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A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT....................................................................1

MARK TWAIN.......................................................................................................................................1

THE ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to

illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the

sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other civilizations of

far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in

practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or customs was

The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book. It was

found too difficult. That the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and

extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable; that none but the Deity could select that head unerr

ingly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise

manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I

mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other

executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged better

to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle the

question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have

IT was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I am going to talk about. He attracted

me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of

his company for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that

was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along, softly,

pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some

remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move

among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it!

Exactly as I would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke

of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of

the Table Round and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and musty and ancient he came to

look as he went on! Presently he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other

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

I said I had not heard of it. He was so little inter ested just as when people speak of the weather that

he did not notice whether I made him any answer or not. There was half a moment of silence, imme diately

"Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur and the Round Table; said to have belonged

to the knight Sir Sagramor le Desirous; ob serve the round hole through the chainmail in the left breast;

can't be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms per haps

My acquaintance smiled not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many

By the time I had recovered from the electric sur prise of this remark, he was gone.

All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain

beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped into old

Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in the

fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnight being come at length, I read another tale, for a

As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger came in. I gave him a pipe and a

chair, and made him welcome. I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him another one; then

still another hoping always for his story. After a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite

I am an American. I was born and reared in Hart ford, in the State of Connecticut anyway, just over the

river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the Yankees and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, I

suppose or poetry, in other words. My father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was

both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was

to it; learned to make every thing: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of laborsaving

machinery. Why, I could make anything a body wanted anything in the world, it didn't make any

difference what; and if there wasn't any quick newfangled way to make a thing, I could invent one and

do it as easy as rolling off a log. I became head superintendent; had a couple of thou sand men under me.

Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight that goes without saying. With a couple of thousand

rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At last I met my match, and I

got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call

Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring

every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and I didn't

When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country

landscape all to myself nearly. Not en tirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me a

fellow fresh out of a picturebook. He was in oldtime iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his

head the shape of a nailkeg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a pro digious spear; and

his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk

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

Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as

he could tear, with his nailkeg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight

He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. There was argument on his side and the bulk

of the advantage so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreement whereby I was to go with

him and he was not to hurt me. I came down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse. We

marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which I could not remember to have seen before

which puzzled me and made me wonder and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a circus. So I

gave up the idea of a circus, and con cluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to an asylum so

I was up a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said he had never heard of

the place; which I took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a faraway town

sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets,

My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught himself nodding, now, and smiled one of those

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

In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal; then by and by, after years, I took the journal and turned it

"Begin here I've already told you what goes be fore." He was steeped in drowsiness by this time. As I

went out at his door I heard him murmur sleep ily: "Give you good den, fair sir."

I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part of it the great bulk of it was parch

ment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particu larly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old dim

writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still Latin

words and sentences: fragments from old monk ish legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated by my

"CAMELOT Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before. Name of the

It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full

of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no

wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoofprints in

it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass wheels that apparently had a tire as

Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her

shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flamered poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as

ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked indo lently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her

innocent face. The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her. And she she was no

more startled at his fantastic makeup than if she was used to his like every day of her life. She was going by

as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, THEN

there was a change! Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone; her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared

wide and timorously, she was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. And there she stood

gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, till we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. That

she should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was too many for me; I couldn't make head or tail of

it . And that she should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook her own merits in that respect,

was another puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young. There

As we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. At intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a

thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. There were

people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, un combed hair that hung down over their faces and made them

look like animals. They and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse towlinen robe that came well below the

knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girls were always naked;

but nobody seemed to know it. All of these people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched

out their families to gape at me; but no body ever noticed that other fellow, except to make him humble

In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched

cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and un paved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the

sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking

wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. Presently there was a distant blare of

military music; it came nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with

plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners and rich doublets and horsecloths and gilded

spear heads; and through the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, and shabby huts, it took its

gallant way, and in its wake we followed. Followed through one winding alley and then another, and

climbing, always climbing till at last we gained the breezy height where the huge castle stood. There was

an exchange of bugle blasts; then a parley from the walls, where menatarms, in hauberk and morion,

marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon

displayed upon them; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head of

the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in a great

paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up into the blue air on all the four sides; and all about us.the

dismount was going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to and fro, and a gay display of

moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion.

THE moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common looking man on the

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

I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his right mind

that might come along and give me some light. I judged I had found one, presently; so I drew him aside and

"HINDER me, then, if the word please thee better. Then he went on to say he was an undercook and could

not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his very liver to know where I

got my clothes. As he started away he pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose,

and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy slim boy in shrimpcolored tights that made him

look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long

yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was

goodnatured; by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough to frame. He arrived, looked

me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a

It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However, it never phazed him; he didn't appear to know he was hurt.

He began to talk and laugh, in happy, thought less, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself

old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never

waited for an answer always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question and

wasn't expecting any reply, until at last he hap pened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the

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

"513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are

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

"Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something just as awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and

I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shall never see my friends again never, never again.

I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. SOMETHING in me seemed to believe him my con

sciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't. My reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural. I

didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve my

reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stum bled on the

very thing, just by luck. I knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century

occurred on the 21st of June, A. D. 528, O.S., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also knew that no total

eclipse of the sun was due in what to ME was the present year i.e., 1879. So, if I could keep my anxiety

and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for fortyeight hours, I should then find out for certain whether

Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its

appointed day and hour should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the

present moment, and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time,

is my motto and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. I made up my

mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics and couldn't get away, I

would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth

century, all right, I didn't want any softer thing: I would boss the whole country inside of three months; for I

judged I would have the start of the besteducated man in the kingdom by a matter of thirteen hundred years

and upward. I'm not a man to waste time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so I said to the

"Now, Clarence, my boy if that might happen to be your name I'll get you to post me up a little if you

"My master and thine? That is the good knight and great lord Sir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to our

He made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest for me was this: He said I was Sir Kay's

prisoner, and that in the due course of custom I would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant

commons until my friends ransomed me unless I chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had the

best show, but I didn't waste any bother about that; time was too precious. The page said, further, that dinner

was about ended in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy drinking

should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated

at the Table Round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the

facts a little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either; and when I was

dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and

Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't do less; and about this time a lackey came to say I was

Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interest ing. It was an immense place, and rather naked yes,

and full of loud contrasts. It was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the arched beams

and girders away up there floated in a sort of twilight; there was a stonerailed gallery at each end, high up,

with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. The floor was of big stone

flags laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair. As to ornament,

there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though on the walls hung some huge tapes tries which were probably

taxed as works of art; battlepieces, they were, with horses shaped like those which children cut out of paper

or create in ginger bread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by round holes

so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuitpunch. 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 menatarms, in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon rigid

In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken table which they called the Table

Round. It was as large as a circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various and

splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, ex cept that

whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was begin ning his

Mainly they were drinking from entire ox horns; but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef

bones. There was about an average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent

bone was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a

fight which filled the prospect with a tumultu ous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and

the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the dogfight

was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it, and the

ladies and the musicians stretched them selves out over their balusters with the same object; and all broke

into delighted ejaculations from time to time. In the end, the winning dog stretched himself out comfortably

with his bone between his paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just

as fifty others were already doing; and the rest of the court resumed their previous indus tries and

As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were

good and serious listeners when anybody was tell ing anything I mean in a dogfightless interval. And

plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and

winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to

associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a

I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were maimed,

hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and

stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffer ing sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and

hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor charity

of a lotion for their wounds; yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show any sign of

restlessness, or any disposition to com plain. The thought was forced upon me: "The ras cals THEY

have served other people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better

treatment than this; so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellec tual

MAINLY the Round Table talk was monologues narrative accounts of the adventures in which these

prisoners were captured and their friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. As a

general thing as far as I could make out these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken to

avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels be

tween strangers duels between people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between

whom existed no cause of offense whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by

chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you," and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until

now that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were

these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was some

thing very engaging about these great simplehearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did

not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with; but you didn't seem

to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and in

deed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its sym metry perhaps rendered its existence impossible.

There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness

that rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. A most noble benignity and purity reposed in the

counte nance of him they called Sir Galahad, and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and

There was presently an incident which centered the general interest upon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign from a

sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt on the

floor and lifted up their hands toward the ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. The

most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flowerbed of feminine show and finery inclined her head

by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her hands

for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, he

was doing by command of Sir Kay the Senes chal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished them

Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over the house; the queen's gratified smile faded out

at the name of Sir Kay, and she looked disap pointed; and the page whispered in my ear with an accent and

"Sir KAY, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dear est, call me a marine! In twice a thousand years shall the

unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!"

Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir Kay. But he was equal to the occasion. He got up and

played his hand like a major and took every trick. He said he would state the case exactly accord ing to

the facts; he would tell the simple straightfor ward tale, without comment of his own; "and then," said he, "if

ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare

shield or strake with sword in the ranks of Christian battle even him that sitteth there!" and he pointed to

Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetched them; it was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told how Sir

Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and

set a hundred and fortytwo captive maidens free; and then went further, still seeking adventures, and found

him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperate fight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle solely

into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that night Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in Sir

Kay's armor and took Sir Kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen knights in

one pitched battle and thirtyfour in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear that about

Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's court and yield them to Queen Guenever's hands as captives of Sir

Kay the Seneschal, spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the rest would be

Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling fur tive

glances at Sir Launcelot that would have got him shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty.

Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Launcelot; and as for me, I was perfectly amazed, that

one man, all by himself, should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions of practiced fighters.

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

I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his counte

nance. I followed the direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and whitebearded man, clothed in a

flowing black gown, had risen and was standing at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his

ancient head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. The same suffering look that

was in the page's face was observable in all the faces around the look of dumb creatures who know that

"Marry, we shall have it a again," sighed the boy; "that same old weary tale that he hath told a thousand times

in the same words, and that he WILL tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his barrel full and feeleth his

"Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one tale!

But that men fear him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in hell at his

beck and call, they would have dug his en trails out these many years ago to get at that tale and squelch it.

He telleth it always in the third person, making believe he is too modest to glorify himself maledictions

light upon him, misfortune be his dole! Good friend, prithee call me for evensong."

The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pre tended to go to sleep. The old man began his tale; and

presently the lad was asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of

menatarms. The droning voice droned on; a soft snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and

subdued accompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay back

with open mouths that issued unconscious music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed

softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made themselves at home everywhere; and one of

them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands and nibbled it, and dribbled

the crumbs in the king's face with naive and impudent irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and restful to the

"Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech. So

the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there three days, and then were

his wounds well amended that he might ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said, I have no

sword. No force *, said Merlin, hereby is a [* Footnote from M.T.: No matter.] sword that shall be yours and

I may. So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake

Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. Lo, said Merlin,

yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that?

said Arthur. That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a

place as any on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her

that she will give you that sword. Anon withal came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her

again. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were

mine, for I have no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift

when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well, said

the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row your self to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you,

and I will ask my gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and tied their horses to two trees,

and so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur took it up by

the handles, and took it with him. And the arm and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the

land and rode forth. And then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What signifieth yonder pavilion? It is the

knight's pavilion, said Merlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is out, he is not there; he hath ado

with a knight of yours, that hight Egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last Egglame fled, and

else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even to Carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the

highway. That is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will I wage battle with him, and be avenged

on him. Sir, ye shall not so, said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have

no worship to have ado with him; also, he will not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is

my counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye

shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wed. When I see him, I will

do as ye advise me, said Arthur. Then Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. Whether

liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are

more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon

you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always with

you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way they met with Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such a craft

that Pellinore saw not Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, said Arthur, that the knight

would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly de parted. So

they came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad. And when they heard of his adventures they

marveled that he would jeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it was merry to be under

such a chieftain that would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did."

IT seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only once,

and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.

Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a suffi

ciently poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and

around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing

against everything that came in their way and making altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening

din and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell

out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so

proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal

idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after

everybody else had got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech of course a

humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old playedout jokes strung together in my life. He was

worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen

hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, wormeaten jokes that had given me the dry

gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years after wards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such

thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities but then they always do; I had

noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh I mean the boy. No, he scoffed;

there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest

were petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I be lieved, myself, that the only right way to classify the

majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place,

for geology hadn't been invented yet. However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate the

commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market

Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his his torymill with me for fuel. It was time for me to feel

serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had en countered me in a far land of barbarians, who all wore the

same ridiculous garb that I did a garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer

secure from hurt by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and had

killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so

strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He

spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant," and "this horrible skytowering

monster," and "this tusked and taloned mandevour ing ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the

naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between these watered

statis tics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred

cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which "allto brast" the

most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for sentence. He ended by condemning me

to die at noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before he named the

I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute

that sprung up as to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being doubted by some, because

of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteendollar slop shops.

Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of the terms used in the most matterof fact way

by this great assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would have made a Comanche blush.

Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Rod erick

Random," and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England

had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up

to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century in which century, broadly speaking,

the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable in English history or in European

history, for that matter may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, in stead of

putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for

themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena which would

embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the uncon sciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Ar

thur's people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence of mind enough not to mention it.

They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were mightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin

swept the difficulty away for them with a com monsense hint. He asked them why they were so dull

why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to

think of it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed me; and did it as uncon cernedly

as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had never seen

anybody with legs just like mine before. It was the only compliment I got if it was a compliment.

Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes in another. I was shoved into a dark and

narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end of

When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been asleep a very long time. My first thought was, "Well,

what an astonishing dream I've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or

drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap again till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms

But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly,

Clarence, stood before me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me.

But he only laughed, in his lighthearted way, and fell to making fun of my sorry plight.

"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court a person who never existed; and that I am

"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned tomorrow? Hoho answer me that!"

The shock that went through me was distressing. I now began to reason that my situation was in the last

degree serious, dream or no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams, that to be

burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any

"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got, for you ARE my friend, aren't you? don't fail me; help

"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors are in guard and keep of menatarms."

"Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause hesitatingly: "and there be other rea sons

He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out,

listening; and finally crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a whisper,

and with all the cowering apprehension of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things

"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and there bides not the man in these king

doms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me, I have told it!

Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who means thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"

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

"Merlin has wrought a spell! MERLIN, forsooth! That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh,

pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic,

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

"Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say such things.

Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me to thinking. If everybody about here was so

honestly and sincerely afraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainly a superior man like me

ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way to take advantage of such a state of things. I went on

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

"Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect

which he took on was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug didn't need to

have a reputation in this asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. I resumed.

"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name every

time: Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin a new alias every time he turns up. I knew

him in Egypt three hundred years ago; I knew him in India five hundred years ago he is always blethering

around in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don't amount to shucks, as a magician; knows

some of the old common tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. He is well enough

for the provinces onenight stands and that sort of thing, you know but dear me, HE oughtn't to set up

for an expert anyway not where there's a real artist. Now look here, Clarence, I am going to stand your

friend, right along, and in re turn you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get word to

the king that I am a magician myself and the Supreme Grand HighyuMuck amuck and head of the

tribe, at that; and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly arrang ing a little calamity here

that will make the fur fly in these realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm comes to me. Will

The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified,

so unnerved, so demoralized. But he prom ised everything; and on my side he made me promise over and

over again that I would remain his friend, and never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him.

Then he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the wall, like a sick person.

Presently this thought occurred to me: how heed less I have been! When the boy gets calm, he will wonder

why a great magician like me should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place; he will put

I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself a great many hard names, meantime. But

finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that THEY never put this and that

together; that all their talk showed that they didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then.

But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on something else to worry about. It occurred to me

that I had made another blunder: I had sent the boy off to alarm his betters with a threat I intending to

invent a calamity at my leisure; now the people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest to swallow

miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you perform them; suppose I should be called on for a

sample? Suppose I should be asked to name my calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder; I ought to have

invented my calamity first. "What shall I do? what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble again; in

the deepest kind of trouble:... "There's a footstep! they're coming. If I had only just a moment to think....

You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of

those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it

myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years

"I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway he had me to his presence. He was frighted even

to the marrow, and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, and that you be clothed in fine

raiment and lodged as befitted one so great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded the king

that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolish ness and idle

vaporing. They disputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore hath he not NAMED his

brave calamity? Verily it is because he can not.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's mouth,

and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he

yet prayeth you to consider his per plexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name the calamity

if so be you have determined the nature of it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay not; to delay at

such a time were to double and treble the perils that already compass thee about. Oh, be thou wise name

I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my im pressiveness together, and then said:

"No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine in the morning now! And yet it is the very complex ion of

"Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused, and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in awful

silence; then, in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages

to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life:

"Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight;

I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and

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

IN the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowl edge of

a fact is pale; but when you come to REALIZE your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference be tween

hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the

knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something

But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a

certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and

then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came

with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the

kingdom besides; and straightway my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solici tudes all

vanished. I was as happy a man as there was in the world. I was even impatient for to morrow to come, I so

wanted to gather in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder and reverence. Besides, in a

Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background of my mind. That was the half

conviction that when the nature of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious people, it

would have such an effect that they would want to compromise. So, by and by when I heard footsteps

coming, that thought was recalled to me, and I said to myself, "As sure as anything, it's the com promise.

