the landsof the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish. "

He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and musthave made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the windwas their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense andbillowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contortedhis body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinaryway. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, andabout exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monksand nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple ofacres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and allin a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously forresults. Merlin said:

"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds thesewaters, this which I have but just essayed had done it. It hasfailed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared isa truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the mostpotent spirit known to the magicians of the East, and whose namenone may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. Themortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secretof that spell, and without that secret none can break it. Thewater will flow no more forever, good Father. I have done whatman could. Suffer me to go. "

Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation. He turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said:

"Ye have heard him. Is it true?"

"Part of it is. "

"Not all, then, not all! What part is true?"

"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spellupon the well. "

"God's wounds, then are we ruined!"

"Possibly. "

"But not certainly? Ye mean, not certainly?"

"That is it. "

"Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell--"

"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true. There are conditions under which an effort to break it may havesome chance--that is, some small, some trifling chance--of success. "

"The conditions--"

"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the welland the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely tomyself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobodyallowed to cross the ground but by my authority. "

"Are these all?"

"Yes. "

"And you have no fear to try?"

"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed. One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?"

"These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandmentto that effect. "

"Wait, " said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye wit that he thatwould break this spell must know that spirit's name?"

"Yes, I know his name. "

"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but yemust likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha! Knew ye that?"

"Yes, I knew that, too. "

"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye minded to utterthat name and die?"

"Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh. "

"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur. "

"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thingfor _you_ to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin. "

It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worstweather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up thedanger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to underminehis reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and insteadof starting home to report my death, he said he would remainand enjoy it. 

My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. They had pack-mules along, and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead pipe, Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored firesprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--everythingnecessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got theirsupper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through asolitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassedthe required conditions. We took possession of the well and itssurroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, fromthe stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematicalinstrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended inship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed ourfireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed. 

Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for therewas a deal to do yet, and I was determined to spring the miraclebefore midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracleworked for the Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it isworth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine hoursthe water had risen to its customary level--that is to say, it waswithin twenty-three feet of the top. We put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we boredinto a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of thewell-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was longenough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyondthe threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to thetwo hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should bepresent on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock atthe proper time. 

We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted thishogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it downfast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on thebottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as theycould loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are;and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. Wegrounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of theroof--blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, andpurple on the last--and grounded a wire in each. 

About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen ofscantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and somade a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowedfor the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you wantto get in every detail that will count; you want to make all theproperties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matterscomfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself looseand play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value ofthese things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too muchstyle into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimesmoney; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires tothe ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the groundto the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fencea hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the commonmultitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors openat 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I couldcharge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructedmy boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody wasaround, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, andmake the fur fly. Then we went home to supper. 

The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time;and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people hadbeen pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley wasbecome one huge camp; we should have a good house, no questionabout that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening andannounced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to feverheat. They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite wouldmove in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which timeall the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bellswould then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permissionto the multitudes to close in and take their places. 

I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when theabbot's solemn procession hove in sight--which it did not do tillit was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless blacknight and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin, and tooka front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once. One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban, but they were there, just the same. The moment the bells stopped, those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vastblack wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow, and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upona pavement of human heads to--well, miles. 

We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thingI had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audiencehave a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of thesilence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled upand rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I hadput that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended myhands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted--that alwaysproduces a dead hush--and then slowly pronounced this ghastly wordwith a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, andmany women to faint:

"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"

Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touchedoff one of my electric connections and all that murky world ofpeople stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense--that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quitin every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbotand the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips flutteredwith agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonishedclear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to beginwith that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I liftedmy hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony:

"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"

--and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlanticof people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue!After sixty seconds I shouted:

"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenen-tragoedie!"

--and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds thistime, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastatingsyllables of this word of words:

"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"

--and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all goingat once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouringvast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blindingrainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. Inthe distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigidagainst the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the firsttime in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now andready. So I said to the abbot:

"The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread nameand command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and takehold of something. " Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, inanother minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred watergush from the chapel door!"

I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spreadmy announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey itto the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extraposturing and gesturing, and shouted:

"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountainto now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that stillremain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee henceto the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dreadname I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!"

Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain ofdazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with ahissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels!One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fairand plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leapingforth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and thechokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded mein his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech. And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were reallyno doctors that were worth a damaged nickel. 

You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves downin that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, andtalk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dearnames they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend whowas long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it waspretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before. 

I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone downlike a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and hadnever come to since. He never had heard that name before, --neitherhad I--but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would havebeen the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's ownmother could not have pronounced that name better than I did. He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tellhim. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find outthe deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it. But he didn't arrive. 

When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell backreverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kindof a superior being--and I was. I was aware of that. I took alonga night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of thepeople out there were going to sit up with the water all night, consequently it was but right that they should have all they wantedof it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracleitself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance. 

It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it. I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it. 

CHAPTER XXIV

A RIVAL MAGICIAN

My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigiousnow. It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuableaccount. The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggestedby my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line comeriding in. According to history, the monks of this place twocenturies before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness stillremaining. So I sounded a Brother:

"Wouldn't you like a bath?"

He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it tothe well--but he said with feeling:

"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known thatblessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. Would God I mightwash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden. "

And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolvedhe should have at least one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So Iwent to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother. Heblenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench, for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, andI didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blenchwas there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness ofthe surface, too--blenched, and trembled. He said:

"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freelygranted out of a grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would youdrive away the blessed water again?"

"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledgewhich teaches me that there was an error that other time whenit was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain. "A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "Myknowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite another sort of sin. "

"These are brave words--but--but right welcome, if they be true. "

"They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father. Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever. "

"You promise this?--you promise it? Say the word--say you promise it!"

"I do promise it. "

"Then will I have the first bath myself! Go--get ye to your work. Tarry not, tarry not, but go. "

I and my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the oldbath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stonemissing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, andavoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days wehad it all done and the water in--a spacious pool of clear purewater that a body could swim in. It was running water, too. It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old abbotkept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down blackand shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled andworried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game was made! another triumph scored. 

It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness, and I was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, butI struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it startedup an old lurking rheumatism of mine. Of course the rheumatismhunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This wasthe place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, whattime he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace. 

When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But everybody was fullof attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back intomy life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftlyup toward health and strength again; so I gained fast. 

Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn outand go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up. My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degreeand wander through the country a week or two on foot. This wouldgive me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorestclass of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other wayto inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operationof the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman, therewould be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me outfrom their private joys and troubles, and I should get no furtherthan the outside shell. 

One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremityof the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the faceof a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitagewhich had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the denof a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he hadlately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lionsand sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive anddifficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thoughtI would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreedwith its reputation. 

My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavernI heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:

"Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot?--Behold, thou mayst gladthy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when thatit cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest inimpossible places--here standeth in the flesh his mightinessThe Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!"

Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumblingtogether of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunctionof opposites and irreconcilables--the home of the bogus miraclebecome the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turnedinto a telephone office!

The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized oneof my young fellows. I said:

"How long has this office been established here, Ulfius?"

"But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you. We saw manylights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a townof goodly size. "

"Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it'sa good stand, anyway. Do you know where you are?"

"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas mycomradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, I got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when I waked, andreport the place's name to Camelot for record. "

"Well, this is the Valley of Holiness. "

It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I hadsupposed he would. He merely said:

"I will so report it. "

"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of latewonders that have happened here! You didn't hear of them?"

"Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all. We learn naught but that we get by the telephone from Camelot. "

"Why _they_ know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anythingabout the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?"

"Oh, _that_? Indeed yes. But the name of _this_ valley doth woundilydiffer from the name of _that_ one; indeed to differ wider were not pos--"

"What was that name, then?"

"The Valley of Hellishness. "

"_That_ explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the verydemon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles ofdivergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you knowthe name of the place now. Call up Camelot. "

He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy'svoice again. It was like being home. After some affectionateinterchanges, and some account of my late illness, I said:

"What is new?"

"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in thishour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters yehave restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the placewhere the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds--an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewisesmile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those flamesfrom out our stock and sent them by your order. "

"Does the king know the way to this place?"

"The king?--no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the ladsthat holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night. "

"This will bring them here--when?"

"Mid-afternoon, or later, the third day. "

"Anything else in the way of news?"

"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggestedto him; one regiment is complete and officered. "

"The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that myself. There isonly one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officera regular army. "

"Yes--and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as oneWest Pointer in that regiment. "

"What are you talking about? Are you in earnest?"

"It is truly as I have said. "

"Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was themethod? Competitive examination?"

"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this--theseofficers be all of noble family, and are born--what is it youcall it?--chuckleheads. "

"There's something wrong, Clarence. "

"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy dotravel hence with the king--young nobles both--and if you but waitwhere you are you will hear them questioned. "

"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in, anyway. Mount a man and send him to that school with a message;let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there beforesunset to-night and say--"

"There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to the school. Prithee let me connect you with it. "

It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones and lightningcommunication with distant regions, I was breathing the breathof life again after long suffocation. I realized, then, what acreepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all theseyears, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind asto have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it. 

I gave my order to the superintendent of the Academy personally. I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen anda box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doingwithout these conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn'tgoing to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could getat my pockets. 

When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interestgoing on. The abbot and his monks were assembled in the greathall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performancesof a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme ofthe fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indianmedicine-man wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor, --theregular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia--so hesaid, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as goodas gold, and passed current everywhere. 

How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow'sterms. His specialty was to tell you what any individual on theface of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had doneat any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in thefuture. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor ofthe East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbingof hands made eloquent answer--this reverend crowd _would_ like toknow what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraudwent through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement:

"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment putmoney in the palm of a holy begging friar--one, two, three pieces, and they be all of silver. "

A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around:

"It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "What study, what labor, to haveacquired a so amazing power as this!"

Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing?Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Thenhe told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the Kingof the Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with eachnew marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time;but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always withunerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should losemy supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I shouldbe left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel, and do itright away, too. I said:

"If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certainperson is doing. "

"Speak, and freely. I will tell you. "

"It will be difficult--perhaps impossible. "

"My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult it is, the morecertainly will I reveal it to you. "

You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting prettyhigh, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it:

"If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want toknow--I will give you two hundred silver pennies. "

"The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you would know. "

"Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand. "

"Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurredto anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring aboutsomebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician washit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in hisexperience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meetit. He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "Come, "I said, "what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up, right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth isdoing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't threeyards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with myright hand--they will indorse you if you tell correctly. " He wasstill dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up andtell; it is because you don't know. _You_ a magician! Good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud and liar. "

This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not usedto hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not knowwhat might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now;superstitious bodings were in every mind. The magician began topull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicatedthat his mood was not destructive. He said:

"It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person'sspeech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves withthe doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be bornin the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur the greatking is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but thedoings of a subject interest me not. "

"Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody, ' and soI supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody; that is, everybody. "

"It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better ifhe be royal. "

"That, it meseemeth, might well be, " said the abbot, who saw hisopportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were notlikely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred forthe revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as beborn near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king--"

"Would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter. 

"Most gladly, yea, and gratefully. "

Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, theincorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "There, now, what can you say to that?"air, when the announcement came:

"The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace thesetwo hours sleeping a dreamless sleep. "

"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself;"may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul. "

"And so it might be, if he were sleeping, " I said, "but the kingis not sleeping, the king rides. "

Here was trouble again--a conflict of authority. Nobody knew whichof us to believe; I still had some reputation left. The magician'sscorn was stirred, and he said:

"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets andmagicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle andsee to the heart of things with never an incantation to help. "

"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantationsmyself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on occasionsof moment. "

When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up. That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after thequeen and the court, and got this information:

"They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king. "

I said:

"That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements, the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Nowperhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the kingand queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?"

"They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride, for they go a journey toward the sea. "

"And where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?"

"Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done. "

"That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles. Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, and they will be _here_, in this valley. "

_That_ was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirlof excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followedthe thing right up:

"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail:if he does I will ride you on a rail instead. "

Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the kinghad passed through two towns that were on the line. I spottedhis progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept thesematters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if hekept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. Therewas still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemedto be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strangething, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that othermagician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I askeda friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magicianhad tried some further enchantments and found out that the courthad concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. Thinkof that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic inhistory, and the only one within their memory that had a positivevalue, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurerwho could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word. 

However, it was not good politics to let the king come withoutany fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up aprocession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits andstarted them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was thesort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rageand humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showedhim the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand tooffer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to gladhis spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces. The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the variousbuildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in arush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician--and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputationwas in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man cankeep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sitaround and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to businessright along. 

CHAPTER XXV

A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION

When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, orvisited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the costof his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It wasa fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examinationof candidates for posts in the army came with the king to theValley, whereas they could have transacted their business justas well at home. And although this expedition was strictly aholiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his businessfunctions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual;he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he washimself Chief Justice of the King's Bench. 

He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humanejudge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest, --accordingto his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights--I meanhis rearing--often colored his decisions. Whenever there was adispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this shouldbe otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder'smoral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and aprivileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholdersunder another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should notbe offensive to any--even to the noble himself--unless the factitself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the _thing_, not its name. Oneneeds but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are belowhim to recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure--the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind theseare the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor'sold and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merelythe fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average motherfor the position of milk-distributor to starving children infamine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest. 

One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, anorphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellowwho had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory heldby the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion ofthe great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground thatshe had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church outof one of its rights as lord of the seigniory--the one heretoforereferred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal oravoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was, that thelordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and theparticular right here involved was not transferable, but must beexercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an olderlaw, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercisingit. It was a very odd case, indeed. 

It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about theingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the moneythat built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken theSacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as acandidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible;they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fineof L400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate forsheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after beingelected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work andelected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it upuntil they had collected L15, 000 in fines; and there stands thestately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizenin mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankeesslipped into London and played games of the sort that has giventheir race a unique and shady reputation among all truly goodand holy peoples that be in the earth. 

The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was justas strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out ofthis hole. But he got out. I append his decision:

"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even achild's affair for simpleness. An the young bride had conveyednotice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper masterand protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the saidbishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporaryconveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thuswould she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her firstduty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clingingto a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being nodefense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither anydeliverance from his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman'scase is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court thatshe forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to thelast farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted inthe costs. Next!"

Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three monthsold. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three monthslapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinketsthey were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretchof the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and inthese pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he tryingto comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides werenot so poor as they. 

Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory tothe Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men writemany fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, butthe fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutallaws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor materialfor a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy;and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make shortwork of that law which the king had just been administering if ithad been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrasewhich has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has cometo seem to have sense and meaning--the sense and meaning impliedwhen it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that orthe other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government";and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nationsomewhere, some time or other which _wasn't_ capable of it--wasn't asable to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were orwould be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in allages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privilegedclasses; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual gradewas; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the longranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the daythat it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the bestgoverned and most free and most enlightened monarchy is stillbehind the best condition attainable by its people; and that thesame is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the waydown to the lowest. 

King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyondmy calculations. I had not supposed he would move in the matterwhile I was away; and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determiningthe merits of officers; I had only remarked that it would be wiseto submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination;and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualificationsthat nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. That oughtto have been attended to before I left; for the king was so takenwith the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but mustget about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examinationas he could invent out of his own head. 

I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how muchmore admirable was the one which I should display to the ExaminingBoard. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired hiscuriosity. When the Board was assembled, I followed him in; andbehind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a brightyoung West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of myWest Point professors. 

When I saw the Board, I did not know whether to cry or to laugh. The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as NorroyKing-at-Arms! The two other members were chiefs of bureaus inhis department; and all three were priests, of course; all officialswho had to know how to read and write were priests. 

My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the headof the Board opened on him with official solemnity:

"Name?"

"Mal-ease. "

"Son of?"

"Webster. "

"Webster--Webster. H'm--I--my memory faileth to recall thename. Condition?"

"Weaver. "

"Weaver!--God keep us!"

The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; oneclerk fainted, and the others came near it. The chairman pulledhimself together, and said indignantly:

"It is sufficient. Get you hence. "

But I appealed to the king. I begged that my candidate might beexamined. The king was willing, but the Board, who were allwell-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity ofexamining the weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough toexamine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the kingturned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboardprepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. It wasbeautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallowin details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, miningand countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siegeguns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musketpractice, revolver practice--and not a solitary word of it allcould these catfish make head or tail of, you understand--and itwas handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on theblackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it likenothing, too--all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, andconstellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds orunder them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and makehim wish he hadn't come--and when the boy made his military saluteand stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and allthose other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judgedthat the cake was ours, and by a large majority. 

Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had cometo West Point so ignorant that when I asked him, "If a generalofficer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said:

"Get up and brush himself. "

One of the young nobles was called up now. I thought I wouldquestion him a little myself. I said:

"Can your lordship read?"

His face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me:

"Takest me for a clerk? I trow I am not of a blood that--"

"Answer the question!"

He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "No. "

"Can you write?"

He wanted to resent this, too, but I said:

"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments. You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothingof the sort will be permitted. Can you write?"