Well, if it is good, all right, I will accept; but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play my hand for all it

The stake! The strength went out of me, and I almost fell down. It is hard to get one's breath at such a time,

such lumps come into one's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said:

I was lost. There was no help for me. I was dazed, stupefied; I had no command over myself, I only wandered

purposely about, like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me along with them, out

of the cell and along the maze of underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight and the

upper world. As we stepped into the vast enclosed court of the castle I got a shock; for the first thing I saw

was the stake, standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. On all four sides of the court the

seated multitudes rose rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. The king and the

To note all this, occupied but a second. The next second Clarence had slipped from some place of con

cealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. He said:

"'Tis through ME the change was wrought! And main hard have I worked to do it, too. But when I revealed to

them the calamity in store, and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I also that this was

the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that your power

against the sun could not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would save the sun and the world, you

must be slain today, while your enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. Odsbodikins, it was

but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should have seen them seize it and swallow it, in the

frenzy of their fright, as it were sal vation sent from heaven; and all the while was I laughing in my sleeve

the one moment, to see them so cheaply deceived, and glorifying God the next, that He was content to let the

meanest of His creatures be His instrument to the saving of thy life. Ah how happy has the matter sped! You

will not need to do the sun a REAL hurt ah, forget not that, on your soul forget it not! Only make a little

darkness only the littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. It will be sufficient. They will see that I

spoke falsely, being ignorant, as they will fancy and with the fall ing of the first shadow of that

darkness you shall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and make you great! Go to thy

triumph, now! But re member ah, good friend, I implore thee remember my supplication, and do the

I choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much as to say I would spare the sun; for which the

lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and loving gratitude that I had not the heart to tell him his

As the soldiers assisted me across the court the still ness was so profound that if I had been blindfold I

should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. There was not a

movement perceptible in those masses of humanity; they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and

dread sat upon every countenance. This hush con tinued while I was being chained to the stake; it still

continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my

body. Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing

torch; the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats without knowing it; the

monk raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in

this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. I waited two or three moments; then looked

up; he was standing there petrified. With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the

sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through my

veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher,

and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that this gaze would be turned

upon me, next. When it was, l was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm

stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could SEE the shudder sweep the mass like a

The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin started from his place to apply the torch

"Stay where you are. If any man moves even the king before I give him leave, I will blast him with

The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expecting they would. Merlin hesitated a moment

or two, and I was on pins and needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I took a good breath; for

"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, lest disaster follow. It was reported to us

that your powers could not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but "

That made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm

of supplications that I might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was eager to

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

My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but I couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out

"How long ah, how long, good sir? Be merci ful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment. Prithee

There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn't shorten up any, for I couldn't remember how long a

total eclipse lasts. I was in a puzzled con dition, anyway, and wanted to think. Something was wrong about

that eclipse, and the fact was very un settling. If this wasn't the one I was after, how was I to tell whether

this was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? Dear me, if I could only prove it was the latter! Here was a

glad new hope. If the boy was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it WASN'T the sixth century.

I reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerable excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was.

Hang him, he said it was the TWENTYFIRST! It made me turn cold to hear him. I begged him not to make

any mistake about it; but he was sure; he knew it was the 21st. So, that featherheaded boy had botched

things again! The time of the day was right for the eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning, by the

dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King Arthur's court, and I might as well make the most out of it I could.

The darkness was steadily growing, the people be coming more and more distressed. I now said:

"I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the world; but

whether I blot out the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. These are the terms, to wit: You shall

remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship; but

you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one per cent. of

such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeed in creating for the state.

If I can't live on that, I sha'n't ask anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?"

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

"Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is become

the king's right hand, is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of the throne!

Now sweep away this creeping night, and bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee."

"That a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the KING if any

that saw his minister naked should not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might ask that my clothes

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

My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be

trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of course I couldn't do it. Sending for the clothes gained

some delay, but not enough. So I had to make another excuse. I said it would be but natural if the king should

change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done under excitement; there fore I would let the

darkness grow a while, and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind the same, the

darkness should be dismissed. Neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I

It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled with those awkward sixthcentury

clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night

breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total,

and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which was quite natural. I said:

"The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." Then I lifted up my hands stood just so a moment

then I said, with the most awful solemnity: "Let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!"

There was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and that graveyard hush. But when the silver rim

of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout and came

pouring down like a deluge to smother me with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the last of the

INASMUCH as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as far as political power and author ty

were concerned, much was made of me. My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by

consequence was very showy, also uncomfort able. But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was

aware of that. I was given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after the king's. They were aglow

with loudcolored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they

were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't

any. I mean LITTLE conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. The big

oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. There was no

soap, no matches, no lookingglass ex cept a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water. And not a

chromo. I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that without my suspecting it a passion for art

had got worked into the fabric of my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesick to look

around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house in East Hartford,

all unpretending as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an insurancechromo, or at least a

threecolor GodBlessOurHome over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in my grand

room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was

either woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right color or the right shape; and

as for proportions, even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, after all his practice

on those nightmares they call his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons." Raphael was a bird. We had several

of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where he puts in a miracle of his own puts

three men into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without up setting. I always admired to study R.'s

There wasn't even a bell or a speakingtube in the castle. I had a great many servants, and those that were on

duty lolled in the anteroom; and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him. There was no gas,

there were no candles; a bronze dish half full of boardinghouse butter with a blazing rag floating in it was

the thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot of these hung along the walls and modified the dark,

just toned it down enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night, your ser vants carried torches. There

were no books, pens, paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they be lieved to be windows. It is a little

thing glass is until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there

wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an

uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable

I must do as he did invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them

One thing troubled me along at first the immense interest which people took in me. Apparently the whole

nation wanted a look at me. It soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the British world almost to death;

that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and the

churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought the

end of the world was come. Then had followed the news that the producer of this awful event was a stranger,

a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going to

do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now recognized and

honored as the man who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and its peoples from

extinction. Now if you consider that everybody believed that, and not only believed it, but never even

dreamed of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not a person in all Britain that would not

have walked fifty miles to get a sight of me. Of course I was all the talk all other subjects were dropped;

even the king became suddenly a per son of minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty four hours the

delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming. The village was

crowded, and all the countryside. I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these reverent and

awestricken multitudes. It came to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same

time compensatingly agree able to be so celebrated and such a center of homage. It turned Brer Merlin

green with envy and spite, which was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one thing I couldn't understand

nobody had asked for an autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. By George! I had to explain to him what

it was. Then he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen priests. Land! think of that.

There was another thing that troubled me a little. Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another

miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man

who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of

their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen him work a miracle

themselves why, people would come a dis tance to see THEM. The pressure got to be pretty strong.

There was going to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. Two

years. I would have given a good deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market

for it. It seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't

have any use for it, as like as not. If it had been booked for only a month away, I could have sold it short; but,

as matters stood, I couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I gave up trying. Next,

Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself busy on the sly among those people. He was spreading a

report that I was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accom modate the people with a miracle was

because I couldn't. I saw that I must do something. I pres ently thought out a plan.

By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison the same cell I had occupied myself. Then I gave

public notice by herald and trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the

end of that time I would take a moment's leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven; in

the meantime, whoso listened to evil re ports about me, let him beware. Furthermore, I would perform but

this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the

I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to work privately. I told him that this

was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about

these preparations to anybody. That made his mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few bushels of

firstrate blasting powder, and I superin tended my armorers while they constructed a lightning rod and

some wires. This old stone tower was very massive and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman, and four

hundred years old. Yes, and handsome, after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as

with a shirt of scale mail. It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about half a mile

Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the

powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in a

dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges. When the thirteenth night

was come we put up our lightningrod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the

other batches. Everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of

the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away a quarter of a

mile away. Then added, by command, that at some time during the twentyfour hours I would consummate

the miracle, but would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by

Thundershowers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I was not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't

have cared for a delay of a day or two; I should have explained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, and

Of course, we had a blazing sunny day almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always

happen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the

public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses

as far as one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared in the right

quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then I

judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered the torchbaskets to be lit, and Merlin liber ated and sent to

me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and

gazing off in the darkness toward Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see

far; these people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great

"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to injure

my professional reputation. Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair

to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat,

He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a

small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get un

comfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands. He worked himself up

slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a

windmill. By this time the storm had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making

the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the

lightning began to wink fitfully. Of course, my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, things were

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

I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the sky

in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thou sand

acres of human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained mortar

and masonry the rest of the week. This was the report; but probably the facts would have modi fied it.

It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporary population vanished. There were a good many

thousand tracks in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. If I had advertised another

Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop his wages; he even wanted to banish him, but I inter fered. I

said he would be useful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that, and I would give him a lift

now and then when his poor little parlor magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower left, but I had

the government rebuild it for him, and advised him to take boarders; but he was too high toned for that. And

as for being grateful, he never even said thank you. He was a rather hard lot, take him how you might; but

TO be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the onlooking world consent to it is a

finer. The tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were per chance disposed to

be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart, now. There was not any one in the

I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and cir cumstances. For a time, I used to wake up, mornings, and

smile at my "dream," and listen for the Colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thing played itself out,

gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize that I was actually living in the sixth century, and in Arthur's

court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I was just as much at home in that century as I could have been in any

other; and as for preference, I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at the opportunities here for a

man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. The grandest field

that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and

capacities; whereas, what would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should be foreman of a factory, that is

about all; and could drag a seine down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself.

What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one does who

has struck oil. There was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be Joseph's case; and

Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendid financial

ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general public must have regarded him with a good deal of

disfavor, whereas I had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was popular by reason of it.

I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance; the king himself was the shadow. My power was colossal;

and it was not a mere name, as such things have generally been, it was the genuine article. I stood here, at the

very spring and source of the second great period of the world's history; and could see the trickling stream of

that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far centuries; and I could note

the upspringing of adven turers like myself in the shelter of its long array of thrones: De Montforts,

Gavestons, Mortimers, Villier ses; the warmaking, campaigndirecting wantons of France, and Charles the

Second's scepterwielding drabs; but nowhere in the procession was my full sized fellow visible. I was a

Unique; and glad to know that that fact could not be dislodged or chal lenged for thirteen centuries and a

half, for sure. Yes, in power I was equal to the king. At the same time there was another power that was a

trifle stronger than both of us put together. That was the Church. I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't,

if I wanted to. But never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its proper place, later on. It didn't cause me

Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. And the people! They were the quaintest and sim plest

and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a person born in a whole some

free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and

nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to

love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me,ANY kind

of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you

are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't

believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort

of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventhrate people

that have always figured as its aristocracies a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would

have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions.

The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron

collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined them selves men

and freemen, and called themselves so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object,

and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve

that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go

naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from pay ing them, be

familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride

and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt;

and so poorspirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.

Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his

people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should

have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For

instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without title and a long pedigree, whether they had

great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration than so many animals,

bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the

peacockshams of inherited dignities and un earned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at. The way I

was looked upon was odd, but it was natural. You know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant in

the menagerie: well, that is the idea. They are full of admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength;

they speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far and away beyond their own

powers; and they speak with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able to drive a thousand men

before him. But does that make him one of THEM? No; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at the

idea. He couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any remote way conceive of it. Well, to the

king, the nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, I was just that kind of an elephant,

and nothing more. I was admired, also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared. The animal is

not reverenced, neither was I; I was not even re spected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king's

and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there was no reverence

mixed with it; through the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of any thing being entitled

to that except pedigree and lord ship. There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic

Church. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. Before the day

of the Church's supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and

spirit and independence; and what of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, not

by birth. But then the Church came to the front, with an axe to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew

more than one way to skin a cat or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings," and propped it all

around, brick by brick, with the Beatitudes wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify

an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of selfsacrifice;

she preached (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the

commoner) pa tience, meanness of spirit, nonresistance under op pression; and she introduced heritable

ranks and aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earth to bow down to them and

worship them. Even down to my birthcentury that poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the best

of English com moners was still content to see his inferiors impudently continuing to hold a number of

positions, such as lord ships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country did not allow him to

aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented with this strange condition of things, he was even able to

persuade himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't anything you can't stand, if you are

only born and bred to it. Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been in our American

blood, too I know that; but when I left America it had disap peared at least to all intents and

purposes. The remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When a disease has worked its way

But to return to my anomalous position in King Arthur's kingdom. Here I was, a giant among pig mies, a

man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and

only actually great man in that whole British world; and yet there and then, just as in the remote England of

my birthtime, the sheepwitted earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman, acquired at

secondhand from the slums of London, was a better man than I was. Such a personage was fawned upon in

Arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were as mean as his

intelligence, and his morals as base as his lineage. There were times when HE could sit down in the king's

presence, but I couldn't. I could have got a title easily enough, and that would have raised me a large step in

everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giver of it. But I didn't ask for it; and I declined it when it was

offered. I couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions; and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway,

because as far back as I could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. I couldn't have felt really

and satisfactorily fine and proud and setup over any title except one that should come from the nation itself,

the only legitimate source; and such an one I hoped to win; and in the course of years of honest and honorable

endeavor, I did win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This title fell casually from the lips of a

blacksmith, one day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth with a

laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept the kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's

name. I was never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate

upon matters of state at the councilboard of the sovereign. This title, translated into modern speech, would

be THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me. And it was a pretty high title. There were very few

THE'S, and I was one of them. If you spoke of the duke, or the earl, or the bishop, how could anybody tell

which one you meant? But if you spoke of The King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different.

Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him respected the office; at least respected it as much as I

was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy; but as MEN I looked down upon him and his nobles

privately. And he and they liked me, and respected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title,

they looked down upon me and were not par ticularly private about it, either. I didn't charge for my

opinion about them, and they didn't charge for their opinion about me: the account was square, the books

THEY were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot; and very stirring and picturesque and

ridiculous human bullfights they were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind. How ever, I

was generally on hand for two reasons: a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his

friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked especially as a statesman; and both as

business man and statesman I wanted to study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improve ment

on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did, in my adminis tration

and it was on the very first day of it, too was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a

patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.

Things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and then the boys used to want me to take a hand

I mean Sir Launcelot and the rest but I said I would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much government

We had one tournament which was continued from day to day during more than a week, and as many as five

hundred knights took part in it, from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They came on horseback from

everywhere; from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and

all brought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to cos tumery, and

very characteristic of the country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent inde cencies of

language, and happyhearted indifference to morals. It was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing,

gamble, dance, carouse half the night every night. They had a most noble good time. You never saw such

people. Those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from

his horse in the lists with a lance shaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting,

and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view; only sometimes

one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously brokenhearted, and then you could lay two to

one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was afraid the public hadn't found it out.

The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but I didn't mind it in the present circum

stances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples. They

ruined an uncommon good old crosscut saw for me, and broke the sawbuck, too, but I let it pass. And as

for my axe well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axe to a surgeon I would pick my century.

I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed an intelligent priest from my Department of

Public Morals and Agriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purpose by and by, when I should

have gotten the people along far enough, to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country, is a

patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper. A newspaper has its

faults, and plenty of them, but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't you forget it.

You can't resurrect a dead nation without it; there isn't any way. So I wanted to sample things, and be finding

out what sort of reporter material I might be able to rake together out of the sixth century when I should

Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item:

you see, he had kept books for the undertaker department of his church when he was younger, and there,

you know, the money's in the details; the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers

everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked

pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here

and there about a knight that was likely to advertise no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also

had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and

Of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the true

ring; but its antique wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors of the

time, and these little merits made up in a meas ure for its more important lacks. Here is an extract from it:

Then Sir Brian de les Isles and Grummore Grummorsum, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir

Aglovale and Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grummore Grummorsum to the earth. Then came Sir

Carados of the dolorous tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and there encountered with them Sir

Percivale de Galis and Sir Lamorak de Galis, that were two brethren, and there encountered Sir Percivale

with Sir Carados, and either brake their spears unto their hands, and then Sir Turquine with Sir Lamorak, and

either of them smote down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either parties rescued other and horsed them

again. And Sir Arnold, and Sir Gauter, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Brandiles and Sir Kay, and

these four knights encountered mightily, and brake their spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from

the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel, and there Sir Pertolope the green knight smote down

Sir Lionel, brother to Sir Launcelot. All this was marked by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their

names. Then Sir Bleobaris brake his spear upon Sir Gareth, but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth.