"No. "

"Do you know the multiplication table?"

"I wit not what ye refer to. "

"How much is 9 times 6?"

"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergencyrequiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barrenof the knowledge. "

"If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel, in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A from B, andwhich party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money?If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damagesin the form of additional money to represent the possible profitwhich might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earnedincrement, that is to say, usufruct?"

"Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, whomoveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have I neverheard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind andcongestion of the ducts of thought. Wherefore I beseech you letthe dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godlessnames work out their several salvations from their piteous andwonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed theirtrouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I shouldbut damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myselfto see the desolation wrought. "

"What do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?"

"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate themwhilst that I lay sick about the beginning of the year and therebyfailed to hear his proclamation. "

"What do you know of the science of optics?"

"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, andsheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles ofhonor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heardof before; peradventure it is a new dignity. "

"Yes, in this country. "

Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an officialposition, of any kind under the sun! Why, he had all the earmarksof a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition tocontribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of thatsort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But thatdidn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. Afternagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him andthey turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, andfound him empty, of course. He knew somewhat about the warfareof the time--bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights inthe tournament ring, and such things--but otherwise he was emptyand useless. Then we took the other young noble in hand, and hewas the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. I deliveredthem into the hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortableconsciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined inthe previous order of precedence. 

"Name, so please you?"

"Pertipole, son of Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash. "

"Grandfather?"

"Also Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash. "

"Great-grandfather?"

"The same name and title. "

"Great-great-grandfather?"

"We had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it hadreached so far back. "

"It mattereth not. It is a good four generations, and fulfilleththe requirements of the rule. "

"Fulfills what rule?" I asked. 

"The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else thecandidate is not eligible. "

"A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he canprove four generations of noble descent?"

"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissionedwithout that qualification. "

"Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such aqualification as that?"

"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it dothgo far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself. "

"As how?"

"For that she hath established the self-same rule regardingsaints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain deadfour generations. "

"I see, I see--it is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the onecase a man lies dead-alive four generations--mummified in ignoranceand sloth--and that qualifies him to command live people, and taketheir weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and thatqualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king'sgrace approve of this strange law?"

The king said:

"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange. All places ofhonor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that beof noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are theirproperty and would be so without this or any rule. The rule isbut to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of loftylineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I wereto blame an I permitted this calamity. _You_ can permit it an youare minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, butthat the king should do it were a most strange madness and notcomprehensible to any. "

"I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's College. "

The chairman resumed as follows:

"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne andState did the founder of your great line lift himself to thesacred dignity of the British nobility?"

"He built a brewery. "

"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirementsand qualifications for military command, and doth hold his caseopen for decision after due examination of his competitor. "

The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generationsof nobility himself. So there was a tie in military qualificationsthat far. 

He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:

"Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?"

"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble;she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life andcharacter, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of thebest lady in the land. "

"That will do. Stand down. " He called up the competing lordlingagain, and asked: "What was the rank and condition of thegreat-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon yourgreat house?"

"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminenceby her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born. "

"Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfectintermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not incontempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs moreworthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine. "

I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promisedmyself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome!

I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in theface. I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end. 

I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. It would also be a goodidea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as manyofficers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in thecountry, even if there should finally be five times as many officersas privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the enviedregiment, the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on itsown hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and comewhen it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent. This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all thenobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. Then wewould make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplacematerials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper--nobodiesselected on a basis of mere efficiency--and we would make thisregiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom fromrestraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to gooff for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a goodtime, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were insafe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at theold stand, same as usual. The king was charmed with the idea. 

When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thoughtI saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. Yousee, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived raceand very fruitful. Whenever a child was born to any of these--and it was pretty often--there was wild joy in the nation's mouth, and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. The joy was questionable, but the grief was honest. Because the event meant another callfor a Royal Grant. Long was the list of these royalties, andthey were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasuryand a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not believe thislatter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projectsfor substituting something in the place of the royal grants. If Icould have persuaded him to now and then provide a support forone of these outlying scions from his own pocket, I could havemade a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effectwith the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He hadsomething like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed tolook upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritatehim in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon thatvenerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that therewas not another respectable family in England that would humbleitself to hold out the hat--however, that is as far as I ever got;he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too. 

But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crackregiment out of officers alone--not a single private. Half of itshould consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up toMajor-General, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; andthey would be glad to do this when they should learn that the restof the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-Generalup to Field Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped andfed by the state. Moreover--and this was the master stroke--it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be alwaysaddressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (whichI would presently invent), and they and they only in all Englandshould be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood shouldhave free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, andrenounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. Neatesttouch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be_born_ into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and apermanent situation, upon due notice from the parents. 

All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existinggrants would be relinquished; that the newly born would alwaysjoin was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint andbizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cease to be a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past. 

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FIRST NEWSPAPER

When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freemanto scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler lifeof the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thingin a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventurehimself--nothing should stop him--he would drop everything andgo along--it was the prettiest idea he had run across for manya day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once;but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billedfor the king's-evil--to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't beright to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worthconsidering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thoughthe ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up atthat and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially whenhe said mournfully:

"Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is, she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth. "

Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. I nevermeddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hateto see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying thatmuch. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seenSir Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around forthe king I didn't happen to be around at the time. 

There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business--verytidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state; abouthim were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel, a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. Allabroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of beinggotten up for that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundredsick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interestof novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before;the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required meto stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in allsuch crowds there were many people who only imagined somethingwas the matter with them, and many who were consciously soundbut wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, andyet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece ofcoin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had beena wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When youconsider how much that amount of money would buy, in that ageand country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation wasjust the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip ittook on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning thesurplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itselffor the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriationinto the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on myadventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated intofive-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerkof the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of eachgold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain thenickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do notapprove of watering stock, but I considered it square enoughin this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you canwater a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The oldgold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknownorigin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; theywere hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use thatthe devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and lookedlike them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with afirst-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Gueneveron the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck outof scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulousfancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it wastried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving in expense wasa notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We toucheda trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this wouldhave cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulledthrough for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider theseother figures: the annual expenses of a national government amountto the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages ofevery individual of the population, counting every individual asif he were a man. If you take a nation of 60, 000, 000, where averagewages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individualwill provide $360, 000, 000 and pay the government's expenses. In myday, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and itmade him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paidby the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributedamong them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and theannual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was preciselythe same--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the united populations of the British Islands amounted tosomething less than 1, 000, 000. A mechanic's average wage was3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the nationalgovernment's expenses were $90, 000 a year, or about $250 a day. Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evilday, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleasedall concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expenseinto the bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalentof $800, 000 in my day in America. In making this substitutionI had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--the wisdomof my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had alwayssaved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionarycause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well asthe coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; allhands were happy and nobody hurt. 

Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate;if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passedalong to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shalllay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover. " Then the kingstroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, thepatient graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it aroundhis neck himself--and was dismissed. Would you think that thatwould cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if thepatient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapelwhere the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herdgeese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built thechapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing theoccurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sickperson to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lameand the sick came and prayed before it every year and went awaywhole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them;but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw thecures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutchesand walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches therewhich had been left by such people as a testimony. 

In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without sayinga word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patientsin a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, andthose patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can'tcure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuablesuperstition that supports his throne--the subject's belief inthe divine appointment of his sovereign--has passed away. In myyouth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could havecured it forty-nine times in fifty. 

Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and thegood king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressingforward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have hisrepulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out:"they shall lay their hands on the sick"--when outside there rangclear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbledthirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "Camelot _WeeklyHosannah and Literary Volcano!_--latest irruption--only two cents--all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greaterthan kings had arrived--the newsboy. But I was the only personin all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, andwhat this imperial magician was come into the world to do. 

I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; theAdam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change;is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaperagain, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell uponthe first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a clammyatmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that theysent a quivery little cold wave through me:

 HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEY

 OF HOLINESS!

 ----

 THE WATER-WORKS CORKED!

 ----

 BRER MERLIN WORKS HIS ARTS, BUT GETS LEFT?

 ----

 But the Boss scores on his first Innings!

 ----

 The Miraculous Well Uncorked amid awful outbursts of

 INFERNAL FIRE AND SMOKE ATHUNDER!

 ----

 THE BUZZARD-ROOST ASTONISHED!

 ----

 UNPARALLELED REJOIBINGS!

--and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could haveenjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now itsnote was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but thiswas not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculatedto give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all throughthe paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable changewithout noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected bypert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper andairy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was anabundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:

 LOCAL SMOKE AND CINDERS. 

 Sir Launcelot met up with old King Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last weok over on the moor south of Sir Balmoral le Merveilleuse's hog dasture. The widow has been notified. 

 Expedition No. 3 will start adout the first of mext month on a search f8r Sir Sagramour le Desirous. It is in com- and of the renowned Knight of the Red Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde, who is compete9t. Intelligent, courte- ous, and in every way a brick, and fur- tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara- cen, who is no huckleberry hinself. This is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s. 

 The readers of the Hosannah will re- gret to learn that the hadndsome and popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who dur- ing his four weeks' stay at the Bull and Halibut, this city, has won every heart by his polished manners and elegant cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for home. Give us another call, Charley!

 The bdsiness end of the funeral of the late Sir Dalliance the duke's son of Cornwall, killed in an encounter with the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of Enchantment was in the hands of the ever affable and efficient Mumble, prince of un3ertakers, then whom there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad offices performed. Give him a trial. 

 The cordial thanks of the Hosannah office are due, from editor down to devil, to the ever courteous and thought- ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace's Third Assistant V t for several sau- ceTs of ice crEam a quality calculated to make the ey of the recipients hu- mid with grt ude; and it done it. When this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the Hosannah would like a chance to sudgest. 

 The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the Cattlemen's Board- ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city. 

 Young Barker the bellows-mender is hoMe again, and looks much improved by his vacation round-up among the out- lying smithies. See his ad. 

Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knewthat quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The"Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignifiedrespectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all thosedisgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved. Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a courtcircular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousnessabout its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest effortsto make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage--in fact, the only sensible way--is to disguise repetitiousness of fact undervariety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticleof words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; itgives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything;this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a goodappetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup madeout of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way:

 COURT CIRCULAR. 

 On Monday, the king rode in the park. " Tuesday, " " " " Wendesday " " " " Thursday " " " " Friday, " " " " Saturday " " " " Sunday, " " "

However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here andthere, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and betterthan was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the grammarwas leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did notmuch mind these things. They are common defects of my own, andone mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't standperpendicular himself. 

I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the wholepaper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then hadto postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eagerquestions: What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it ahandkerchief?--saddle blanket?--part of a shirt? What is it made of?How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. Will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? Is itwriting that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? Theysuspected it was writing, because those among them who knew howto read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some ofthe letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as awhole. I put my information in the simplest form I could:

"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time. It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explainwhat paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not writtenby hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is. A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail--they can't be told apart. " Then they allbroke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration:

"A thousand! Verily a mighty work--a year's work for many men. "

"No--merely a day's work for a man and a boy. "

They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two. 

"Ah-h--a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment. "

I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many ascould crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part ofthe account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, andwas accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through:"Ah-h-h!" "How true!" "Amazing, amazing!" "These be the veryhaps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" And might theytake this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examineit?--they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, handlingit as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thingcome from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, andscanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. Thesegrouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes--how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was notall this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquenttribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a motherfeels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bendtheir heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the restof the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if itwere not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there isno other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields halfso divine a contentment. 

During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group togroup all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eyewas upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more. 

CHAPTER XXVII

THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO

About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut hishair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead buthanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas thelowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaveswere bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverteda bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were onlyabout a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, andsucceeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got hislubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was nolonger the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomestand most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barberedalike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, orshepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because ofits strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheapto a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapestmaterial there was for male attire--manufactured material, youunderstand. 

We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had madeeight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settledcountry. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden withprovisions--provisions for the king to taper down on, till hecould take to the coarse fare of the country without damage. 

I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and thengave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. Then I saidI would find some water for him, and strolled away. Part of myproject was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a littlemyself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence;even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions whenthe sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then I hada trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvertand was as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want to breakhim in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sittogether now when in company, or people would notice; but it wouldnot be good politics for me to be playing equality with him whenthere was no necessity for it. 

I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had beenresting about twenty minutes, when I heard voices. That is allright, I thought--peasants going to work; nobody else likely to bestirring this early. But the next moment these comers jingled intosight around a turn of the road--smartly clad people of quality, with luggage-mules and servants in their train! I was off likea shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. For a while itdid seem that these people would pass the king before I couldget to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I cantedmy body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew. I arrived. And in plenty good enough time, too. 

"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony--jump! Jump toyour feet--some quality are coming!"

"Is that a marvel? Let them come. "

"But my liege! You must not be seen sitting. Rise!--and stand inhumble posture while they pass. You are a peasant, you know. "

"True--I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge warwith Gaul"--he was up by this time, but a farm could have got upquicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate--"andright-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dreamthe which--"

"A humbler attitude, my lord the king--and quick! Duck your head!--more!--still more!--droop it!"

He did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. He lookedas humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is the most you couldsay of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success thatit raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeousflunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped intime and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volleyof coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warnedthe king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. I said:

"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, beingwithout weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. If weare going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look thepeasant but act the peasant. "

"It is wisdom; none can gainsay it. Let us go on, Sir Boss. I will take note and learn, and do the best I may. "

He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen better. If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising childgoing diligently out of one mischief and into another all daylong, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and justsaving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck witheach new experiment, you've seen the king and me. 

If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, I should have said, No, if anybody wants to make his livingexhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; I cando better with a menagerie, and last longer. And yet, duringthe first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or otherdwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his earlynovitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to theseplaces we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best hecould, but what of that? He didn't improve a bit that I could see. 

He was always frightening me, always breaking out with freshastonishers, in new and unexpected places. Toward evening onthe second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirkfrom inside his robe!

"Great guns, my liege, where did you get that?"

"From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve. "

"What in the world possessed you to buy it?"

"We have escaped divers dangers by wit--thy wit--but I havebethought me that it were but prudence if I bore a weapon, too. Thine might fail thee in some pinch. "

"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. Whatwould a lord say--yes, or any other person of whatever condition--if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?"

It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then. I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy aspersuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killingitself. We walked along, silent and thinking. Finally the king said:

"When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hatha peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?"

It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite knowhow to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, I endedby saying the natural thing:

"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughts are?"

The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me. 

"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magicthou art. But prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet. "

I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground. After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said:

"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are twokinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are buta little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things thatare whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift, do you think?"

"Oh, the last, most surely!"

"True. Does Merlin possess it?"

"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and futurekingship that were twenty years away. "

"Has he ever gone beyond that?"

"He would not claim more, I think. "

"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limitof some of the great prophets has been a hundred years. "

"These are few, I ween. "

"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was fourhundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassedeven seven hundred and twenty. "

"Gramercy, it is marvelous!"

"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing. "

"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretchof time as--"

"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagledoes my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of thisworld for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!"

My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! Thatsettled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove hisfacts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. Itnever occurred to anybody to doubt the statement. 

"Now, then, " I continued, "I _could_ work both kinds of prophecy--the long and the short--if I chose to take the trouble to keepin practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, becausethe other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort--stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course, I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but notoften--hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there wasgreat talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about myhaving prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival, two or three days beforehand. "

"Indeed, yes, I mind it now. "

"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, andpiled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it hadbeen five hundred years away instead of two or three days. "

"How amazing that it should be so!"

"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is fivehundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only fivehundred seconds off. "

"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it shouldbe five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almostsee it. In truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult. "

It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it;you could know it for a king's under a diving-bell, if you couldhear it work its intellect. 

I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. The kingwas as hungry to find out everything that was going to happenduring the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to livein them. From that time out, I prophesied myself bald-headedtrying to supply the demand. I have done some indiscreet things inmy day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was theworst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't haveto have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for theordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professionalwork. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit ofprophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay itoff in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave italone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy. 

Every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of themfired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgottenhimself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspiciousshade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got himwell out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look withall his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and hisnostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and I knew he waslonging for a brush with them. But about noon of the third dayI had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had beensuggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two daysbefore; a precaution which I had afterward decided to leave untaken, I was so loath to institute it; but now I had just had a freshreminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread andintellect at rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed my toe andfell sprawling. I was so pale I couldn't think for a moment;then I got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack. I had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. It wasa good thing to have along; the time would come when I could doa valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thingto have about me, and I didn't like to ask the king to carry it. Yet I must either throw it away or think up some safe way to getalong with its society. I got it out and slipped it into my scrip, and just then here came a couple of knights. The king stood, stately as a statue, gazing toward them--had forgotten himself again, of course--and before I could get a word of warning out, it wastime for him to skip, and well that he did it, too. He supposedthey would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirtunder foot? When had he ever turned aside himself--or ever hadthe chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knightin time to judiciously save him the trouble? The knights paidno attention to the king at all; it was his place to look outhimself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidlyridden down, and laughed at besides. 