When Sir Galihodin saw that, he bad Sir Gareth keep him, and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir

Galihud gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadan and

his brother La Cote Male Taile, and Sir Sagramore le Disirous, and Sir Dodinas le Savage; all these he bare

down with one spear. When King Aswisance of Ireland saw Sir Gareth fare so he marvelled what he might

be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue. And thus at every

course that he rode to and fro he changed his color, so that there might neither king nor knight have ready

cognizance of him. Then Sir Agwisance the King of Ireland encountered with Sir Gareth, and there Sir

Gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all. And then came King Carados of Scotland, and Sir Gareth

smote him down horse and man. And in the same wise he served King Uriens of the land of Gore. And then

there came in Six Bagdemagus, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth. And

Bagdemagus's son Meliganus brake a spear upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly. And then Sir Galahault

the noble prince cried on high, Knight with the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee ready that

I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him, and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered together, and

there the prince brake his spear; but Sir Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here

and there, and he had fallen down had not his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that knight with

the many colors is a good knight. Wherefore the king called unto him Sir Launcelot, and prayed him to

encounter with that knight. Sir, said Launcelot, I may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time,

for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is no good

knight's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great labour; for

peradventure, said Sir Launcelot, his quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best beloved with this

lady of all that be here, for I see well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great deeds, and therefore,

said Sir Launcelot, as for me, this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my power to put him from it,

There was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons of state I struck out of my priest's report.

You will have noticed that Garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. When I say Garry I mean

Sir Gareth. Garry was my private pet name for him; it suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and that

was the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one, much less to him; being

a noble, he would not have endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to pro ceed: I sat in the private

box set apart for me as the king's minister. While Sir Dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he

came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was always making up to me, because I was a stranger

and he liked to have a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that stage of wear where

the teller has to do the laughing himself while the other person looks sick. I had always responded to his

efforts as well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, too, for the reason that if by malice

of fate he knew the one particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest and had most hated and most loathed

all my life, he had at least spared it me. It was one which I had heard attributed to every humorous person

who had ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to Artemus Ward. It was about a humorous

lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and

then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefully by the hand and said it had been the

funniest thing they had ever heard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' right out in meetin'."

That anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling; and yet I had sat under the telling of it hundreds

and thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried and cursed all the way through. Then who can

hope to know what my feelings were, to hear this armor plated ass start in on it again, in the murky twilight

of tradition, before the dawn of history, while even Lactantius might be referred to as "the late Lactan tius,"

and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred years yet? Just as he finished, the callboy came; so,

hawhawing like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and I knew

nothing more. It was some minutes before I came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to see Sir Gareth

fetch him an awful welt, and I uncon sciously out with the prayer, "I hope to gracious he's killed!" But by

illluck, before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashed into Sir Sagramor le Desirous and

sent him thundering over his horse's crupper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and thought I meant it for

Well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so

I saved my breath, and offered no explana tions. As soon as Sir Sagramor got well, he notified me that there

was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; place of

settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he

was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years'

cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of

them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it,

or would have known what to do with it if he HAD run across it. You see, it was just the Northwest Passage

of that day, as you may say; that was all. Every year expe ditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief

expeditions went out to hunt for THEM. There was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they

THE Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good deal discussed, for such things

interested the boys. The king thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I might gain

renown and be the more worthy to meet Sir Sagramor when the several years should have rolled away. I

excused myself for the present; I said it would take me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and

going smoothly; then I should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of that time Sir Sagramor would

still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be lost by the postponement; I should then have been in office

six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinery would be so well developed that I could take a

I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I had the

beginnings of all sorts of industries under way nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel

missionaries of my future civilization. In these were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find,

and I kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into

experts experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly

and privately along undisturbed in their ob scure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their

I had started a teacherfactory and a lot of Sunday schools the first thing; as a result, I now had an ad

mirable system of graded schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of Protestant con

gregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted

to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. But I confined public religious teaching to the churches and the

Sundayschools, permitting nothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could have given my own sect

the preference and made everybody a Presby terian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront

a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical

appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the

religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spirit ual

complexion, angularities, and stature of the indi vidual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a united

Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish

hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought.

All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. They had formerly been worked as

savages always work mines holes grubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by

hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to put the mining on a scientific basis as early as I could.

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

Four years rolled by and then! Well, you would never imagine it in the world. Unlimited power is the

ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An

earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same,

namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a

perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly

despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.

My works showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by

this dark land, I had the civilization of the nine teenth century booming under its very nose! It was fenced

away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact and to be heard from, yet, if I

lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano, standing

innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. My

schools and churches were children four years before; they were grownup now; my shops of that day were

vast factories now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now; where I had one brilliant

expert then, I had fifty now. I stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and flood the

midnight world with light at any moment. But I was not going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not

my policy. The people could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should have had the Established Roman

No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential agents trickling through the country

some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this

and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning

I had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. I meant to

work this racket more and more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest

secrets was my West Point my military academy. I kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the

same with my naval academy which I had established at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my

Clarence was twentytwo now, and was my head executive, my right hand. He was a darling; he was equal to

anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for journalism,

for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for

experimental circulation in my civilization nurseries. He took to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed

in him, sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. His

journalistic style was climbing, stead ily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, and

couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavor.

We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph and a telephone; our first venture in this

line. These wires were for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day should come.

We had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were

afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good enough, in both

instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention which was per fect. My men

had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns

whose lights betrayed their pres ence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobody could tell you how to find any

place in the kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his

wanderings, and then gener ally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and

another we had sent out topo graphical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had

always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom

As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when I arrived in it, to all intents and

purposes. I had made changes, but they were neces sarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus far, I

had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had

systematized those, and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were

already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than before, that all the king

dom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my ad ministration were hearty and general.

Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it, it could not have happened at a better time.

Earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. The

king had reminded me several times, of late, that the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had

about run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a

size to make me worthy of the honor of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was still out grailing, but

was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. So you see I was

THERE never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly a month went by

without one of these tramps arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting

help to get her out of some faraway castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a

giant. Now you would think that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a novelette from an

entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route

to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and commonsense a thing at that. No, everybody

swallowed these peo ple's lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. Well, one

day when I was not around, one of these people came along it was a she one, this time and told a tale

of the usual pat tern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with fortyfour other

young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in that cruel

captivity for twentysix years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms

and one eye the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not mentioned; their

Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table were in raptures over this preposterous

opportunity for adventure. Every knight of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their

vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all.

By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news. But he he could not contain his. His

mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a steady discharge delight in my good fortune, grati tude to the

king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but

On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation

under the surface for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I SAID I was glad. And

Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with useless fretting, but get down to busi ness

and see what can be done. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff; I must get at the wheat in this case: so I

sent for the girl and she came. She was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signs went for

"Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask, to make sure; it's the way I've been raised. Now you

mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. You may be all

right, of course, and we'll hope that you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. YOU understand that. I'm

obliged to ask you a few ques tions; just answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. Where do you live,

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

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

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

"Don't UNDERSTAND? Land of why, you see you see why, great Scott, can't you understand a

little thing like that? Can't you understand the difference between your WHY do you look so inno cent

"Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind my seeming excited; I'm not. Let us change the

subject. Now as to this castle, with forty five princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it, tell me

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

"Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and being

made all in the same image and tincted with the same color, one may not know the one league from its

fellow, nor how to count them except they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that,

"Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; WHEREABOUTS does the castle lie? What's the direction

"Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth

evermore; wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under the one sky and anon under

another, whereso if ye be minded that it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that the way of

the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet

again and still again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwart and bring to

naught the will of Him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth Him, and if it please

Him not, will the rather that even all castles and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the

places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning His creatures that where He will He will, and

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind about the direction, HANG the direction I

beg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons, I am not well today; pay no attention when I soliloquize, it is an old

habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food that was

raised forever and ever before he was born; good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring

chickens thirteen hundred years old. But come never mind about that; let's have you got such a thing as

"Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas,

"What, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know what a map is? There, there, never mind, don't

explain, I hate explanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Run along, dear;

Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. It may be

that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a hydraulic;

nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfect ass; and

yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up

the whole party. And think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to

get access to the king in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse in my day and country.

In fact, he was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome

Just as I was endingup these reflections, Clarence came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my

efforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find the castle. The youth looked a

little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself what I had

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

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

"What? She browse around the hills and scour the woods with me alone and I as good as engaged to be

My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy was eager to know all about this tender matter. I swore him to

secresy and then whispered her name "Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed, and said he didn't

remember the countess. How natural it was for the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me where she

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

It was but a little thing to promise thirteen hun dred years or so and he so eager; so I said Yes. But I

sighed; I couldn't help it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But that is the way

My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of

me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexa tion and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to

hive those ogres and set those ripe old vir gins loose as if it were themselves that had the con tract. Well,

they WERE good children but just chil dren, that is all. And they gave me no end of points about how to

scout for giants, and how to scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms against en chantments, and

gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if

I was such a wonderful necro mancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to need salves or instructions, or

charms against enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any kind even against

firespouting dragons, and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after,

I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was the usual way; but I had the demon's own

time with my armor, and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and there is so much detail.

First you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold iron;

then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail these are made of small steel links woven together,

and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like a peck of

wet fishnet; it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night shirt, yet

plenty used it for that tax collectors, and reformers, and onehorse kings with a defective title, and those

sorts of people; then you put on your shoes flatboats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel and

screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your cuisses on your

thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the

breastplate the halfpetticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is scolloped

out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either for looks or

for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stovepipe joints onto

your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rattrap onto your head, with a rag of steel web

hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck and there you are, snug as a candle in a candlemould.

This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there

is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell.

The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw

that as like as not I hadn't chosen the most con venient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked; and tall

and broad and grand. He had on his head a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, and for visor

had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him,

from neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. But pretty much all of him was hidden under his

outside garment, which of course was of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from his shoulders to his

ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let

the skirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it, too. I would have

given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sun was just up, the king

and the court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You

don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get dis appointed. They carry you out, just as

they carry a sunstruck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix your feet in

the stirrups; and all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else like somebody that

has been mar ried on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around

yet, and is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up the mast they called a spear, in its

socket by my left foot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and I was

all complete and ready to up anchor and get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a

maid of honor gave me the stirrupcup her own self. There was nothing more to do now, but for that damsel

to get up behind me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on.

And so we started, and everybody gave us a good bye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. And

everybody we met, going down the hill and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby little

In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect anything, they don't care for any thing or

anybody. They say "Go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of antiquity; they

sass me in the holy gloom of the Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan's

administration; I remember, because I was there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled with his

boys; and I wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up

STRAIGHT off, we were in the country. It was most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early

cool morning in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below,

with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered

shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away in billowy per

spective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wavesummit, which we

knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the

cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that

got its tint from the sundrenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets

went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music, comfortable to hear; and at

times we left the world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where

furtive wild things whisked and scurried by and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place

where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song

here and a quarrel yonder and a mysterious far off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk

away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of the woods. And by and by out we would swing again

About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare it was along there somewhere, a

couple of hours or so after sunup it wasn't as pleas ant as it had been. It was beginning to get hot. This

was quite noticeable. We had a very long pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious how

progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all, at

first, I began to mind now and more and more, too, all the time. The first ten or fifteen times I wanted my

handkerchief I didn't seem to care; I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped it out of

my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I

couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of

armor without any pockets in it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other things; but it

was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there;

and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularly convenient there. And so now, the thought of

its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not getatable, made it all the worse and the harder to bear.

Yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took

my mind off from every thing else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there

it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggravating to have

the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing, on paper,

but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made

up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they

would. Of course these iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise Sheol

about it, but as for me, give me comfort first, and style after wards. So we jogged along, and now and then

we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and

cry; and of course I said things I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that. I am not better than others.

We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lone some Britain, not even an ogre; and, in the mood I was in

then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of

nothing but getting his armor; but so I got his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me.

Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the

iron more and more all the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every little thing irritates you. When I

trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand that shield

slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints

creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze at

that gait, I was like to get fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron set tled

down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute. And you had to be always

changing hands, and passing your spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand to hold it long at

Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a time when you when you well,

when you itch. You are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. It is not a

light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is one place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading

and spreading, and at last the ter ritory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how

unpleasant it is. And when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could not stand anything more, a

fly got in through the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I couldn't

get the visor up; and I could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time, and the fly well, you

know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty he only minded the shaking enough to change from nose

to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a way that a

person, already so distressed as I was, simply could not stand. So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the

helmet and relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and I

drank and then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think how refreshing it

was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable.

It was good to have a rest and peace. But nothing is quite perfect in this life, at any time. I had made a

pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what some of the Indians use: the

inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again, but no

Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon my understanding that we were

weatherbound. An armed novice cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was not

enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until somebody should come along. Waiting, in silence,

would have been agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to

work. I wanted to try and think out how it was that rational or even halfrational men could ever have learned

to wear armor, considering its incon veniences; and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for

generations when it was plain that what I had suffered today they had had to suffer all the days of their lives.

I wanted to think that out; and more over I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade

the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You

She was a quite biddable creature and goodhearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill,

and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a

comfort. But you can't cork that kind; they would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think

something would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never

had to slack up for words. She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil

up or blow out. And yet the result was just nothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a fog

has. She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as

good as she could be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account of having that hornets' nest of other

"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to im porting

YES, it is strange how little a while at a time a per son can be contented. Only a little while back, when I

was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded shady nook

by this purling stream would have seemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a

dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet already I was getting dissatisfied; partly be cause I could

not light my pipe for, although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches

with me and partly because we had nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlike

improvidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a journey, and

would have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There was probably

not a knight of all the Round Table com bination who would not rather have died than been caught carrying

such a thing as that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything more sensible. It had been my

intention to smuggle a couple of sand wiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to

Night approached, and with it a storm. The dark ness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I found a

good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. But I was obliged to

remain in my armor, because I could not get it off by myself and yet could not allow Alisande to help,

because it would have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would not have amounted to that in reality,

because I had clothes on underneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump,

and I knew that when it came to stripping off that bobtailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed.

With the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the wind blew, and the wilder the rain lashed

around, the colder and colder it got. Pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things began

to flock in out of the wet and crawl down in side my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved

well enough, and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless,

uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;

especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome procession from one end of me to the other by

the hour, and are a kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again. It would be my advice to persons

situated in this way, to not roll or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the different sorts of

animals and makes every last one of them want to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things

worse than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can. Still, if one did not

roll and thrash around he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other; there is no real

choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is

All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that

swarm of crawlers, that same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my tired head: How

do people stand this miserable armor? How have they managed to stand it all these generations? How can

When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep;

weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of the animals; and

crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle

Alisande la Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept like the dead; and as for a bath,

probably neither she nor any other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not missing it.

Measured by modern standards, they were merely modified savages, those people. This noble lady showed no

impatience to get to breakfast and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys those Britons were

used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them; and also how to freight up against probable fasts before

starting, after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not, Sandy was loaded for a threeday

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limp ing along behind. In half an hour we came upon a

group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They

were as humble as animals to me; and when I pro posed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so

overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that I was

in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would

as soon think of eating with the other cattle a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely be

cause it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn't. And yet they were not

slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seventenths of the free popula tion

of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say,

they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth sav ing, or really

respectworthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs,

some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of

wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by

ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, in stead of being in the tail of the procession where it be

longed, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation,

and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not

only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves that this

ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to

amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter

The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly American ear. They were free men,

but they could not leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his permission; they could not prepare

their own bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay

roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their own property without paying him a handsome

percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering him in cash for the

privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving

their own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let him plant fruit trees in their fields, and

then keep their indignation to themselves when his heedless fruitgatherers trampled the grain around the

trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting parties galloped through their fields laying waste the

result of their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my

lord's dovecote settled on their crops they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the

penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail

upon it: first the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twen tieth, then my

lord's people made a mighty inroad upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty to

bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble; there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and

more taxes, and taxes again, and yet other taxes upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his

lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the wasteful nobility or the alldevouring Church; if the baron would

sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs

quiet; if the freeman's daughter but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is un printable; and

finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions,

and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle Church condemned him to eternal fire, the

gentle law buried him at midnight at the crossroads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron

or the bishop confiscated all his property and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors.