The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challengeand epithets with a most royal vigor. The knights were some littledistance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned intheir saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worthwhile to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled andstarted for us. Not a moment must be lost. I started for _them_. I passed them at a rattling gait, and as I went by I flung out ahair-lifting soul-scorching thirteen-jointed insult which madethe king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. I got it out ofthe nineteenth century where they know how. They had such headwaythat they were nearly to the king before they could check up;then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hindhoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to breast. I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling upa great bowlder at the roadside. When they were within thirtyyards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressedtheir mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streamingstraight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning expresscame tearing for me! When they were within fifteen yards, I sentthat bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just underthe horses' noses. 

Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembleda steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the nextfifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopicfragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. I say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had gothis breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steadywork for all the people in that region for some years to come--in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that servicewould be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of aselect few--peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't getanything for it, either. 

But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with adynamite bomb. This information did him no damage, because itleft him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noblemiracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thoughtit well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sortthat it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditionswere just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it every time wehad a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because Ihadn't any more bombs along. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

DRILLING THE KING

On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and wehad been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution:the king _must_ be drilled; things could not go on so, he must betaken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or wecouldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would knowthis masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a haltand said:

"Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, thereis no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Yoursoldierly stride, your lordly port--these will not do. You standtoo straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The caresof a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do notput doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of themin slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares ofthe lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick;you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sapthe manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper andapproved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the veryinfants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall goto pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this. "

The king took careful note, and then tried an imitation. 

"Pretty fair--pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please--there, verygood. Eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at theground, ten steps in front of you. Ah--that is better, that isvery good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too muchdecision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please--this iswhat I mean.... Now you are getting it; that is the idea--at least, it sort of approaches it.... Yes, that is pretty fair. _But!_There is a great big something wanting, I don't quite know whatit is. Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspectiveon the thing.... Now, then--your head's right, speed's right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, generalstyle right--everything's right! And yet the fact remains, theaggregate's wrong. The account don't balance. Do it again, please.... _Now_ I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I'vestruck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that'swhat's the trouble. It's all _amateur_--mechanical details allright, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except that it don't delude. "

"What, then, must one do, to prevail?"

"Let me think... I can't seem to quite get at it. In fact, thereisn't anything that can right the matter but practice. This isa good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up yourstately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one fieldand one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody couldsee us from there. It will be well to move a little off the roadand put in the whole day drilling you, sire. "

After the drill had gone on a little while, I said:

"Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are before us. Proceed, please--accost the headof the house. "

The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, with frozen austerity:

"Varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have. "

"Ah, your grace, that is not well done. "

"In what lacketh it?"

"These people do not call _each other_ varlets. "

"Nay, is that true?"

"Yes; only those above them call them so. "

"Then must I try again. I will call him villein. "

"No-no; for he may be a freeman. "

"Ah--so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman. "

"That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better ifyou said friend, or brother. "

"Brother!--to dirt like that?"

"Ah, but _we_ are pretending to be dirt like that, too. "

"It is even true. I will say it. Brother, bring a seat, andthereto what cheer ye have, withal. Now 'tis right. "

"Not quite, not wholly right. You have asked for one, not _us_--for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one. "

The king looked puzzled--he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to doit a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. 

"Would _you_ have a seat also--and sit?"

"If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretendingto be equals--and playing the deception pretty poorly, too. "

"It is well and truly said! How wonderful is truth, come it inwhatsoever unexpected form it may! Yes, he must bring out seatsand food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkinwith more show of respect to the one than to the other. "

"And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. He mustbring nothing outside; we will go in--in among the dirt, andpossibly other repulsive things, --and take the food with thehousehold, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equalterms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, therewill be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Pleasewalk again, my liege. There--it is better--it is the best yet;but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burdenthan iron mail, and they will not stoop. "

"Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goethwith burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeththe shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.... Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing. Strap it upon my back. "

He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as littlelike a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinatepair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick ofstooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on, I prompting and correcting:

"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentlesscreditors; you are out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let ussay--and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children arecrying because they are hungry--"

And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn allsorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations andmisfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words--they meantnothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you havesuffered in your own person the thing which the words try todescribe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly andcomplacently about "the working classes, " and satisfy themselvesthat a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder thana day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to muchbigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because theyknow all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I knowall about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't moneyenough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just asnear nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too. 

Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heavenwhen he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bowin his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with theebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterlyunfair--but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higherthe pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shallbe his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of thosetransparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship. 

CHAPTER XXIX

THE SMALLPOX HUT

When we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signsof life about it. The field near by had been denuded of its cropsome time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively hadit been harvested and gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had aruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was aroundanywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful, itwas like the stillness of death. The cabin was a one-story one, whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair. 

The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily--on tiptoeand at half-breath--for that is the way one's feeling makes him do, at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knockedagain. No answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in. I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the groundand stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. Presentlyshe found her voice:

"Have mercy!" she pleaded. "All is taken, nothing is left. "

"I have not come to take anything, poor woman. "

"You are not a priest?"

"No. "

"Nor come not from the lord of the manor?"

"No, I am a stranger. "

"Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and deathsuch as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! This place is underhis curse--and his Church's. "

"Let me come in and help you--you are sick and in trouble. "

I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her holloweyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated she was. 

"I tell you the place is under the Church's ban. Save yourself--and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it. "

"Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for theChurch's curse. Let me help you. "

"Now all good spirits--if there be any such--bless thee for thatword. Would God I had a sup of water!--but hold, hold, forgetI said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he thatfeareth not the Church must fear: this disease whereof we die. Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee suchwhole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give. "

But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushingpast the king on my way to the brook. It was ten yards away. When I got back and entered, the king was within, and was openingthe shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light. The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman'slips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter cameopen and a strong light flooded her face. Smallpox!

I sprang to the king, and said in his ear:

"Out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of thatdisease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago. "

He did not budge. 

"Of a truth I shall remain--and likewise help. "

I whispered again:

"King, it must not be. You must go. "

"Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame thata king should know fear, and shame that belted knight shouldwithhold his hand where be such as need succor. Peace, I willnot go. It is you who must go. The Church's ban is not upon me, but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you witha heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass. "

It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him hislife, but it was no use to argue with him. If he considered hisknightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; hewould stay, and nothing could prevent it; I was aware of that. And so I dropped the subject. The woman spoke:

"Fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there, and bring me news of what ye find? Be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking--being already broke. "

"Abide, " said the king, "and give the woman to eat. I will go. "And he put down the knapsack. 

I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had notnoticed us thus far, or spoken. 

"Is it your husband?" the king asked. 

"Yes. "

"Is he asleep?"

"God be thanked for that one charity, yes--these three hours. Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart isbursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now. "

I said:

"We will be careful. We will not wake him. "

"Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead. "

"Dead?"

"Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, noneinsult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will findneither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; wewere man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separatedtill this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together. This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we wereboy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so inthat innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, stilllightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we knownot of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there wasno parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not butI went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not thiswithered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate andknow it not; how could one go peace--fuller than that? It washis reward for a cruel life patiently borne. "

There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner wherethe ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that hewas bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with theother. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay aslender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dyingof smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open fieldunarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward setupon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of goldto gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenelybrave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knightmeets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. Hewas great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestorsin his palace should have an addition--I would see to that; and itwould not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like therest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in hisarms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child andbe comforted. 

He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearmentsand caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect aflickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but thatwas all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, andimploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbademe, and said:

"No--she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her backto life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do herthat cruel hurt. For look you--what is left to live for? Herbrothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, theChurch's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend hereven though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I havenot asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, hereoverhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not leftthe poor thing forsaken--"

"She lieth at peace, " interrupted the king, in a subdued voice. 

"I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah, my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon--thou'rt on thy way, and these be merciful friends that will not hinder. "

And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, andsoftly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling herby endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response nowin the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king's eyes, andtrickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said:

"Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, andyou and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that thelittle ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, andthe daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the Churchand the king. "

The king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still;he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, fora pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered thewoman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allownothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slippedaway and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. This broke her down again, and there was another scene that wasfull of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiledher to sketch her story. 

"Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it--for truly noneof our condition in Britain escape it. It is the old, weary tale. We fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, thatwe lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. Notroubles came that we could not outlive, till this year broughtthem; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmedus. Years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees onour farm; in the best part of it, too--a grievous wrong and shame--"

"But it was his right, " interrupted the king. 

"None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what isthe lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. Our farm wasours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as hewould. Some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewndown. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. Well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith thereshall they lie and rot till they confess. They have naught toconfess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain untilthey die. Ye know that right well, I ween. Think how this left us;a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was plantedby so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day frompigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurtby any of our sort. When my lord's crop was nearly ready forthe harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us tohis fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow thatI and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, butfor only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined. All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and soboth the priest and his lordship fined us because their sharesof it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate upour crop--and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvestit for them, without pay or food, and we starving. Then the worstcame when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and miseryand despair, uttered a deep blasphemy--oh! a thousand of them!--against the Church and the Church's ways. It was ten days ago. I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priestI said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of duehumility under the chastening hand of God. He carried my trespassto his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my headand upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of Rome. 

"Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None hascome near this hut to know whether we live or not. The rest of uswere taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and motherwill. It was little they could have eaten in any case; it wasless than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gavethem that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But theend came yesterday; my strength broke down. Yesterday was thelast time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. I have lain here all these hours--these ages, ye may say--listening, listening for any sound up there that--"

She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then criedout, "Oh, my darling!" and feebly gathered the stiffening formto her sheltering arms. She had recognized the death-rattle. 

CHAPTER XXX

THE TRAGEDY OF THE MANOR-HOUSE

At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of fourcorpses. We covered them with such rags as we could find, andstarted away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must bethese people's grave, for they could not have Christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wildbeasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal lifewould throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked andsmitten outcasts. 

We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footstepsupon gravel. My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seencoming from that house. I plucked at the king's robe and we drewback and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin. 

"Now we are safe, " I said, "but it was a close call--so to speak. If the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, he seemed to be so near. "

"Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all. "

"True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minuteand let it get by and out of the way. "

"Hark! It cometh hither. "

True again. The step was coming toward us--straight toward the hut. It must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved ourtrepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his handupon my arm. There was a moment of silence, then we heard a softknock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the knockwas repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice:

"Mother! Father! Open--we have got free, and we bring news topale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, butmust fly! And--but they answer not. Mother! father!--"

I drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered:

"Come--now we can get to the road. "

The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heardthe door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in thepresence of their dead. 

"Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and thenwill follow that which it would break your heart to hear. "

He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the roadI ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut--I couldn'tbear it; I wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into thefirst subject that lay under that one in my mind:

"I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothingto fear; but if you have not had it also--"

He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was hisconscience that was troubling him:

"These young men have got free, they say--but _how_? It is notlikely that their lord hath set them free. "

"Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped. "

"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and yoursuspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear. "

"I should not call it by that name though. I do suspect that theyescaped, but if they did, I am not sorry, certainly. "

"I am not sorry, I _think_--but--"

"What is it? What is there for one to be troubled about?"

"_If_ they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands uponthem and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemlythat one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handedoutrage from persons of their base degree. "

There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He wasborn so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood thatwas rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought downby inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each doneits share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these menwithout proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they weremerely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men tobreak out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thingnot to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew hisduty to his sacred caste. 

I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change thesubject--and even then an outside matter did it for me. This wasa something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of asmall hill--a red glow, a good way off. 

"That's a fire, " said I. 

Fires interested me considerably, because I was getting a gooddeal of an insurance business started, and was also training somehorses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paidfire department by and by. The priests opposed both my fire andlife insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt tohinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did nothinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hardconsequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, theyretorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and wasjust as bad. So they managed to damage those industries moreor less, but I got even on my Accident business. As a rule, a knightis a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to prettypoor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, but even _he_ could see the practical side of a thing once in a while;and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile theresult without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet. 

We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, lookingtoward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out themeaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on thenight. Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed lessremote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its causeand nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding roadplunged us at once into almost solid darkness--darkness that waspacked and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We gropedalong down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more andmore distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more andmore, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show oflightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in thelead. I ran against something--a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment thelightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhingface of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! That is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a grewsome sight. Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, andthe bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance thatthere might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning camequick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday andmidnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in anintense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected. 

"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property tohis lord; so let him be. If others hanged him, belike they hadthe right--let him hang. "

"But--"

"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet anotherreason. When the lightning cometh again--there, look abroad. "

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you. Come--it is unprofitable to tarry here. "

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the nextmile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmurno longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. A man came flyingby now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another. Then a sudden turn of the roadbrought us in sight of that fire--it was a large manor-house, andlittle or nothing was left of it--and everywhere men were flyingand other men raging after them in pursuit. 

I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light, until matters shouldimprove. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of thewood. From this hiding-place we saw both men and women huntedby the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flyingfootsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again. 

We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we wereworn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place somemiles behind us. Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoalburner, and got what was to be had. A woman was up and about, butthe man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelersand had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of theterrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure. Yes, we hadheard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. Theking broke in:

"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilouscompany, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death. "

It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorationsof the nation was the waffle-iron face. I had early noticed thatthe woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made usentirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immenselyimpressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a gooddeal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king'shumble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sakeof a night's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and shestrained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to makeus comfortable. 

We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough tomake cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularlyas it was scant in quantity. And also in variety; it consistedsolely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out ofhorse-feed. The woman told us about the affair of the eveningbefore. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames. The country-side swarmed tothe rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, themaster. He did not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking theburning house seeking that valuable personage. But after a whilehe was found--what was left of him--which was his corpse. It wasin a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in adozen places. 

Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in theneighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshnessby the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extendeditself to their relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough;my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade againstthese people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had notreturned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find outwhat the general result had been. While we were still talking hecame back from his quest. His report was revolting enough. Eighteenpersons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisonerslost in the fire. 

"And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?"

"Thirteen. "

"Then every one of them was lost?"

"Yes, all. "

"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it theycould save none of the prisoners?"

The man looked puzzled, and said:

"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Marry, some wouldhave escaped. "

"Then you mean that nobody _did_ unlock them?"

"None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth toreason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needfulto establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might notescape, but be taken. None were taken. "

"Natheless, three did escape, " said the king, "and ye will do wellto publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murtheredthe baron and fired the house. "

I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a momentthe man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news andan impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden somethingelse betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effectsproduced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who thesethree prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; thatour hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was nowonly pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around towardother details of the night's proceedings, and noted that thesepeople were relieved to have it take that direction. 

The painful thing observable about all this business was thealacrity with which this oppressed community had turned theircruel hands against their own class in the interest of the commonoppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrelbetween a person of their own class and his lord, it was the naturaland proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole casteto side with the master and fight his battle for him, without everstopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. Thisman had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done hiswork with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing againstthem but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describableas evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anythinghorrible about it. 

This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in hishead. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, whenthe "poor whites" of our South who were always despised andfrequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owedtheir base condition simply to the presence of slavery in theirmidst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lordsin all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating ofslavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour outtheir lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that veryinstitution which degraded them. And there was only one redeemingfeature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and didfeel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something--in fact, it was enough;for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if itdoesn't show on the outside. 

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin ofthe Southern "poor white" of the far future. The king presentlyshowed impatience, and said:

"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think yethe criminals will abide in their father's house? They are fleeing, they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horsebe set upon their track. "

The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man lookedflustered and irresolute. I said:

"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain whichdirection I think they would try to take. If they were merelyresisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would tryto protect them from capture; but when men murder a person ofhigh degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter. "

The last remark was for the king--to quiet him. On the roadthe man pulled his resolution together, and began the march witha steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:

"What relation were these men to you--cousins?"

He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, andstopped, trembling. 

"Ah, my God, how know ye that?"

"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess. "

"Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they were, too. "

"Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?"

He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:

"Ye-s. "

"Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!"

It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel. 

"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that yewould not betray me an I failed of my duty. "

"Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keepstill and let those men get away. They've done a righteous deed. "

He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at thesame time. He looked up and down the road to see that no onewas coming, and then said in a cautious voice:

"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilouswords, and seem not to be afraid?"

"They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them?"

"I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first. "

"Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeatingit. I think devil's work has been done last night upon thoseinnocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck. "

Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulnessand a brave animation took their place:

"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and otherslike to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had onegood feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang myneighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack ofzeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seeminglysorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that liessafety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the onlyones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward ofthat taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to thescaffold, for I am ready. "

There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole agesof abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there isplenty good enough material for a republic in the most degradedpeople that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhoodin them--even in the Germans--if one could but force it out ofits timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in themud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that eversupported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope andbelieve. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, everymember of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrageinstituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of themen and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was nooccasion to give up my dream yet a while. 

CHAPTER XXXI

MARCO

We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, andtalked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it oughtto take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justiceon the track of those murderers and get back home again. Andmeantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom:the behavior--born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste--of chancepassers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudgedalong with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down hisfat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentlemanhe was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he wascordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenancerespectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air--he couldn'teven see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hangthe whole human race and finish the farce. 

Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boysand girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen yearsold. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves thatwe couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we plungedinto the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble wasquickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking todeath. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some morehuman nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders;they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promisedto be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for. 

It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the timevery well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my qualityof stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was thematter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head duringthe afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn'tthink, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperityby the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, thenation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. Which is an error. Itisn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that'sthe important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wagesare high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how itwas in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation;in the South he got fifty--payable in Confederate shinplastersworth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls costthree dollars--a day's wages; in the South it cost seventy-five--which was two days' wages. Other things were in proportion. Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they werein the South, because the one wage had that much more purchasingpower than the other had. 

Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing thatgratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation--lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonaltygenerally; yes, and even some gold--but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's. I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarterof a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar goldpiece. They furnished it--that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked mewhere I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and whereI was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhapsa couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily;told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wifewas a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a warton the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a gloriousresurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even thathungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shadeput out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out ofhis underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walkinginto a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiringthe boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you allof a sudden. He could do it, maybe; but at the same time hewould wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so muchmoney around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith'sthought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazingafter me with reverent admiration. 

Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its languagewas already glibly in use; that is to say, people had droppedthe names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worthso many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. It was verygratifying. We were progressing, that was sure. 

I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interestingfellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley. He was a live manand a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was very proud ofhaving such a man for a friend. He had taken me there ostensiblyto let me see the big establishment which bought so much of hischarcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiarterms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I fraternizedat once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, underme in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, soI invited him to come out to Marco's Sunday, and dine with us. Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandeeaccepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonishedat the condescension. 

Marco's joy was exuberant--but only for a moment; then he grewthoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I shouldhave Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, outthere, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he losthis grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was theexpense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financialdays were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others, I said:

"You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must alsoallow me to pay the costs. "

His face cleared, and he said with spirit:

"But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well bear a burdenlike to this alone. "

I stopped him, and said:

"Now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. I amonly a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless. I have been very fortunate this year--you would be astonishedto know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I sayI could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and nevercare _that_ for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers. I couldsee myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and whenI fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for styleand altitude. "So you see, you must let me have my way. Youcan't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's _settled_. "

"It's grand and good of you--"

"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in themost generous way; Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just beforeyou came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likelyto say such a thing to you--because Jones isn't a talker, and isdiffident in society--he has a good heart and a grateful, andknows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you andyour wife have been very hospitable toward us--"

"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing--_such_ hospitality!"

"But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is alwayssomething, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks rightalong beside it--for even a prince can but do his best. And sowe'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worryabout the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that everwas born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend--but never mind about that--you'd never believe it anyway. "

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricingthings, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and nowand then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons ofshunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homeshad been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen andlinsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it beingmade up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, townshipby township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly ahand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present. Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account ofthat swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it--with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had alreadybeen liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it wouldbe just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantialsort; so I said:

"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out ofkindness for Jones--because you wouldn't want to offend him. He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, buthe is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he beggedme to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllisand let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came fromhim--you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing--and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his ideawas, a new outfit of clothes for you both--"

"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be. Consider the vastness of the sum--"

"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment, and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways, you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't goodform, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it. Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff--and don'tforget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he hadanything to do with it. You can't think how curiously sensitiveand proud he is. He's a farmer--pretty fairly well-to-do farmer--an I'm his bailiff; _but_--the imagination of that man! Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'dthink he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listento him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer--especially ifhe talked agriculture. He _thinks_ he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinkshe's old Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privatelyhe don't know as much about farming as he does about runninga kingdom--still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop yourunderjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard suchincredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid youmight die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones. "

It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character;but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience whenyou travel with a king who is letting on to be something else andcan't remember it more than about half the time, you can't taketoo many precautions. 

This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everythingin it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the waydown to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. I concluded I would bunchmy whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more. So I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the mason andthe wheelwright, which left the field free to me. For I never careto do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or I don'ttake any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a carelessway, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote downa list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if hecould read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could. He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both readand write. He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction thatit was a pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a littleconcern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, butsome odds and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be cartedout and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday. He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it wasthe rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw ina couple of miller-guns for the Marcos gratis--that everybodywas using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that cleverdevice. I said:

"And please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add thatto the bill. "

He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them withme. I couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was alittle invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered thatevery shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell themat government price--which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeepergot that, not the government. We furnished them for nothing. 

The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. Hehad early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaulwith the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoonhad slipped away without his ever coming to himself again. 

CHAPTER XXXII

DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION

Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They weresure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselvesas accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to thedinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family:for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tablesof their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeabledeal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which wasanother piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructedthe Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to giveme a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerningthe new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were upand down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so thatthey could put them on, and they were into them at last as muchas an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure--not to saydelirium--was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of itpaid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual--like the dead. The Marcos couldnot thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but theytried every way they could think of to make him see how gratefulthey were. Which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change. 

It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which isjust a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to beout of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembledunder a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some littletrouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along atfirst. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer;but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thingstand at that, and not elaborate it any. Because he was just thekind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing likethat if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and hisspirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. 

Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and thenadroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text andhimself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear himhum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They dodeserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true;and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told howhe had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friendsable to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanestmaster lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hourslong, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in ahalf-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attractedthe attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking himdead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totallyunprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine yearsand give him board and clothes and teach him the trade--or "mystery"as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his firstgorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speakof it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such agilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common humanbeing. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but onhis graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linensand made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. 

"I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, withenthusiasm. 

"And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe theywere thine own; in faith I could not. "

"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was liketo lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap beenstealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth notdays like that. "

Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and alwayshad a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it whitebread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. 

"And now consider what is come to pass, " said he, impressively. "Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table. "He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added--"and eight times salt meat. "

"It is even true, " said the wheelwright, with bated breath. 

"I know it of mine own knowledge, " said the mason, in the samereverent fashion. 

"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year, "added the master smith, with solemnity. "I leave it to your ownconsciences, friends, if this is not also true?"

"By my head, yes, " cried the mason. 

"I can testify it--and I do, " said the wheelwright. 

"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipmentis. " He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank andunhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved;speak as ye would speak; an I were not here. "

"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeityour family is but three, " said the wheelwright, with deep respect. 

"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewterto eat and drink from withal, " said the mason, impressively. "AndI say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth. "

"Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones, " said thesmith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless yewould look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect andbut sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality beassured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye wellye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but iswilling to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrietha right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouthwe are equals--equals"--and he smiled around on the company withthe satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and graciousthing and is quite well aware of it. 

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, andlet go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of whichhad a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment naturalto one who was being called upon by greatness. 

The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and asumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher stillwhen the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise;you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine newstools--whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes ofevery guest. Then she brought two more--as calmly as she could. Sensation again--with awed murmurs. Again she brought two--walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, andthe mason muttered:

"There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence. "

As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climaxwhile the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for alanguid composure but was a poor imitation of it:

"These suffice; leave the rest. "

So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't haveplayed the hand better myself. 

From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush thatfired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in theshade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down togasped "Oh's" and "Ah's, " and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden gobletsand other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealthof genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spreadlaid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd hadseen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied withwonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, andthe storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had cometo collect. 

"That's all right, " I said, indifferently. "What is the amount?give us the items. "

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternatewaves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:

 2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 700 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6, 000 2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2, 800 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 600 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 Various table furniture . . . . . . . . . 10, 000 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 000 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 000 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3, 000

He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. 

"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. 

"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment areplaced together under a head hight sundries. If it would likeyou, I will sepa--"

"It is of no consequence, " I said, accompanying the words witha gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grandtotal, please. "

The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:

"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!"

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the tableto save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:

"God be with us in the day of disaster!"

The clerk hastened to say:

"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require youto pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you--"

I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with anair of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my moneyand tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seenthem stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retainone of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and--I interrupted:

"What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. Keep the change. "

There was an amazed murmur to this effect:

"Verily this being is _made_ of money! He throweth it away evenas if it were dirt. "

The blacksmith was a crushed man. 

The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I saidto Marco and his wife:

"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you"--handing the miller-gunsas if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of themcontained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatureswent to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to theothers and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to. "

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don't know thatI ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectaculareffects out of the materials available. The blacksmith--well, hewas simply mashed. Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man wasfeeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing andbragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his freshmeat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his whitebread every Sunday the year round--all for a family of three; theentire cost for the year not above 69. 2. 6 (sixty-nine cents, twomills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a manwho slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and notonly that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such smallsums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up andcollapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's beenstepped on by a cow. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY

However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first thirdof the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easyto do--in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a countrywhere they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he isonly part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You proveyour superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, andthat's the end of it--he knuckles down. You can't insult himafter that. No, I don't mean quite that; of course you _can_ insulthim, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lotof useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had thesmith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperousand rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some littlegimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner'sin the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in theearth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look intothe future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakableGeorges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonoredthe creators of this world--after God--Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell. 

The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning uponbattle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsinessand went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placedthe beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavingsin humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into mattersnear and dear to the hearts of our sort--business and wages, of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceedingprosperous in this little tributary kingdom--whose lord wasKing Bagdemagus--as compared with the state of things in my ownregion. They had the "protection" system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easystages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and Iwere doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowleywarmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and beganto put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look:

"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?"

"Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent. "

The smith's face beamed with joy. He said:

"With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanicget--carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?"

"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day. "

"Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any goodmechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, butnot the others--they are all allowed a cent a day, and in drivingtimes they get more--yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteenmilrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, withinthe week. 'Rah for protection--to Sheol with free-trade!"

And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn'tscare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myselffifteen minutes to drive him into the earth--drive him _all_ in--drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should showabove ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:

"What do you pay a pound for salt?"

"A hundred milrays. "

"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton--when youbuy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the color come. 

"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milraysthe pound. "

"_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?"

"Fifty milrays the dozen. "

"We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?"

"It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint. "

"We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat?"

"At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel. "

"We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?"

"Thirteen cents. "

"We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of thelaborer or the mechanic?"

"We pay eight cents, four mills. "

"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents. " I prepared now to sock it to him. I said:"Look here, dear friend, _what's become of your high wages youwere bragging so about a few minutes ago?_"--and I looked aroundon the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped upon him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without hisever noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become ofthose noble high wages of yours?--I seem to have knocked thestuffing all out of them, it appears to me. "

But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, thatis all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he hadwalked into a trap, didn't discover that he was _in_ a trap. I couldhave shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a strugglingintellect he fetched this out:

"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wagesbe double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefromthe stuffing?--an miscall not the wonderly word, this being thefirst time under grace and providence of God it hath been grantedme to hear it. "

Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity onhis part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided withhim and were of his mind--if you might call it mind. My positionwas simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplifiedmore? However, I must try:

"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages aremerely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_. "

"Hear him! They are the _double_--ye have confessed it yourself. "

"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to dowith it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaninglessnames attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to dowith it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages?--that's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanicis allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us onlyabout a dollar and seventy-five--"

"There--ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!"

"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say isthis. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buyswith you--and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonestkind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours. "

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:

"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are thehigher, and with the same breath ye take it back. "

"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thingthrough your head? Now look here--let me illustrate. We payfour cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8. 4. 0, which isfour mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboringwoman who works on a farm?"

"Two mills a day. "

"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenthof a cent a day; and--"

"Again ye're conf--"

"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'llunderstand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earnher gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' work; but ours earns hersin forty days--two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, andtwo days' wages left, to buy something else with. There--_now_you understand it!"

He looked--well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say;so did the others. I waited--to let the thing work. Dowley spokeat last--and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten awayfrom his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, witha trifle of hesitancy:

"But--but--ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is betterthan one. "

Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chancedanother flyer:

"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes outand buys the following articles:

 "1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 tow-linen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5 pounds of mutton. 

"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working daysto earn the money--5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us andwork 32 days at _half_ the wages; he can buy all those things fora shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carryit through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages everytwo months, _your_ man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wagesin a year, your man not a cent. _Now_ I reckon you understand that'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anythingin the world until you find out which of them will _buy_ the most!"

It was a crusher. 

But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What thosepeople valued was _high wages_; it didn't seem to be a matter ofany consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anythingor not. They stood for "protection, " and swore by it, which wasreasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them intothe notion that it was protection which had created their highwages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wageshad advanced but 30 per cent. , while the cost of living had goneup 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced40 per cent. While the cost of living had gone steadily down. Butit didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. 

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to thinkof the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablestman, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiestuncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any politicalfirmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated inargument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see thatthose others were sorry for me--which made me blush till I couldsmell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as meanas I did, as ashamed as I felt--wouldn't _you_ have struck below thebelt to get even? Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm onlysaying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it. 

Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan outa love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit himat all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at himall of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way businessof it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on himgradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit himat all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, andhe can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That isthe way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy andcomfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and theoldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of mystarting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up:

"Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it;yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too. There are written laws--they perish; but there are alsounwritten laws--_they_ are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages:it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight throughthe centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages arenow, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that'sthe wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred yearsago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far backas we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, withouta document to help us, we can come pretty close to determiningwhat the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward;we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I cantell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in thefuture you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years. "

"What, goodman, what!"

"Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six timeswhat they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will beallowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6. "

"I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted Smug, thewheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye. 

"And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides--such as it is:it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later--pay attentionnow--a mechanic's wages will be--mind you, this is law, notguesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be _twenty_ cents a day!"

There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the masonmurmured, with raised eyes and hands:

"More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!"

"Riches!--of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco, his breathcoming quick and short, with excitement. 

"Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred andforty years more there'll be at least _one_ country where themechanic's average wage will be _two hundred_ cents a day!"

It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could gethis breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burnersaid prayerfully:

"Might I but live to see it!"

"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug. 

"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that andspeak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hathan income like to that. Income of an earl--mf! it's the incomeof an angel!"

"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week's work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of _fifty_ weeks toearn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, andservant shall be for that year?"

"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistratethat fixes the wages. "

"Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to _help_ him fix their wagesfor them, does he?"

"Hm! That _were_ an idea! The master that's to pay him the moneyis the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice. "

"Yes--but I thought the other man might have some little trifleat stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shallhave who _do_ work. You see? They're a 'combine'--a trade union, to coin a new phrase--who band themselves together to force theirlowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundredyears hence--so says the unwritten law--the 'combine' will be theother way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fumeand fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of tradeunions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange thewages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; andthen all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a coupleof thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing;and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliationto settle. "

"Do ye believe--"

"That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then. "

"Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith. 

"Oh, --and there's another detail. In that day, a master may hirea man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to. "

"What?"

"It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a manto work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the manwants to or not. "

"Will there be _no_ law or sense in that day?"

"Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave townwhenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him!--and they can'tput him in the pillory for it. "

"Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong indignation. "An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors andrespect for authority! The pillory--"

"Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I thinkthe pillory ought to be abolished. "

"A most strange idea. Why?"

"Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory fora capital crime?"

"No. "

"Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a smalloffense and then kill him?"

There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the firsttime, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it. Good effect. 

"You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillorya while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't goingto use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. Whatusually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for somelittle offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? Themob try to have some fun with him, don't they?"

"Yes. "

"They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to piecesto see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?"

"Yes. "

"Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?"

"Yes. "

"Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that moband here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge againsthim--and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another--stonesand bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?"

"There is no doubt of it. "

"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he?--jaws broken, teethsmashed out?--or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off?--or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?"

"It is true, God knoweth it. "

"And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there inthe stocks, can't he?"

"He surely can! One may not deny it. "

"I take it none of _you_ are unpopular--by reason of pride orinsolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things thatexcite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?"

Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betrayit by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of thestocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they wouldnever consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quickdeath by hanging. 

"Well, to change the subject--for I think I've established mypoint that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of ourlaws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which oughtto deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keepstill and don't report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybodyinforms on you. "

"Ah, but that would serve you but right, " said Dowley, "for you_must_ inform. So saith the law. "

The others coincided. 

"Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there'sone thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes amechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says thatif any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, heshall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he didit and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Nowit seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that withina week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil--"

Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them togo to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poorsmiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, thathe never suspected anything was going to happen till the blowcame crashing down and knocked him all to rags. 

A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with solittle time to work it up in. 

But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scarethem to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see theyhad been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; andto have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of themdistinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go andreport--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recoverfrom the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better thanso many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thoughtthey would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressedand suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantagetaken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kindtreatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course, they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. 

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES

Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I mustget up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to lifeagain. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to getthe hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitudehe was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in hisunconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explainits mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet itwas mysterious enough, for that race and that age. 

I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, theywere totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreledtube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a springto it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shotwouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In thegun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort thatwere several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seedshot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun wasa purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the darkwith it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; orin your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes--one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metalcost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I wasthe only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. "Paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knewit would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenthcentury, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. 

The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was souneasy--for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me todetect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed toindicate that he had been loading himself up for a performanceof some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choosesuch a time as this?