And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three

days each gratis; every head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so

added for their servants. Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memor able

and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidalwave of blood

one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that

had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame

and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would

but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the

one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand

persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the

momentary Ter ror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with

lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared

with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror

which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain

the coffins filled by that older and real Terror that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us

These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me, were as full of

humble reverence for their king and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was some

thing pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a

free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it

forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families including the voter's; and would

also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with

offensive trans missible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families

They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had never thought about it before, and it hadn't

ever occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man COULD have a say in the govern

ment. I said I had seen one and that it would last until it had an Established Church. Again they were all

unhit at first. But presently one man looked up and asked me to state that proposition again; and state it

slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he had the idea, and he brought his

fist down and said HE didn't believe a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down in the

mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation its will and preference must be a crime and the

"This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would make a strike for the welfare of this

country, and try to prove myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its system of

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The

country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and

be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, be come

ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to

rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it

belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Con necticut, whose

Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free govern ments are

founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have AT ALL TIMES an undeni

able and indefeasible right to ALTER THEIR FORM OF GOVERN MENT in such a manner as they may

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and

yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one

who thinks he sees this decay, does not ex cuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the

And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to

six persons in each thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninetyfour to express dis

satisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one

man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonor able, such putrid black treason. So to speak, I was become

a stockholder in a corporation where nine hun dred and ninetyfour of the members furnished all the money

and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the

dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninetyfour dupes needed was a new deal. The

thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the Bossship and

get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries

such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get

left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had

been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the CadeTyler sort.

So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and

mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had

finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark

"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he

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

"How a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church, no bondslave of pope or bishop can enter

my ManFactory? Didn't I tell you that YOU couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was

"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

"He is not a priest and yet can read yes, and write, too, for that matter. I taught him myself." The man's

face cleared. "And it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory "

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

"No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your family and go along. Your lord the bishop will

confiscate your small property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right."

I PAID three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have

breakfasted a dozen persons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, and I had always been a kind

of spendthrift anyway; and then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their

provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a

good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where,

these pennies being made of iron and not stinted in weight, my halfdollar's worth was a good deal of a

burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't

got the proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long a sojourn in Britain hadn't got along

to where I was able to absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of dollars in Connecticut

were about one and the same thing: just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from

Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from

our own mint, and that would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted the American values

exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and halfdollars, and also a trifle of gold,

would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked

The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset my liberality, whether I would or no; so I let

them give me a flint and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy and me on our horse, I lit

my pipe. When the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke for the

woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. They thought I was one of

those firebelching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. I had

infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that this

was only a bit of enchant ment which would work harm to none but my enemies. And I promised, with my

hand on my heart, that if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass before me they

should see that only those who re mained behind would be struck dead. The procession moved with a good

deal of promptness. There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough to remain behind to

I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my

awecompelling fireworks that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me

go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to

the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a consider

able while, and that was a gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learned something. I was ready

We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity came about the middle of the next after noon.

We were crossing a vast meadow by way of shortcut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing

nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted a re mark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:

And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. I looked up and saw, far off in the shade

of a tree, half a dozen armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle among them and

tightening of saddlegirths for the mount. My pipe was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost

in thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and

manhood without disobliging anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head of reserved

steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so

much about one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came in a body,

they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down,

plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight for a

man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready to

break over me, then spouted a column of white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen

But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed,

and fear came; I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was going to be eloquent but I

stopped her, and told her my magic had mis carried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all

despatch, and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my enchantment had disabled those

knights; they were not riding on, because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles presently,

and we would get their horses and harness. I could not deceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a

mistake; that when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men would not die, there was

something wrong about my apparatus, I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those people

"Lackaday, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by them,

and will assail them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer and destroy them; and so

likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovale and Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that

will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not

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

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

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

"It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blam able.

And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubt ful

errand, myself. I presently saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was a relief. I judged

she had somehow failed to get the first innings I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview

wouldn't have been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business well; in fact, admirably. She

said that when she told those people I was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore with fear

and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to put up with anything she might require. So she swore

them to appear at Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and harness, and be my knights

henceforth, and subject to my command. How much better she managed that thing than I should have done it

AND so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I, as we rode off. "Who would ever have sup posed that I

should live to list up assets of that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle them off. How

"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then she said musingly, and softly, turn ing the words

daintily over her tongue: "Hang they out hang they out where hang where do they hang out; eh,

right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded

withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure learn it. Where do they

hang out. Even so! already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as "

"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them. A while back, you remember.

"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting

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

You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works agoing; it was my own fault; she would be

thirty days getting down to those facts. And she generally began without a preface and finished without a

result. If you interrupted her she would either go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of

words, and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptions only did harm; and yet I had to in

terrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if he let her mo

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

"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So on the

morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great forest; then was Sir

Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and the

damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaine ware how there hung a white shield on that tree,

and ever as the damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the shield "

"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can

just see those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do cer tainly

act like all possessed. Yes, and I mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The hum blest

hellogirl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the

"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl; they don't have them here; one often speaks

sharply to them when they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling sorry for it and ashamed of

himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, no

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

"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked

them why they did that despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a knight in this

country that owneth this white shield, and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all ladies and

gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth

evil a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure though he hate you he hath some

cause, and peradventure he loveth in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, and

"Man of prowess yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. Man of brains that is a thing they never

think of. Tom Sayers John Heenan John L. Sullivan pity but you could be here. You would have

your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in front of your names within the twentyfour hours; and you

could bring about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses of the Court in another

twentyfour. The fact is, it is just a sort of polishedup court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw in it who

doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt."

" and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine. Now, what is his name? Sir, said

"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean anything. And look out and hold on tight,

now, we must jump this gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in the circus; he is born

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

"ON LIVE. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that you are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any

" for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were gathered, and that time there might no

man withstand him. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to suppose he that

hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those knights match him on horseback, and

that is more your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to see a knight's shield dishonored. And

therewith Sir Uwaine and Sir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware where Sir

Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus

they fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. Then the one of the knights

of the tower dressed his shield, and said on high, Sir Mar haus defend thee. And so they ran together that the

knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smote him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's

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

"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward Marhaus, and they went so eagerly together,

that the knight of the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead "

"ANOTHER horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to be broken up. I don't see how people with any

I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn't say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was

" that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieces on the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote

him so sore that horse and man he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side

"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little TOO simple; the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by

consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharas of fact, and not

enough to picturesque detail; this throws about them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all

alike: a couple of people come together with great random random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for

that matter, and so is holocaust, and de falcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land! a body ought

to discriminate they come together with great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield

and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horsetail and brake his neck, and then the next

candidate comes randoming in, and brast HIS spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down HE goes,

horse and man, over his horsetail, and brake HIS neck, and then there's another elected, and another and

another and still another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to figure up results, you can't tell

one fight from another, nor who whip ped; and as a PICTURE, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why,

it's pale and noiseless just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of

the mightiest spectacle? the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say,

'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, THAT ain't a picture!"

It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb Sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared

"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine with his spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw

that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all the might of their

horses, that either knight smote other so hard in the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake "

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

"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Mar

haus on foot, and therewith either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their

shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir

Gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hours ever stronger and stronger. and

thrice his might was increased. All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his might in creased,

The pelting singsong of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds of my boyhood days:

"Neeew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments knductr'll strike the gongbell two minutes before train

leaves passengers for the Shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar don't go no furder

"and waxed past noon and drew toward even song. Sir Gawaine's strength feebled and waxed pass ing

faint, that unnethes he might dure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger "

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

"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a mar

velous man of might as ever I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a

pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that

I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together

But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such

superb strength strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with

perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch should not have been born

at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind

of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a

nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never

have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never

When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that

"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water;

above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair foun tain, and three damsels sitting thereby. In this coun

try, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures "

"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son of Ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to

give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic exple tive; by this means one would recognize him as soon as

he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should

make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange

"came never knight but he found strange adven tures, be jabers. Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit

'tis passing hard to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed with usage. And then they

rode to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she was

"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not the loosefit kind, that go up and down like a portcullis

"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. The third damsel was

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

Fifteen! Break my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her age who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world

to me, and whom I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory

to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer

mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!" just to hear her dear voice come melting back

to me with a "Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week,

I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who our captured knights were, now I mean in case

she should ever get to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts were far away, and sad.

By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague way

that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode

north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after year and day. Year and

day and without baggage. It was of a piece with the general simplicity of the country.

The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when Alisande had begun to tell me who the

cowboys were; so she had made pretty good progress with it for her. She would arrive some time or other,

We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray

towers and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched with

splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the

one we were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it; she said she had passed it without

IF knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter

of fact, knights errant were NOT persons to be believed that is, measured by modern standards of

veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was

very simple: you discounted a statement ninety seven per cent.; the rest was fact. Now after making this

allowance, the truth remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the door bell

I mean hailing the warders it was the sensible thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the dis

tance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle.

As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in

steel, but bore a curious addition also a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile

That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and

uplifting of this nation. In the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry,

though nobody suspected that but me. I had started a number of these people out the bravest knights I

could get each sandwiched between bul letinboards bearing one device or another, and I judged that by

and by when they got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the

steelclad ass that HADN'T any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a

rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests

could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education

next, freedom and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Estab lished

Church is an established crime, an established slavepen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any

way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day in remote centuries not yet

stirring in the womb of time there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free

country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it timbers propped against

men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.