I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocentlyartful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to thesubject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me. I wanted to whisper in his ear, "Man, we are in awful danger!every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men'sconfidence; _don't_ waste any of this golden time. " But of courseI couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we wereconspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant whilethe king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about hisdamned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue fromevery quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusionand fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; butpresently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallizeand fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order andquiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as ifout of remote distance:

"--were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be deniedthat authorities differ as concerning this point, some contendingthat the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken earlyfrom the tree--"

The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyesin a surprised and troubled way. 

"--whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, thatthis is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and otherlike cereals do be always dug in the unripe state--"

The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear. 

"--yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when onedoth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of thetranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage--"

The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, andone of them muttered, "These be errors, every one--God hath surelysmitten the mind of this farmer. " I was in miserable apprehension;I sat upon thorns. 

"--and further instancing the known truth that in the case ofanimals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of thecreature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsomeappetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious qualityof morals--"

They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, "The one wouldbetray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!" they flungthemselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! Hemight be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just inhis line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clearoff his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "St. George forBritain!" and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, butI laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up andcame again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeatingthis, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell usfrom each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away withwhat might was left in them. Hammering each other--for we steppedaside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention tobusiness of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safefrom intrusion. 

Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurredto me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; hewas nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled theking's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marcothere, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure. I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later. We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted intothe shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excitedpeasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head. They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody;the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depthswe would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then cameanother sound--dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. Itmagnified our contract--we must find running water. 

We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behindand modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it. We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as muchas three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a greatbough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; nowwe began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struckour trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. Andthen for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had foundthe place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzingup and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again. 

When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we couldcrawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged itworth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, thoughthe king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment amongthe foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. 

Presently we heard it coming--and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream. Louder--louder--next minuteit swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone. 

"I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest somethingto them, " said I, "but I don't mind the disappointment. Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We'veflanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross thestream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses fromsomebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough. "

We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemedto hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen. 

"Yes, " said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're ontheir way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and letthem go by. "

So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said:

"They still search--I wit the sign. We did best to abide. "

He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noiseapproached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said:

"They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we tookthe water. "

"Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hopingbetter things. "

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was driftingunder us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt fromthe other bank, and said:

"An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branchthat overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to senda man up it. "

"Marry, that we will do!"

I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thingand swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there aresome things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardnessand stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't needto fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the personfor him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has neverhad a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he oughtto do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thinghe ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and endshim on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make anyvaluable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headedclown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the rightone? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, whichwas, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. 

Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himselfup and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's headarrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the manfloundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of angerbelow, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we weretreed, and prisoners. Another man started up; the bridging boughwas detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnishedthe bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep thebridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodgedhim as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirits rose, his joywas limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospectwe should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics wecould hold the tree against the whole country-side. 

However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; whereforethey called off the assault and began to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stonesmight answer. We had no objections. A stone might possiblypenetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we werewell protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible fromany good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour instone-throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feelingvery well satisfied. We could smile; almost laugh. 

But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have beeninterrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leavesand bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to noticea smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation--it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recognized that. Whensmoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile ofdry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they sawthe thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they brokeout in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough breath to say:

"Proceed, my liege; after you is manners. "

The king gasped:

"Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of thetrunk, and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pilehis dead according to his own fashion and taste. "

Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struckthe ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow andracket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion andthick-falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midstof the crowd, and a voice shouted:

"Hold--or ye are dead men!"

How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks ofa gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentlemaninspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants:

"What are ye doing to these people?"

"They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we knownot whence, and--"

"Ye know not whence? Do ye pretend ye know them not?"

"Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangersand unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violentand bloodthirsty madmen that ever--"

"Peace! Ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye?And whence are ye? Explain. "

"We are but peaceful strangers, sir, " I said, "and traveling uponour own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquaintedhere. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your braveinterference and protection these people would have killed us. As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violentor bloodthirsty. "

The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "Lash methese animals to their kennels!"

The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down suchas were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to thebush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in thedistance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantimethe gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dugno particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of theservice he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that wewere friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort wereall returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants:

"Bring the led-horses and mount these people. "

"Yes, my lord. "

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveledpretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at aroadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of ourtroubles. My lord went immediately to his room, after orderinghis supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morningwe breakfasted and made ready to start. 

My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment withindolent grace, and said:

"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is ourdirection likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath givencommandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certainof us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril. "

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept theoffer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate andcomfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Gripwas a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day'sjourney beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it wasnear the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market squareof the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more formy lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center ofthe square, to see what might be the object of interest. It was theremnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they hadbeen dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poorhusband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchaseshad been added to the gang. The king was not interested, andwanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity. I couldnot take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast, aredundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirtysteps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"

I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was rememberingI was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and--

Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. Theking burst out in a fury, and said:

"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?"

My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:

"Put up the slaves and sell them!"

_Slaves!_ The word had a new sound--and how unspeakably awful! Theking lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force;but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen ofthe rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we werehelpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and soearnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interestedattention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. The orator said:

"If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear--the God-givenliberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter!(Applause. ) Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs. "

"What proofs?"

"Proof that ye are freemen. "

Ah--I remembered! I came to myself; I said nothing. But theking stormed out:

"Thou'rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, thatthis thief and scoundrel here prove that we are _not_ freemen. "

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often knowthe laws; by words, not by effects. They take a _meaning_, and getto be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself. 

All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turnedaway, no longer interested. The orator said--and this time in thetones of business, not of sentiment:

"An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learnedthem. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may befreemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The lawis clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not. "

I said:

"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us onlytime to send to the Valley of Holiness--"

"Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you maynot hope to have them granted. It would cost much time, and wouldunwarrantably inconvenience your master--"

"_Master_, idiot!" stormed the king. "I have no master, I myselfam the m--"

"Silence, for God's sake!"

I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in troubleenough already; it could not help us any to give these peoplethe notion that we were lunatics. 

There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us upand sold us at auction. This same infernal law had existed inour own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred yearslater, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove thatthey were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery withoutthe circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but theminute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenlyhellish. Well, that's the way we are made. 

Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and anactive market we should have brought a good price; but this placewas utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes meashamed, every time I think of it. The King of England broughtseven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king waseasily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. Butthat is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dullmarket, I don't care what the property is, you are going to makea poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. Ifthe earl had had wit enough to--

However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies upon his account. Let him go, for the present; I took his number, so to speak. 

The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that longchain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. Wetook up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon;and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the Kingof England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fetteredand yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle menand women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a kingthan there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap andhollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But revealhis quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to lookat him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt. 

CHAPTER XXXV

A PITIFUL INCIDENT

It's a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural. What would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigiousnature of his fall, of course--from the loftiest place in the worldto the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world tothe obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to startwith, was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn'tseem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, whenI first found it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seemnatural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a rightfocus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it _was_ natural. For thisreason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities;but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, arereal, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued belowhis own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn'tanything more than an average man, if he was up that high. 

Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anythinglike a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure--a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldestconceit; I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground forme to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and dothe diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, andbrazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars;whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world hadnever seen a king that was worth half the money, and during thenext thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourthof it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops;or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics;or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology--no matter what--I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of ita palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever wehalted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look whichsaid plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, withthis kind of folk, you would see a different result. " Well, whenhe was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for sevendollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worryingI wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chanceto die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchaserslooked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment onthe king was something like this:

"Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style. Pity but style was marketable. "

At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our ownerwas a practical person and he perceived that this defect must bemended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he wentto work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could havegiven the man some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn'tvolunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damagethe cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficientlydifficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertaketo reduce the king's style to a slave's style--and by force--go to!it was a stately contract. Never mind the details--it will save metrouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at theend of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and cluband fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sightto see--and to weep over; but his spirit?--why, it wasn't evenphased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to seethat there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a mantill he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood youcan't. This man found that from his first effort down to hislatest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but theking was ready to plunge for him, and did it. So he gave upat last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he wasa man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. 

We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested inthe slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; frombeing the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had everheard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question whichI had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer thatI had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further. Would he abolish slavery?

His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time;I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanitywas not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-wordalmost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, itought to have been. 

I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to getfree any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and hadalways dissuaded the king from them. But now--ah, it was a newatmosphere! Liberty would be worth any cost that might be putupon it now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmedwith it. It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a greatdeal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sureones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none thatcould be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give thisone up. It might delay us months, but no matter, I would carryit out or break something. 

Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtakenby a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were makingfor. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the drivingsnow was so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soonlost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruinbefore him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for theydrove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where wewere. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women weredead, and others past moving and threatened with death. Ourmaster was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living, andmade us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. 

Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon awoman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flungherself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of peoplecame tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was awitch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a blackcat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly lookedhuman, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her. 

Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closedaround this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. Hesaid, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imaginethat! They were willing. They fastened her to a post; theybrought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch whileshe shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughtersto her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into lifeand commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocentlife of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master wehad. I took _his_ number. That snow-storm cost him nine of hisflock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, formany days together, he was so enraged over his loss. 

We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession. And such a procession! All the riffraff of the kingdom seemedto be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. In the van wasa cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely younggirl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to herbreast in a passion of love every little while, and every littlewhile wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained downupon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. 

Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or afterthe cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singingsnatches of foul song, skipping, dancing--a very holiday ofhellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of Londonsociety. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, andsaid comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff providea stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, andfor a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at hisfeet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched awayon every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then beganto tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice--how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land!I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he saidit in; and so I change it into my own words:

"Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. Thiscannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and prayfor the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, andthat his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thingto death--and it is right. But another law had placed her whereshe must commit her crime or starve with her child--and before Godthat law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death!

"A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lipswere blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad andinnocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she; for he wasdoing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he wasadding his mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of atreacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home andswept it away! That young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought himeverywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplicationsof her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks draggedby, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreckunder the burden of her misery. Little by little all her smallpossessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. She begged, while she had strength;when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole apiece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by theowner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial. The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and hersorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, bypermission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mindwas so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overbornewith hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless throughher brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was sohungry! For a moment all were touched, and there was dispositionto deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young andfriendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed herof her support to blame as being the first and only cause of hertransgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereasthese things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still therewas much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here wouldbe a danger to property--oh, my God, is there no property in ruinedhomes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British lawholds precious!--and so he must require sentence. 

"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolenlinen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray asashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poorchild, poor child, I did not know it was death!' and fell as atree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; beforethe sun was set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a manwhose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this thatis to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong--to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is come, mychild; let me pray over thee--not _for_ thee, dear abused poor heartand innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more. "

After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching itwith tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and thebaby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight overwhat it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled andtugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and steppedquickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made awild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope--and theunder-sheriff--held her short. Then she went on her knees andstretched out her hands and cried:

"One more kiss--oh, my God, one more, one more, --it is the dyingthat begs it!"

She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when theygot it away again, she cried out:

"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it hasno father, no friend, no mother--"

"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I beto it till I die. "

You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what doyou want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire;a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it awayto the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong. 

CHAPTER XXXVI

AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK

London--to a slave--was a sufficiently interesting place. It wasmerely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. The streetswere muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flockingand drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes andshining armor. The king had a palace there; he saw the outsideof it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poorjuvenile sixth century way. We saw knights and grandees whomwe knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and rawwelts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailedthem, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speakwith slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me ona mule--hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which cleanbroke my heart was something which happened in front of our oldbarrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a manbeing boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. It wasthe sight of a newsboy--and I couldn't get at him! Still, I hadone comfort--here was proof that Clarence was still alive andbanging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought wasfull of cheer. 

I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave mea great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop. Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a littlepiece of it. It was just what I needed, in order to carry out myproject of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along withthe king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and--

But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surpriseI would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible, ifI could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I couldshape into a lock-pick. I could then undo the lumbering padlockswith which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose. But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fallin my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman whohad come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeedany approach to a result, came again. I was far from expectingever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the timeI was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked eitheranger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it--twenty-twodollars. He wouldn't bate a cent. The king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was againsthim, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave. I considered myself safe from parting from him because of myextravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong tothis gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something whichI expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visitus often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, withwhich his long cloth outside garment was fastened together infront. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my projectentirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lowerclasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lostit on the way. 

I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chanceto be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus--in modern English:

"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two forno good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throwthe other one in. "

The king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. He beganto choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman movedaway discussing. 

"An ye will keep the offer open--"

"'Tis open till the morrow at this hour. "

"Then I will answer you at that time, " said the gentleman, anddisappeared, the master following him. 

I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it. I whispered in his ear, to this effect:

"Your grace _will_ go for nothing, but after another fashion. Andso shall I. To-night we shall both be free. "

"Ah! How is that?"

"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locksand cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirtyto inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batterhim, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves. "

That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to getto sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not takemany chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It isbest to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only aboutas usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that theywere going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't haveenough of it left for our needs; so I made several prematureattempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn't seemto touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattleout of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turnover and wake some more of the gang. 

But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man oncemore. I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king'sirons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one handand his heavy walking-staff in the other. I snuggled close amongthe wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I wasnaked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to springfor my man the moment he should bend over me. 

But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward ourdusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else;then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and beforea body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of thedoor and had closed it behind him. 

"Quick!" said the king. "Fetch him back!"

Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in amoment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, andit was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few stepsaway. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there wasa state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest inthe fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn'thave been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their ownfight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as muchas half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest somesympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions;it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberdfell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant. I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off towardprison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried toimagine what would happen when the master should discover thatit was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if theyjailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and pettylaw-breakers, as was the custom; and what might--

Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, and, by George, he was the wrong man!

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT

Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossiblein that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing thatmade sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was myracking impatience to get out of this place and find out the wholesize of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quartersin consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. 

It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I madea full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just afterdark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of thewater, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he beingtaken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had beenordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the bestphysician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with allmy might; the night was dark, I ran against this common personhere, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, althoughI told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the greatearl my master's mortal peril--

The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was goingto explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word--

"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give hima few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant ofa nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go!"

Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not failto tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that thishigh-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was startingto ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I wasarrested. I said I would if I had thought of it--which was true--but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knockedout of me--and so forth and so on, and got myself away, stillmumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under myfeet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty--everybody gone!That is, everybody except one body--the slave-master's. It laythere all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences ofa terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart atthe door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning aroad through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. 

I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talkwith one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter. 

"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their masterin the night, and thou seest how it ended. "

"Yes. How did it begin?"

"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave thatwas most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strangeway--by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. Whenthe master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threwhimself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted andbrake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurtsthat brought him swiftly to his end. "

"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial. "

"Marry, the trial is over. "

"Over!"

"Would they be a week, think you--and the matter so simple? Theywere not the half of a quarter of an hour at it. "

"Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guiltyones in so short a time. "

"_Which_ ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. They condemned them in a body. Wit ye not the law?--which mensay the Romans left behind them here when they went--that if oneslave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it. "

"True. I had forgotten. And when will these die?"

"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they willwait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missingone meantime. "

The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable. 

"Is it likely they will find him?"

"Before the day is spent--yes. They seek him everywhere. Theystand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves whowill discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass outbut he will be first examined. "

"Might one see the place where the rest are confined?"

"The outside of it--yes. The inside of it--but ye will not wantto see that. "

I took the address of that prison for future reference and thensauntered off. At the first second-hand clothing shop I came to, up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seamanwho might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face witha liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed myworst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled myformer self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it andfollowed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher'sshop--which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphicline. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I lockedthe door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the youngfellow, and he was going to make a noise; but I said:

"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackleyour instrument. Lively, now! Call Camelot. "

"This doth amaze me! How should such as you know aught of suchmatters as--"

"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get awayfrom the instrument and I will do it myself. "

"What--you?"

"Yes--certainly. Stop gabbling. Call the palace. "

He made the call. 

"Now, then, call Clarence. "

"Clarence _who_?"

"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clarence; you'll getan answer. "

He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes--ten minutes--how long it did seem!--and then came a click that was as familiarto me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil. 

"Now, my lad, vacate! They would have known _my_ touch, maybe, and so your call was surest; but I'm all right now. "

He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen--but it didn'twin. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilitieswith Clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off--thus:

"The king is here and in danger. We were captured and broughthere as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity--and the fact is, I am not in a position to try. Send a telegramfor the palace here which will carry conviction with it. "

His answer came straight back:

"They don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't hadany experience yet, the line to London is so new. Better notventure that. They might hang you. Think up something else. "

Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was crowding thefacts. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an ideastruck me, and I started it along:

"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; andsend them on the jump. Let them enter by the southwest gate, andlook out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm. "

The answer was prompt:

"They shall start in half an hour. "

"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm a friendof yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and saynothing about this visit of mine. "

The instrument began to talk to the youth and I hurried away. I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock. Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. These would make the best time they could, and now that the groundwas in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probablymake a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a coupleof times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it wouldstill be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth whichI should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. Wewould surround that prison and have the king out in no time. It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though I would have preferred noonday, on account of the moretheatrical aspect the thing would have. 

Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thoughtI would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized, and make myself known. That would help us out of our scrape, without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it wasa risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and itwouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to itby degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until I shouldfinally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. SoI started. 

But the scheme fell through like scat! The first corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman. I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit rightinto my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before. I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. Thosepeople had stopped, and were talking together and looking in atthe door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if therewas a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step outthere and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be inhiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers incharge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell himhe needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end ofthe back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out. 

She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebratedmurderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped outthe back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocketand started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable. 

Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. A double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid ofthat officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I mustpick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character. And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, beinghuman, would _naturally_ do; whereas when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's _not_natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would finda stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; beforehe could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slippinginto a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get meinto a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddlinglaw-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purityof character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officertook me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as Icame trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with myown cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into hishandcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac--however, thereisn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it upto profit and loss. 

Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore froma long voyage, and all that sort of thing--just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. ThenI reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised thanhurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said:

"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hangwith us, when thou'rt the very _cause_ of our hanging? Go to!"

"Go to" was their way of saying "I should smile!" or "I like that!"Queer talkers, those people. 

Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster byargument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said:

"You're not going to be hanged. None of us are. "

Both men laughed, and the slave said:

"Ye have not ranked as a fool--before. You might better keepyour reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long. "

"It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we shall be outof prison, and free to go where we will, besides. "

The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, madea rasping noise in his throat, and said:

"Out of prison--yes--ye say true. And free likewise to go whereye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil's sultry realm. "

I kept my temper, and said, indifferently:

"Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang withina day or two. "

"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decidedand proclaimed. "

"Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?"

"Even that. I only _thought_, then; I _know_, now. "

I felt sarcastical, so I said:

"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, what you _know_. "

"That ye will all be hanged _to-day_, at mid-afternoon! Oho! thatshot hit home! Lean upon me. "

The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn'tarrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, whichwas more important. More important, not merely to me, but tothe nation--the only nation on earth standing ready to blossominto civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn'tanything to say. I knew what the man meant; that if the missingslave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the executiontake place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE

Nearing four in the afternoon. The scene was just outside thewalls of London. A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliantsun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. Themultitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteenpoor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painfulin that thought, look at it how you might. There we sat, on ourtall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all thoseenemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had builta sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these werethere in full force, with their ladies. We recognized a goodmany of them. 

The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out ofthe king. The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, andproclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced theawful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hairof his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised himto hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded hisdignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, althoughthe crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to itby catcalls, jeers, and shouts of:

"Let him speak! The king! The king! his humble subjects hungerand thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their masterhis Serene and Sacred Raggedness!"

But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat underthis rain of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was greatin his way. Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and woundit about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this, they beganupon me. They said:

"Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister--observe his costlybadge of office!"

I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said:

"Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and to-morrow you will hearthat from Camelot which--"

I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. Butpresently there was silence; for the sheriffs of London, in theirofficial robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir whichindicated that business was about to begin. In the hush whichfollowed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, theneverybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. 

Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. Therelay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the bankedmultitude wailing its other side--a good clear road, and kept freeby the police--how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemencome tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities. I followed its receding thread out into the distance--not a horsemanon it, or sign of one. 

There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideouslysquirming, for his limbs were not tied. 

A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling. 

In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It wasdreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned backI missed the king! They were blindfolding him! I was paralyzed;I couldn't move, I was choking, my tongue was petrified. Theyfinished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. I couldn'tshake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put thenoose around his neck, then everything let go in me and I madea spring to the rescue--and as I made it I shot one more glanceabroad--by George! here they came, a-tilting!--five hundred mailedand belted knights on bicycles!

The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord, how the plumesstreamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless processionof webby wheels!

I waved my right arm as Launcelot swept in--he recognized my rag--I tore away noose and bandage, and shouted:

"On your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! Whofails shall sup in hell to-night!"

I always use that high style when I'm climaxing an effect. Well, it was noble to see Launcelot and the boys swarm up onto thatscaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. And it was fineto see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and begtheir lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, I thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarlygrand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all. 

I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all around, it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated. 

And presently up comes Clarence, his own self! and winks, andsays, very modernly:

"Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I'vehad the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungryfor a chance to show off. "

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE YANKEE'S FIGHT WITH THE KNIGHTS

Home again, at Camelot. A morning or two later I found the paper, damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table. I turnedto the advertising columns, knowing I should find something ofpersonal interest to me there. It was this:

 DE PAR LE ROI. 

 Know that the great lord and illus- trious Kni8ht, SIR SAGRAMOR LE DESIROUS having condescended to meet the King's Minister, Hank Mor- gan, the which is surnamed The Boss, for satisfgction of offence anciently given, these wilL engage in the lists by Camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month. The battle will be a l outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no comPosition. 

 DE PAR LE ROI

Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect:

 It will be observed, by a gl7nce at our advertising columns, that the commu- nity is to be favored with a treat of un- usual interest in the tournament line. The n ames of the artists are warrant of good enterTemment. The box-office will be open at noon of the 13th; ad- mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro- ceeds to go to the hospital fund The royal pair and all the Court will be pres- ent. With these exceptions, and the press and the clergy, the free list is strict- ly susPended. Parties are hereby warn- ed against buying tickets of speculators; they will not be good at the door. Everybody knows and likes The Boss, everybody knows and likes Sir Sag. ; come, let us give the lads a good send- off. ReMember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity, and one whose broad begevolence stretches out its help- ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov- ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition or color--the only charity yet established in the earth which has no politico-religious stop- cock on its compassion, but says Here flows the stream, let ALL come and drink! Turn out, all hands! fetch along your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops and have a good time. Pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with; and ciRcus-lemonade--three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water. N. B. This is the first tournament under the new law, whidh allow each combatant to use any weapon he may pre- fer. You may want to make a note of that. 

Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anythingbut this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance andpassed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not becausea tournament was a great matter, it was not because Sir Sagramorhad found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it wasnot because the second (official) personage in the kingdom wasone of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace. Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest whichthis coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that allthe nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel notof muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman artand craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two masterenchanters of the age. It was realized that the most prodigiousachievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthyof comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child'splay, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duelbetween Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers againstmine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nightstogether, imbuing Sir Sagramor's arms and armor with supernalpowers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for himfrom the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render thewearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to othermen. Against Sir Sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousandknights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantmentscould prevail. These facts were sure; regarding them there wasno doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question: mightthere be still other enchantments, _unknown_ to Merlin, which couldrender Sir Sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchantedmail vulnerable to my weapons? This was the one thing to bedecided in the lists. Until then the world must remain in suspense. 

So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, andthe world was right, but it was not the one they had in theirminds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die:_the life of knight-errantry_. I was a champion, it was true, butnot the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was the championof hard unsentimental common-sense and reason. I was enteringthe lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim. 

Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in themoutside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th. The mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and richtapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributarykings, their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our ownroyal gang in the chief place, and each and every individuala flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets--well, I never sawanything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippisunset and the aurora borealis. The huge camp of beflagged andgay-colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-standingsentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him forchallenge, was another fine sight. You see, every knight wasthere who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feelingtoward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was theirchance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramor, others would havethe right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond. 

Down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and anotherfor my servants. At the appointed hour the king made a sign, andthe heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. Therewas a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal forus to come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, andan eager curiosity flashed into every face. 

Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramor, an imposing towerof iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in itssocket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face andbreast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings thatalmost dragged the ground--oh, a most noble picture. A greatshout went up, of welcome and admiration. 

And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout. There wasa wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great waveof laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warningbugle-blast cut its career short. I was in the simplest andcomfortablest of gymnast costumes--flesh-colored tights from neckto heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded. My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. He wasa beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridle and ranger-saddle. 

The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously butgracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly upto meet them. We halted; the tower saluted, I responded; thenwe wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and facedour king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. The queen exclaimed:

"Alack, Sir Boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or--"

But the king checked her and made her understand, with a politephrase or two, that this was none of her business. The buglesrang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. Now old Merlin stepped into view and casta dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramor which turnedhim into Hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, Sir Sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment herehe came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him--cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight'sposition and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouragingshouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a hearteningword for me--said:

"Go it, slim Jim!"

It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favor for me--and furnished the language, too. When that formidable lance-pointwas within a yard and a half of my breast I twitched my horse asidewithout an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up, anddown we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar ofapplause for me. This same thing was repeated once more; andit fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramor lost histemper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the taskof chasing me down. Why, he hadn't any show in the world at that;it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; I whirledout of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped himon the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase intomy own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself alwaysin front at the end of his maneuver. So he gave up that businessand retired to his end of the lists. His temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposedof mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, andgrasped the coil in my right hand. This time you should have seenhim come!--it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there wasblood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swingingthe great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; themoment he was under way, I started for him; when the space betweenus had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the ropea-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about andbrought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced underhim for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yankedSir Sagramor out of the saddle! Great Scott, but there wasa sensation!

Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. Thesepeople had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From allaround and everywhere, the shout went up:

"Encore! encore!"

I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipheron philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hivewas just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't havebeen better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramorhad been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took mystation and began to swing my loop around my head again. I wassure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successorfor Sir Sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there wereso many hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight off--Sir Hervis de Revel. 

_Bzz_! Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged: he passed likea flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck;a second or so later, _fst_! his saddle was empty. 

I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious tothe ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. As aresult, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and sendtheir greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of thatlittle world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after himSir Galahad. So you see there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower--bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Launcelot himself!

A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur, King of Britain; yonder was Guenever; yes, and whole tribes oflittle provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest bodyknown to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the mostillustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sunof their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focalpoint of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here wasI laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of acertain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wished she could seeme now. In that moment, down came the Invincible, with the rushof a whirlwind--the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward--the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before youcould wink I was towing Sir Launcelot across the field on hisback, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs andthe thunder-crash of applause that greeted me!

Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn, and sat there drunk with glory, "The victory is perfect--no otherwill venture against me--knight-errantry is dead. " Now imagine myastonishment--and everybody else's, too--to hear the peculiarbugle-call which announces that another competitor is about toenter the lists! There was a mystery here; I couldn't account forthis thing. Next, I noticed Merlin gliding away from me; and thenI noticed that my lasso was gone! The old sleight-of-hand experthad stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. 

The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagramor ridingagain, with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely re-arranged. I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the soundof his horse's hoofs. He said:

"Thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" andhe touched the hilt of his great sword. "An ye are not able to seeit, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrouslance, but a sword--and I ween ye will not be able to avoid it. "

His visor was up; there was death in his smile. I should neverbe able to dodge his sword, that was plain. Somebody was goingto die this time. If he got the drop on me, I could name thecorpse. We rode forward together, and saluted the royalties. This time the king was disturbed. He said:

"Where is thy strange weapon?"

"It is stolen, sire. "

"Hast another at hand?"

"No, sire, I brought only the one. "

Then Merlin mixed in:

"He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the kingof the Demons of the Sea. This man is a pretender, and ignorant, else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight boutsonly, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea. "

"Then is he weaponless, " said the king. "Sir Sagramore, ye willgrant him leave to borrow. "

"And I will lend!" said Sir Launcelot, limping up. "He is asbrave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shallhave mine. "

He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagramor said:

"Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons; itwas his privilege to choose them and bring them. If he has erred, on his head be it. "

"Knight!" said the king. "Thou'rt overwrought with passion; itdisorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked man?"

"An he do it, he shall answer it to me, " said Sir Launcelot. 

"I will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted Sir Sagramor hotly. 

Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownestsmile of malicious gratification:

"'Tis well said, right well said! And 'tis enough of parleying, let my lord the king deliver the battle signal. "

The king had to yield. The bugle made proclamation, and we turnedapart and rode to our stations. There we stood, a hundred yardsapart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues. And so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, everybody gazing, nobody stirring. It seemed as if the king couldnot take heart to give the signal. But at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed, Sir Sagramor's long bladedescribed a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see himcome. I sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got soexcited that they shouted to me:

"Fly, fly! Save thyself! This is murther!"

I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparitionhad got within fifteen paces of me; then I snatched a dragoonrevolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, andthe revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tellwhat had happened. 

Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay Sir Sagramor, stone dead. 

The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the lifewas actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a holethrough the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importanceto a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there producesbut little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing andswaddlings under the armor. The body was dragged over to letthe king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefiedwith astonishment naturally. I was requested to come and explainthe miracle. But I remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said:

"If it is a command, I will come, but my lord the king knows thatI am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desireto come against me. "

I waited. Nobody challenged. Then I said:

"If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, I do not wait for them to challenge me, I challenge them. "

"It is a gallant offer, " said the king, "and well beseems you. Whom will you name first?"

"I name none, I challenge all! Here I stand, and dare the chivalryof England to come against me--not by individuals, but in mass!"

"What!" shouted a score of knights. 

"You have heard the challenge. Take it, or I proclaim you recreantknights and vanquished, every one!"

It was a "bluff" you know. At such a time it is sound judgmentto put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times whatit is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call, "and you rake in the chips. But just this once--well, things lookedsqually! In just no time, five hundred knights were scramblinginto their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scatteringdrove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatchedboth revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distancesand calculate chances. 

Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang--bang, andI bagged two. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it. If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feelso happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detectedthe wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instantlost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it. I raised both revolvers and pointed them--the halted host stoodtheir ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled. 

The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed institution. Themarch of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ah, you nevercould imagine it. 

And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Somehow, every timethe magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left. 

CHAPTER XL

THREE YEARS LATER

When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longerfelt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposedmy hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestinefactories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. 

Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them soI must just simply paralyze them--nothing short of that wouldanswer. You see, I was "bluffing" that last time in the field;it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, if I gave them a chance. So I must not give them time; and I didn't. 

I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up whereany priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing inthe advertising columns of the paper. 

I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up_against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it_. 

I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could dowhat I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the languageof that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceivedthat this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up. " They werewise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gaveme no trouble worth mentioning. 

Consider the three years sped. Now look around on England. A happyand prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Evenauthorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was firstin the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had beenfamiliar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out thatold rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything;but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hangedthe author. 

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law;taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, thephonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousandwilling and handy servants of steam and electricity were workingtheir way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercialmarine; I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discoverAmerica. 

We were building several lines of railway, and our line fromCamelot to London was already finished and in operation. I wasshrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passengerservice places of high and distinguished honor. My idea wasto attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keepthem out of mischief. The plan worked very well, the competitionfor the places was hot. The conductor of the 4. 33 express wasa duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line belowthe degree of earl. They were good men, every one, but they hadtwo defects which I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: theywouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock down" fare--I mean rob the company. 

There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some usefulemployment. They were going from end to end of the country in allmanner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effectivespreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed in steel andequipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn'tpersuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on. 

I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretlylonged-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head whichwere the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow theCatholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins--not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; andthe other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commandingthat upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike--at any rate to all men, wiseor unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be foundto know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. Arthur wasgood for thirty years yet, he being about my own age--that isto say, forty--and I believed that in that time I could easilyhave the active part of the population of that day ready and eagerfor an event which should be the first of its kind in the historyof the world--a rounded and complete governmental revolutionwithout bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I mayas well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it:I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first presidentmyself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I foundthat out. 

Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modifiedway. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but witha hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an electivechief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever knownthe joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of itand not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings weredangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royalfamily of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as usefulas any other royal family, they would know as much, they wouldhave the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same dispositionto get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughablyvain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive;finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any otherroyal house, and "Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the graceof God King, " would sound as well as it would when applied tothe ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And as a rule, " saidhe, in his neat modern English, "the character of these cats wouldbe considerably above the character of the average king, and thiswould be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reasonthat a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. Theworship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful andharmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed thatthey hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflictedno cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy ofa deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, andwould certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world wouldsoon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butcherswould presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fillthe vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we shouldbecome a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; withinforty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we shouldfurnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever.... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow--fzt!--wow!"

Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to bepersuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled mealmost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. Hedidn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectlyrational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything aboutit, either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy cameflying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobsthat for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took herin my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly:

"Speak, darling, speak! What is it?"

Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly:

"HELLO-CENTRAL!"

"Quick!" I shouted to Clarence; "telephone the king's homeopathto come!"

In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy wasdispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over thepalace. I took in the situation almost at a glance--membranouscroup! I bent down and whispered:

"Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central. "

She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say:

"Papa. "

That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent forpreparations of sulphur, I rousted out the croup-kettle myself;for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the childis sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laughthrough the tear-dews on its eye-lashes when even its mother couldn't. 

Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the greathall now on his way to the stock-board; he was president of thestock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had boughtof Sir Galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knights ofthe Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business purposesnow. Seats at it were worth--well, you would never believe thefigure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Launcelot was a bear, andhe had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just gettingready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? He wasthe same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passingthe door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enoughfor him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for allhim, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello-Centralfor all he was worth. And that was what he did. He shied hishelmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wickin the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. By thistime Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everythingwas ready. 

Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle withunslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid addedthereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted thesteam-spout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shape now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a coupleof church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get underthe canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in theland who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't bea more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in hisnoble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yardof snowy church-warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But, ofcourse Guenever--however, it's no use to cry over what's done andcan't be helped. 

Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through, for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; thenhe took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumesfalling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy'slap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, betweenthe ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him againin this world! Lord, what a world of heart-break it is. 

The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coaxher back to health and strength again. And she must have sea-air. So we took a man-of-war, and a suite of two hundred and sixtypersons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this westepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought itwould be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The littleking of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were gladto accept. If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, weshould have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, wemade out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comfortsand luxuries from the ship. 

At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies, and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. Shewould bring me, along with other news, the result of a certainexperiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mineto replace the tournament with something which might furnish anescape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucksentertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preservethe best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. 

This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing voguefrom the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chosemy nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in eitherteam who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of thissort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn'tthrow a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course, I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn'tdo that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate thearmor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but thatwas the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mailulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemersteel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing Iever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the batand a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yardssometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on hisstomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming intoport. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, butI had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to pleasethan other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually hislast; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted himhome on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever surviveda game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appointsomebody whose rank and lofty position under the government wouldprotect him. 

Here are the names of the nines:

 BESSEMERS ULSTERS

 KING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS. KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS. KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND. KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE. KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL. KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT. KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE. KING MELIODAS OF LIONES. KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE. KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA. 

 Umpire--CLARENCE. 

The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people;and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful springweather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. 

CHAPTER XLI

THE INTERDICT

However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters;our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sittingup with her, her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allowanybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, howsimple, and genuine, and good she was! She was a flawless wifeand mother; and yet I had married her for no other particularreasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my propertyuntil some knight should win her from me in the field. She hadhunted Britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-boutoutside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place atmy side in the placidest way and as of right. I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument shortand we had a wedding. 

Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I diddraw. Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ourswas the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. Peopletalk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the samesex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendshipof man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals ofboth are the same? There is no place for comparison betweenthe two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine. 

In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuriesaway, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all upand down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many atime Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon ourchild, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. It touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and playedher quaint and pretty surprise upon me:

"The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here madeholy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears. Nowthou'lt kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child. "

But I didn't know it, all the same. I hadn't an idea in theworld; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil herpretty game; so I never let on, but said:

"Yes, I know, sweetheart--how dear and good it is of you, too!But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utterit first--then its music will be perfect. "

Pleased to the marrow, she murmured:

"HELLO-CENTRAL!"

I didn't laugh--I am always thankful for that--but the strainruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I couldhear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake. The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephoneshe was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had givenorder for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone mustalways be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honorand remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. Thiswas not true. But it answered. 

Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and inour deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside ofthat sick-room. Then our reward came: the center of the universeturned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn't the term. There _isn't_ any term for it. You know that yourself, if you'vewatched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen itcome back to life and sweep night out of the earth with oneall-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. 

Why, we were back in this world in one instant! Then we lookedthe same startled thought into each other's eyes at the samemoment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet!

In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. Theyhad been steeped in troubled bodings all this time--their facesshowed it. I called an escort and we galloped five miles to ahilltop overlooking the sea. Where was my great commerce thatso lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautifulwith its white-winged flocks? Vanished, every one! Not a sail, from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank--just a dead and emptysolitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life. 

I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandythis ghastly news. We could imagine no explanation that wouldbegin to explain. Had there been an invasion? an earthquake?a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? Butguessing was profitless. I must go--at once. I borrowed the king'snavy--a "ship" no bigger than a steam launch--and was soon ready. 

The parting--ah, yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the childwith last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary!--the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of usfor joy. The darling mispronunciations of childhood!--dear me, there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when itwastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will nevervisit his bereaved ear again. Well, how good it was to be ableto carry that gracious memory away with me!

I approached England the next morning, with the wide highway ofsalt water all to myself. There were ships in the harbor, atDover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no signof life about them. It was Sunday; yet at Canterbury the streetswere empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness ofdeath was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last, inthe further edge of that town I saw a small funeral procession--just a family and a few friends following a coffin--no priest;a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church thereclose at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it;I glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded inblack, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew! Now I understoodthe stupendous calamity that had overtaken England. Invasion?Invasion is a triviality to it. It was the INTERDICT!

I asked no questions; I didn't need to ask any. The Church hadstruck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, andgo warily. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, andwhen we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that timeI traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrassment of company. 

A miserable journey. A desolate silence everywhere. Even inLondon itself. Traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, orgo in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, eachman by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart. The Tower showed recent war-scars. Verily, much had been happening. 

Of course, I meant to take the train for Camelot. Train! Why, the station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved on. The journeyto Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen. The Mondayand the Tuesday differed in no way from the Sunday. I arrivedfar in the night. From being the best electric-lighted town inthe kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you eversaw, it was become simply a blot--a blot upon darkness--that isto say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness, and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as ifmaybe it was symbolical--a sort of sign that the Church was going to_keep_ the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilizationjust like that. I found no life stirring in the somber streets. I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed blackupon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it. The drawbridgewas down, the great gate stood wide, I entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound I heard--and it was sepulchralenough, in those huge vacant courts. 

CHAPTER XLII

WAR!

I found Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy;and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancientrag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtainsdrawn tight. He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying:

"Oh, it's worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!"

He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all. Whichfrightened me; one may easily believe that. 

"Quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster, " I said. "How did it come about?"

"Well, if there hadn't been any Queen Guenever, it wouldn't havecome so early; but it would have come, anyway. It would havecome on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to comeon the queen's. "

"_And_ Sir Launcelot's?"

"Just so. "

"Give me the details. "

"I reckon you will grant that during some years there has beenonly one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been lookingsteadily askance at the queen and Sir Launcelot--"

"Yes, King Arthur's. "

"--and only one heart that was without suspicion--"

"Yes--the king's; a heart that isn't capable of thinking evilof a friend. "

"Well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting, to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements--the stock-board. When you left, three miles of the London, Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready andripe for manipulation in the stock-market. It was wildcat, andeverybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a give-away. Whatdoes Sir Launcelot do, but--"

"Yes, I know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song;then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call;and he was about to call when I left. "

"Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't deliver. Oh, he hadthem--and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. They werelaughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stockto him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10. Well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. That was when they compromised with the Invincible at 283!"

"Good land!"

"He skinned them alive, and they deserved it--anyway, the wholekingdom rejoiced. Well, among the flayed were Sir Agravaine andSir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Actsecond, scene first, an apartment in Carlisle castle, where thecourt had gone for a few days' hunting. Persons present, thewhole tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agravaine proposeto call the guileless Arthur's attention to Guenever and SirLauncelot. Sir Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will havenothing to do with it. A dispute ensues, with loud talk; in themidst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agravaine spring theirdevastating tale upon him. _Tableau_. A trap is laid for Launcelot, by the king's command, and Sir Launcelot walks into it. He madeit sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses--to wit, Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for hekilled every one of them but Mordred; but of course that couldn'tstraighten matters between Launcelot and the king, and didn't. "

"Oh, dear, only one thing could result--I see that. War, andthe knights of the realm divided into a king's party and aSir Launcelot's party. "

"Yes--that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to thestake, proposing to purify her with fire. Launcelot and hisknights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friendsof yours and mine--in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, Sir Belias le Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet le Fils de Dieu, Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale--"

"Oh, you tear out my heartstrings. "

"--wait, I'm not done yet--Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer--"

"The very best man in my subordinate nine. What a handy right-fielderhe was!"

"--Sir Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kaythe Stranger--"

"My peerless short-stop! I've seen him catch a daisy-cutter inhis teeth. Come, I can't stand this!"

"--Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope, Sir Perimones, and--whom do you think?"

"Rush! Go on. "

"Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gareth--both!"

"Oh, incredible! Their love for Launcelot was indestructible. "

"Well, it was an accident. They were simply onlookers; they wereunarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen's punishment. Sir Launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were. Here is aninstantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it'sfor sale on every news-stand. There--the figures nearest the queenare Sir Launcelot with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping hislatest breath. You can catch the agony in the queen's face throughthe curling smoke. It's a rattling battle-picture. "

"Indeed, it is. We must take good care of it; its historical valueis incalculable. Go on. "

"Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Launcelotretreated to his town and castle of Joyous Gard, and gatheredthere a great following of knights. The king, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpsesand cast-iron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthurand Launcelot and the queen and everybody--everybody but Sir Gawaine. He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, Gareth and Gaheris, and would not be appeased. He notified Launcelot to get himthence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. So Launcelot sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, andGawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to gowith him. Arthur left the kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands untilyou should return--"

"Ah--a king's customary wisdom!"

"Yes. Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingshippermanent. He was going to marry Guenever, as a first move; butshe fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London. Mordredattacked; the Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with theInterdict. The king returned; Mordred fought him at Dover, atCanterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peaceand a composition. Terms, Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent duringArthur's life, and the whole kingdom afterward. "

"Well, upon my word! My dream of a republic to _be_ a dream, andso remain. "

"Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Gawaine--Gawaine's headis at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight there--Gawaine appeared toArthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him torefrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had givenorder that if a sword was raised during the consultation overthe proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on!for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similarorder to _his_ people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel;the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at theadder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigioushosts came together with a crash! They butchered away all day. Then the king--however, we have started something fresh sinceyou left--our paper has. "

"No? What is that?"

"War correspondence!"

"Why, that's good. "

"Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the Interdict madeno impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. I had warcorrespondents with both armies. I will finish that battle byreading you what one of the boys says:

 'Then the king looked about him, and then was he ware of all his host and of all his good knights were left no more on live but two knights, that was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir Bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. Jesu mercy, said the king, where are all my noble knights becomen? Alas that ever I should see this doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am come to mine end. But would to God that I wist where were that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all this mischief. Then was King Arthur ware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. Now give me my spear, said Arthur unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have espied the traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy; and if ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well revenged upon him. Good lord, remember ye of your night's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawaine told you this night, yet God of his great goodness hath preserved you hitherto. Therefore, for God's sake, my lord, leave off by this. For blessed be God ye have won the field: for here we be three on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live. And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past. Tide me death, betide me life, saith the king, now I see him yonder alone, he shall never escape mine hands, for at a better avail shall I never have him. God speed you well, said Sir Bedivere. Then the king gat his spear in both his hands, and ran toward Sir Mordred crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the butt of King Arthur's spear. And right so he smote his father Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned oft-times--'"

"That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence; you area first-rate newspaper man. Well--is the king all right? Didhe get well?"

"Poor soul, no. He is dead. "

I was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any woundcould be mortal to him. 

"And the queen, Clarence?"

"She is a nun, in Almesbury. "

"What changes! and in such a short while. It is inconceivable. What next, I wonder?"

"I can tell you what next. "

"Well?"

"Stake our lives and stand by them!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"The Church is master now. The Interdict included you with Mordred;it is not to be removed while you remain alive. The clans aregathering. The Church has gathered all the knights that are leftalive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have businesson our hands. "

"Stuff! With our deadly scientific war-material; with our hostsof trained--"

"Save your breath--we haven't sixty faithful left!"

"What are you saying? Our schools, our colleges, our vastworkshops, our--"

"When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselvesand go over to the enemy. Did you think you had educated thesuperstition out of those people?"

"I certainly did think it. "

"Well, then, you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily--until the Interdict. Since then, they merely put on a boldoutside--at heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it--when the armies come, the mask will fall. "

"It's hard news. We are lost. They will turn our own scienceagainst us. "

"No they won't. "

"Why?"

"Because I and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game. I'll tell you what I've done, and what moved me to it. Smart asyou are, the Church was smarter. It was the Church that sentyou cruising--through her servants, the doctors. "

"Clarence!"

"It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship wasthe Church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew. "

"Oh, come!"

"It is just as I tell you. I did not find out these things at once, but I found them out finally. Did you send me verbal information, by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his returnto you, with supplies, you were going to leave Cadiz--"

"Cadiz! I haven't been at Cadiz at all!"

"--going to leave Cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, for the health of your family? Did you send me that word?"

"Of course not. I would have written, wouldn't I?"

"Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commandersailed again I managed to ship a spy with him. I have neverheard of vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hearfrom you in. Then I resolved to send a ship to Cadiz. There wasa reason why I didn't. "

"What was that?"

"Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared! Also, assuddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph andtelephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cutdown, the Church laid a ban upon the electric light! I had to beup and doing--and straight off. Your life was safe--nobody inthese kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magicianas you without ten thousand men at his back--I had nothing tothink of but how to put preparations in the best trim against yourcoming. I felt safe myself--nobody would be anxious to toucha pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various worksI selected all the men--boys I mean--whose faithfulness underwhatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them togethersecretly and gave them their instructions. There are fifty-two ofthem; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old. "

"Why did you select boys?"

"Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstitionand reared in it. It is in their blood and bones. We imaginedwe had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the Interdictwoke them up like a thunderclap! It revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. With boys it was different. Suchas have been under our training from seven to ten years have hadno acquaintance with the Church's terrors, and it was among thesethat I found my fifty-two. As a next move, I paid a private visitto that old cave of Merlin's--not the small one--the big one--"

"Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electricplant when I was projecting a miracle. "

"Just so. And as that miracle hadn't become necessary then, I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. I'veprovisioned the cave for a siege--"

"A good idea, a first-rate idea. "

"I think so. I placed four of my boys there as a guard--inside, and out of sight. Nobody was to be hurt--while outside; but anyattempt to enter--well, we said just let anybody try it! ThenI went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wireswhich connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamitedeposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc. , and about midnight I and my boys turned out and connectedthat wire with the cave, and nobody but you and I suspects wherethe other end of it goes to. We laid it under ground, of course, andit was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We sha'n't haveto leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization. "

"It was the right move--and the natural one; military necessity, in the changed condition of things. Well, what changes _have_ come!We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but--however, go on. "

"Next, we built a wire fence. "

"Wire fence?"

"Yes. You dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago. "

"Oh, I remember--the time the Church tried her strength againstus the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for ahopefuler season. Well, how have you arranged the fence?"

"I start twelve immensely strong wires--naked, not insulated--from a big dynamo in the cave--dynamo with no brushes excepta positive and a negative one--"

"Yes, that's right. "

"The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of levelground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independentfences, ten feet apart--that is to say, twelve circles withincircles--and their ends come into the cave again. "

"Right; go on. "

"The fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground. "

"That is good and strong. "

"Yes. The wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave. They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is aground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends ofthe wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently. "

"No, no, that won't do!"

"Why?"

"It's too expensive--uses up force for nothing. You don't wantany ground-connection except the one through the negative brush. The other end of every wire must be brought back into the caveand fastened independently, and _without_ any ground-connection. Now, then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry charge hurlsitself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spendingno money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horsescome against the wire; the moment they touch it they form aconnection with the negative brush _through the ground_, and dropdead. Don't you see?--you are using no energy until it is needed;your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; butit isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. Oh, yes, thesingle ground-connection--"

"Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not onlycheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wiresbreak or get tangled, no harm is done. "

"No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnectthe broken wire. Well, go on. The gatlings?"

"Yes--that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle, on aspacious platform six feet high, I've grouped a battery of thirteengatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition. "

"That's it. They command every approach, and when the Church'sknights arrive, there's going to be music. The brow of theprecipice over the cave--"

"I've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. They won't drop anyrocks down on us. "

"Well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?"

"That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was everplanted. It's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outerfence--distance between it and the fence one hundred yards--kind ofneutral ground that space is. There isn't a single square yardof that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid themon the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand overthem. It's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man startin to hoe it once, and you'll see. "

"You tested the torpedoes?"

"Well, I was going to, but--"

"But what? Why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a--"

"Test? Yes, I know; but they're all right; I laid a few in thepublic road beyond our lines and they've been tested. "

"Oh, that alters the case. Who did it?"

"A Church committee. "

"How kind!"

"Yes. They came to command us to make submission. You see theydidn't really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident. "

"Did the committee make a report?"

"Yes, they made one. You could have heard it a mile. "

"Unanimous?"

"That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs, for theprotection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since. "

"Clarence, you've done a world of work, and done it perfectly. "

"We had plenty of time for it; there wasn't any occasion for hurry. "

We sat silent awhile, thinking. Then my mind was made up, andI said:

"Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail iswanting. I know what to do now. "

"So do I; sit down and wait. "

"No, _sir_! rise up and _strike_!"

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes, indeed! The _de_fensive isn't in my line, and the _of_fensiveis. That is, when I hold a fair hand--two-thirds as good a handas the enemy. Oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game. "

"A hundred to one you are right. When does the performance begin?"

"_Now!_ We'll proclaim the Republic. "

"Well, that _will_ precipitate things, sure enough!"

"It will make them buzz, I tell you! England will be a hornets'nest before noon to-morrow, if the Church's hand hasn't lost itscunning--and we know it hasn't. Now you write and I'll dictate thus:

 "PROCLAMATION

 ---

 "BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL. Whereas the king having died and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me, until a government shall have been created and set in motion. The monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists. By consequence, all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation. With the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an Established Church; all men are become exactly equal; they are upon one common level, and religion is free. _A Republic is hereby proclaimed_, as being the natural estate of a nation when other authority has ceased. It is the duty of the British people to meet together immediately, and by their votes elect representatives and deliver into their hands the government. "

I signed it "The Boss, " and dated it from Merlin's Cave. Clarence said--

"Why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away. "

"That is the idea. We _strike_--by the Proclamation--then it'stheir innings. Now have the thing set up and printed and posted, right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a coupleof bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, ho for Merlin's Cave!"

"I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is goingto be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work!... It's apleasant old palace, this is; I wonder if we shall ever again--but never mind about that. "

CHAPTER XLIII

THE BATTLE OF THE SAND BELT

In Merlin's Cave--Clarence and I and fifty-two fresh, bright, well-educated, clean-minded young British boys. At dawn I sentan order to the factories and to all our great works to stopoperations and remove all life to a safe distance, as everythingwas going to be blown up by secret mines, "_and no telling at whatmoment--therefore, vacate at once_. " These people knew me, andhad confidence in my word. They would clear out without waitingto part their hair, and I could take my own time about dating theexplosion. You couldn't hire one of them to go back during thecentury, if the explosion was still impending. 

We had a week of waiting. It was not dull for me, because I waswriting all the time. During the first three days, I finishedturning my old diary into this narrative form; it only requireda chapter or so to bring it down to date. The rest of the weekI took up in writing letters to my wife. It was always my habitto write to Sandy every day, whenever we were separate, and nowI kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though I couldn'tdo anything with the letters, of course, after I had written them. But it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking;it was almost as if I was saying, "Sandy, if you and Hello-Centralwere here in the cave, instead of only your photographs, whatgood times we could have!" And then, you know, I could imaginethe baby goo-gooing something out in reply, with its fists in itsmouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, and she a-laughing and admiring and worshipping, and now and thentickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybethrowing in a word of answer to me herself--and so on and so on--well, don't you know, I could sit there in the cave with my pen, and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. Why, it wasalmost like having us all together again. 

I had spies out every night, of course, to get news. Every reportmade things look more and more impressive. The hosts were gathering, gathering; down all the roads and paths of England the knights wereriding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these originalCrusaders, this being the Church's war. All the nobilities, bigand little, were on their way, and all the gentry. This was allas was expected. We should thin out this sort of folk to sucha degree that the people would have nothing to do but just stepto the front with their republic and--

Ah, what a donkey I was! Toward the end of the week I began to getthis large and disenchanting fact through my head: that the massof the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic forabout one day, and there an end! The Church, the nobles, andthe gentry then turned one grand, all-disapproving frown upon themand shriveled them into sheep! From that moment the sheep hadbegun to gather to the fold--that is to say, the camps--and offertheir valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteouscause. " Why, even the very men who had lately been slaves werein the "righteous cause, " and glorifying it, praying for it, sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. Imagine such human muck as this; conceive of this folly!

Yes, it was now "Death to the Republic!" everywhere--not a dissentingvoice. All England was marching against us! Truly, this was morethan I had bargained for. 

I watched my fifty-two boys narrowly; watched their faces, theirwalk, their unconscious attitudes: for all these are a language--a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times ofemergency, when we have secrets which we want to keep. I knewthat that thought would keep saying itself over and over againin their minds and hearts, _All England is marching against us!_and ever more strenuously imploring attention with each repetition, ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, untileven in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hearthe vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, _All England_--ALL ENGLAND!--_is marching against you_! I knew all this wouldhappen; I knew that ultimately the pressure would become so greatthat it would compel utterance; therefore, I must be ready with ananswer at that time--an answer well chosen and tranquilizing. 

I was right. The time came. They HAD to speak. Poor lads, itwas pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. Atfirst their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but hepresently got both. This is what he said--and he put it in theneat modern English taught him in my schools:

"We have tried to forget what we are--English boys! We have triedto put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our mindsapprove, but our hearts reproach us. While apparently it wasonly the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirtythousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of onemind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every oneof these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'Theyhave chosen--it is their affair. ' But think!--the matter isaltered--_All England is marching against us_! Oh, sir, consider!--reflect!--these people are our people, they are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, we love them--do not ask us to destroy our nation!"

Well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready fora thing when it happens. If I hadn't foreseen this thing and beenfixed, that boy would have had me!--I couldn't have said a word. But I was fixed. I said:

"My boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought theworthy thought, you have done the worthy thing. You are Englishboys, you will remain English boys, and you will keep that nameunsmirched. Give yourselves no further concern, let your minds beat peace. Consider this: while all England is marching againstus, who is in the van? Who, by the commonest rules of war, willmarch in the front? Answer me. "

"The mounted host of mailed knights. "

"True. They are thirty thousand strong. Acres deep they will march. Now, observe: none but _they_ will ever strike the sand-belt! Thenthere will be an episode! Immediately after, the civilian multitudein the rear will retire, to meet business engagements elsewhere. None but nobles and gentry are knights, and _none but these_ willremain to dance to our music after that episode. It is absolutelytrue that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousandknights. Now speak, and it shall be as you decide. Shall weavoid the battle, retire from the field?"

"NO!!!"

The shout was unanimous and hearty. 

"Are you--are you--well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights?"

That joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanishedaway, and they went gaily to their posts. Ah, they were a darlingfifty-two! As pretty as girls, too. 

I was ready for the enemy now. Let the approaching big day comealong--it would find us on deck. 

The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry on watch in thecorral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass underthe horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be militarymusic. Breakfast was just ready; we sat down and ate it. 

This over, I made the boys a little speech, and then sent outa detail to man the battery, with Clarence in command of it. 

The sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors overthe land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us, with the steady drift and aligned front of a wave of the sea. Nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposingbecame its aspect; yes, all England was there, apparently. Soonwe could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sunstruck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. Yes, it was a finesight; I hadn't ever seen anything to beat it. 

At last we could make out details. All the front ranks, no tellinghow many acres deep, were horsemen--plumed knights in armor. Suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst intoa gallop, and then--well, it was wonderful to see! Down sweptthat vast horse-shoe wave--it approached the sand-belt--my breathstood still; nearer, nearer--the strip of green turf beyond theyellow belt grew narrow--narrower still--became a mere ribbon infront of the horses--then disappeared under their hoofs. GreatScott! Why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky witha thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments;and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what wasleft of the multitude from our sight. 

Time for the second step in the plan of campaign! I toucheda button, and shook the bones of England loose from her spine!

In that explosion all our noble civilization-factories went up inthe air and disappeared from the earth. It was a pity, but itwas necessary. We could not afford to let the enemy turn our ownweapons against us. 

Now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours I had ever endured. We waited in a silent solitude enclosed by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. We couldn'tsee over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. Butat last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of anotherquarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabledto satisfy itself. No living creature was in sight! We nowperceived that additions had been made to our defenses. Thedynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all aroundus, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on bothborders of it. As to destruction of life, it was amazing. Moreover, it was beyond estimate. Of course, we could not _count_ the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneousprotoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons. 

No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been somewounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field undercover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among theothers--there always is, after an episode like that. But therewould be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalryof England; it was all that was left of the order, after the recentannihilating wars. So I felt quite safe in believing that theutmost force that could for the future be brought against uswould be but small; that is, of knights. I therefore issued acongratulatory proclamation to my army in these words:

 SOLDIERS, CHAMPIONS OF HUMAN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY: Your General congratulates you! In the pride of his strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant enemy came against you. You were ready. The conflict was brief; on your side, glorious. This mighty victory, having been achieved utterly without loss, stands without example in history. So long as the planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the BATTLE OF THE SAND-BELT will not perish out of the memories of men. 

 THE BOSS. 

I read it well, and the applause I got was very gratifying to me. I then wound up with these remarks:

"The war with the English nation, as a nation, is at an end. The nation has retired from the field and the war. Before it canbe persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign isthe only one that is going to be fought. It will be brief--the briefest in history. Also the most destructive to life, considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties tonumbers engaged. We are done with the nation; henceforth we dealonly with the knights. English knights can be killed, but theycannot be conquered. We know what is before us. While one ofthese men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is notended. We will kill them all. " [Loud and long continued applause. ]

I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines bythe dynamite explosion--merely a lookout of a couple of boysto announce the enemy when he should appear again. 

Next, I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyondour lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there, and bring it within our lines and under our command, arrangingit in such a way that I could make instant use of it in an emergency. The forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, andwere to relieve each other every two hours. In ten hours thework was accomplished. 

It was nightfall now, and I withdrew my pickets. The one whohad had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visiblewith the glass only. He also reported that a few knights had beenfeeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across ourlines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near. That was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, yousee; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terroron them again. They would grow bolder in the night, perhaps. I believed I knew what project they would attempt, because it wasplainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their placesand as ignorant as they were. I mentioned it to Clarence. 

"I think you are right, " said he; "it is the obvious thing forthem to try. "

"Well, then, " I said, "if they do it they are doomed. "

"Certainly. "

"They won't have the slightest show in the world. "

"Of course they won't. "

"It's dreadful, Clarence. It seems an awful pity. "

The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mindfor thinking of it and worrying over it. So, at last, to quietmy conscience, I framed this message to the knights:

 TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMANDER OF THE INSURGENT CHIVALRY OF ENGLAND: YOU fight in vain. We know your strength--if one may call it by that name. We know that at the utmost you cannot bring against us above five and twenty thousand knights. Therefore, you have no chance--none whatever. Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS--the capablest in the world; a force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of England. Be advised. We offer you your lives; for the sake of your families, do not reject the gift. We offer you this chance, and it is the last: throw down your arms; surrender unconditionally to the Republic, and all will be forgiven. 

 (Signed) THE BOSS. 

I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flagof truce. He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said:

"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize whatthese nobilities are. Now let us save a little time and trouble. Consider me the commander of the knights yonder. Now, then, you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message, and I will give you your answer. "

I humored the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard ofthe enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed upa scornful lip and said with lofty disdain:

"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to thebase-born knave who sent him; other answer have I none!"

How empty is theory in presence of fact! And this was just fact, and nothing else. It was the thing that would have happened, there was no getting around that. I tore up the paper and grantedmy mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest. 

Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from the gatlingplatform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right;I tested and retested those which commanded the fences--thesewere signals whereby I could break and renew the electric currentin each fence independently of the others at will. I placed thebrook-connection under the guard and authority of three of mybest boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night andpromptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it--three revolver-shots in quick succession. Sentry-duty was discardedfor the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered thatquiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turneddown to a glimmer. 

As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from allthe fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment borderingour side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of itand lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it wastoo dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. Thestillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night-soundsof the country--the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine--but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensifiedit, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain. 

I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, butI kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, forI judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed. However, I had to wait a long time. At last I caught what youmay call in distinct glimpses of sound dulled metallic sound. I pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was thesort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound thickened, andapproached--from toward the north. Presently, I heard it at myown level--the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundredfeet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appearalong that ridge--human heads? I couldn't tell; it mightn't beanything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imaginationis out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heardthat metallic noise descending into the great ditch. It augmentedfast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me thisfact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes, these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. Wecould expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier. 

I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough. I wentto the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the twoinner fences. Then I went into the cave, and found everythingsatisfactory there--nobody awake but the working-watch. I wokeClarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, and that I believed all the knights were coming for us in a body. It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expectthe ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankmentand make an assault, and be followed immediately by the restof their army. 

Clarence said:

"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to makepreliminary observations. Why not take the lightning off theouter fences, and give them a chance?"

"I've already done it, Clarence. Did you ever know me to beinhospitable?"

"No, you are a good heart. I want to go and--"

"Be a reception committee? I will go, too. "

We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two insidefences. Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesightsomewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself andsoon it was adjusted for present circumstances. We had had to feelour way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence brokeoff and said:

"What is that?"

"What is what?"

"That thing yonder. "

"What thing--where?"

"There beyond you a little piece--dark something--a dull shapeof some kind--against the second fence. "

I gazed and he gazed. I said:

"Could it be a man, Clarence?"

"No, I think not. If you notice, it looks a lit--why, it _is_a man!--leaning on the fence. "

"I certainly believe it is; let us go and see. "

We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, and then looked up. Yes, it was a man--a dim great figure in armor, standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire--and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as adoor-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like astatue--no motion about him, except that his plumes swished abouta little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in throughthe bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew himor not--features too dim and shadowed. 

We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the groundwhere we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was comingvery stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now forus to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend andstep under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at thefirst knight--and started slightly when he discovered him. Hestood a moment--no doubt wondering why the other one didn't moveon; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, goodSir Mar--" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder--and justuttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a deadman, you see--killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was somethingawful about it. 

These early birds came scattering along after each other, aboutone every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour. They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule, they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward andfound the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue sparkwhen the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisibleto us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow, he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected. We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteousregularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; andthis sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepythere in the dark and lonesomeness. 

We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We electedto walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned, we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any casewe should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seemto have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip. Everywheredead men were lying outside the second fence--not plainly visible, but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those patheticstatues--dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire. 

One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our currentwas so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next momentwe guessed what it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whisperedClarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silencein the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stoodby the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awfulwork upon that swarming host. One could make out but little ofdetail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself upbeyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men! Ourcamp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead--a bulwark, a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. One terrible thing aboutthis thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved asnoiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was nearenough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to geta shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went downwithout testifying. 

I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediatelythrough the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up. I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed thatthat whole army was in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to findout. So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflameon the top of our precipice. 

Land, what a sight! We were enclosed in three walls of dead men!All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living, who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilizetheir immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, inanother instant they would have recovered their faculties, thenthey'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wireswould have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost themtheir opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of timewas still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences andstruck the whole host dead in their tracks! _There_ was a groanyou could _hear_! It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. It swelled out on the night with awful pathos. 

A glance showed that the rest of the enemy--perhaps ten thousandstrong--were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressingforward to the assault. Consequently we had them _all!_ and hadthem past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I firedthe three appointed revolver shots--which meant:

"Turn on the water!"

There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountainbrook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river ahundred feet wide and twenty-five deep. 

"Stand to your guns, men! Open fire!"

The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated tenthousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment againstthat withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about andswept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourthpart of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment;the three-fourths reached it and plunged over--to death by drowning. 

Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistancewas totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four weremasters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. 

But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while--say an hour--happened a thing, by my own fault, which--but I have no heartto write that. Let the record end here. 

CHAPTER XLIV

A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE

I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we twogo out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I wasstrenuous against the project. I said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us totrust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turnedfrom a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric currentfrom the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosingramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The firstwounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his backagainst a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoketo him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight wasSir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet. Hewill not ask for help any more. 

We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which wasnot very serious, the best care we could. In this service we hadthe help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguisedas a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, hehad appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cookfor us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new campswhich the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Bosshad been getting along very well, and had amused himself withfinishing up his record. 

We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. Wewere in a trap, you see--a trap of our own making. If we stayedwhere we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of ourdefenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered;in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we allrecognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps andpatch up some kind of terms with the enemy--yes, but The Bosscould not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first thatwere made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others. To-morrow--

_To-morrow. _ It is here. And with it the end. About midnightI awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air aboutThe Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybodybut the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeingtoward the door. I called out:

"Stop! What have you been doing?"

She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:

"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing--you also. Ye shall all die in this place--every one--except _him_. He sleepeth now--and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!"

Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeledabout like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against oneof our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is stilllaughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh untilthe corpse turns to dust. 

The Boss has never stirred--sleeps like a stone. If he does notwake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, andhis body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recessesof the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As forthe rest of us--well, it is agreed that if any one of us everescapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, andloyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he alive or dead. 

THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT

FINAL P. S. BY M. T. 

The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rainhad almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted stormwas sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger'sroom, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I couldhear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I stillheard the voice. I peeped in. The man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings andejaculations went on. I spoke--merely a word, to call his attention. His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant withpleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome:

"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last--how I have longed for you! Sitby me--do not leave me--never leave me again, Sandy, never again. Where is your hand?--give it me, dear, let me hold it--there--now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again--_we_ are happyagain, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are buta mist, a cloud, but you are _here_, and that is blessedness sufficient;and I have your hand; don't take it away--it is for only a littlewhile, I shall not require it long.... Was that the child?... Hello-Central!... She doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring herwhen she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye.... Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lostmyself a moment, and I thought you were gone.... Have I beensick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams!such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as realas reality--delirium, of course, but _so_ real! Why, I thoughtthe king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't gethome, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzyof these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful ofmy cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England!But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creatureout of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even _that_ wasas real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of thatage into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was setdown, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with anabyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! betweenme and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dearto me, all that could make life worth the living! It was awful--awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy--stay by me every moment--_don't_ let me go out of my mind again;death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not withthe torture of those hideous dreams--I cannot endure _that_ again.... Sandy?... "

He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time helay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presentlyhis fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that signI knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of thedeath-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemedto listen: then he said:

"A bugle?... It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man thebattlements!--turn out the--"

He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.