My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tabards the showy gilding was a neat idea,

I could have got the king to wear a bulletinboard for the sake of that barbaric splendor they were to spell

out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies were afraid

of it, get them to try it on a dog. The mission ary's next move was to get the family together and try it on

himself; he was to stop at no experiment, how ever desperate. that could convince the nobility that soap was

harmless; if any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit the woods were full of them; saints they

called themselves, and saints they were be lieved to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles,

and everybody stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince a duke,

Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road they washed him, and when he got well they

swore him to go and get a bulletinboard and dis seminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. As a

consequence the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My

soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two hands; but before I had left home I was already

employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the

king went sort of fainting and gasping around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and

Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear, although I told

him it was worse up there than any where else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and he was always

complaining that a palace was no place for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his

house he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies present, too, but much these people

ever cared for that; they would swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory was going.

This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he said that this castle was the abode of Morgan

le Fay, sister of King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens. monarch of a realm about as big as the District of

Columbia you could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and

"Kingdoms" were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to

sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.

La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of his campaign. He had not worked

off a cake; yet he had tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; but the hermit died.

This was, indeed, a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place

among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and

sorrowed passing sore. And so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I

"Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have brains, you and I; and for such as have brains

there are no defeats, but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement;

an advertisement for our soap; and the biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement that

will transform that Mount Washing ton defeat into a Matterhorn victory. We will put on your

"Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little oneline ad., it's a corker."

So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in

his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once

made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a

different way, for her tongue churned forth only rail ings and insult, whereas Sandy's music was of a

kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when

Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said that La Cote's bad luck had begun with the

very beginning of that trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was

customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted after ward in

sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil? She

said that that wouldn't answer he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be regular. I made a note of that. If

Sandy's music got to be too burdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chance that she

In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. I have

nothing pleasant to tell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knew Mrs. le Fay by reputation,

and was not expecting anything pleasant. She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made

everybody believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. She was

loaded to the eyelids with cold malice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimes murder

was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious as I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she

was beautiful; black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to wrinkle her satin

skin or mar its bloomy freshness. She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she could have been

As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered into her presence. King Uriens was there, a

kindfaced old man with a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, in whom I was, of

course, interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on

account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandy had been aging me with. But Morgan was

the main attraction, the conspicuous per sonality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain.

She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask

me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman

must have been misrepre sented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome

young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with

something on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and

so fell lightly against her knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matterofcourse a way as another person

Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was

dead. Out of the old king was wrung an involuntary "Oh!" of compassion. The look he got, made him cut it

suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the

anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk.

I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see

that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she

sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a

crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male

Taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb

Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman. And what a glance she had: when it fell

in reproof upon those servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of a

cloud. I could have got the habit myself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he was always on the

In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how

this woman hated her brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up like storm; she called

That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say or do. But

not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest con fidence, and

Now what a happy idea that was! and so simple; yet it would never have occurred to me. I was born

The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance and brought back her smiles and all her

persuasive graces and blandishments; but never theless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the

"La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing which I have

said unto one who has vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments I foresaw your coming,

and by them I knew you when you entered here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into

some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to

ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly curious

MADAME, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that I was deceived by her excuse; for her

fright dissolved away, and she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill somebody,

that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However, to my relief she was presently interrupted by the call to

prayers. I will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as

they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the regular and

faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten

his enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once I had seen a noble, after

ambushing and despatching his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give thanks, without

even waiting to rob the body. There was to be nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Benvenuto Cellini,

that roughhewn saint, ten centuries later. All the nobles of Britain, with their families, attended divine

service morning and night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them had family worship five

or six times a day besides. The credit of this belonged entirely to the Church. Although I was no friend to that

Cath olic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often, in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What

After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was lighted by hundreds of greasejets, and

everything was as fine and lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the hosts. At the

head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching down

the hall from this, was the general table, on the floor. At this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the

grown members of their families, of both sexes, the resident Court, in effect sixtyone per sons;

below the salt sat minor officers of the house hold, with their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred

and eighteen persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or serving in

one capacity or another. It was a very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other

horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude firstdraft or original agony of the wail

known to later centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little

After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then

the battalion of waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried, and the

mighty feeding began; no words anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops opened

and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean machinery.

The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unim aginable was the destruction of substantials. Of the chief

feature of the feast the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing at the start nothing

was left but the semblance of a hoopskirt; and he was but the type and symbol of what had hap pened to all

With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began and the talk. Gallon after gallon of wine and mead

disappeared, and everybody got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous both sexes, and by

and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrific to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was

sprung, the assemblage let go with a horselaugh that shook the fortress. Ladies answered back with

historiettes that would almost have made Queen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth of England

hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed howled, you may say. In pretty much

all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the chap lain any, he

had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort

By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some

affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrel somely, some dead and under the table. Of the ladies, the

worst spectacle was a lovely young duch ess, whose weddingeve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle,

sure enough. Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the young daughter of the

Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner whence she was carried, foulmouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to

Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all conscious heads were bowed in reverent expec

tation of the coming blessing, there appeared under the arch of the faroff door at the bottom of the hall an

old and bent and whitehaired lady, leaning upon a crutchstick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it

"The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity, who have slain mine innocent grandchild

and made desolate this old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in all this world but him!"

Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an awful thing to those people; but the queen

rose up majestic, with the deathlight in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command:

The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame; it was a cruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy

She was up and facing toward the queen in a mo ment. She indicated me, and said:

"Madame, HE saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or he will dissolve the castle and it shall

But my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off; for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show

of resistance but gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. When she reached it she was sober. So

were many of the others. The assemblage rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a

mob; overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding anything to get

out before I should change my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of space. Well,

well, well, they WERE a superstitious lot. It is all a body can do to conceive of it.

The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid to hang the composer without first

consulting me. I was very sorry for her indeed, any one would have been, for she was really suffering; so I

was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I

therefore considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the musicians ordered into our presence to

play that Sweet Bye and Bye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and gave her permission to

hang the whole band. This little relaxation of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A states man

gains little by the arbitrary exercise of ironclad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the

just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little concession, now and then,

Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably happy, her wine naturally began to

assert itself again, and it got a little the start of her. I mean it set her music going her silver bell of a

tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would not become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that I

was a tired man and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I had the chance. Now I must stick it

out; there was no other way. So she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly hush of

the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if from deep down under us, a faraway sound, as of a

muffled shriek with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. The queen stopped, and her

eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound bored its way

"The rack. Come ye shall see a blithe sight. An he yield not his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder."

What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so com posed and serene, when the cords all down my legs were

hurting in sympathy with that man's pain. Con ducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we tramped

along echoing corridors, and down stone stair ways dank and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of

imprisoned night a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter or the cheerier by the

sorceress's talk, which was about this sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymous

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

"I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. But an I would, I could not, for that the accuser

came masked by night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so the forester

"Marry, NO man SAW the killing, but this Unknown saw this hardy wretch near to the spot where the stag

"So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too? Isn't it just possible that he did the killing himself? His loyal

zeal in a mask looks just a shade sus picious. But what is your highness's idea for racking the

"He will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. For his crime his life is forfeited by the law and of

a surety will I see that he payeth it! but it were peril to my own soul to let him die unconfessed and

"As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to death and he confess not, it will peradventure show that he

had indeed naught to confess ye will grant that that is sooth? Then shall I not be damned for an

It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance

against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's.

The brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position was defective.

As we entered the rackcell I caught a picture that will not go from me; I wish it would. A native young giant

of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes

which led over windlasses at either end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and

sweatdrops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards

were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched a poor young creature,

her face drawn with anguish, a halfwild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little child asleep.

Just as we stepped across the threshold the executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry

from both the prisoner and the woman; but I shouted, and the executioner released the strain without waiting

to see who spoke. I could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to see it. I asked the queen to let

me clear the place and speak to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object I spoke in a low

voice and said I did not want to make a scene before her servants, but I must have my way; for I was King

Arthur's repre sentative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she had to yield. I asked her to indorse me

to these peo ple, and then leave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill; and even went further

than I was meaning to require. I only wanted the backing of her own authority; but she said:

It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it by the squirming of these rats. The queen's

guards fell into line, and she and they marched away, with their torchbearers, and woke the echoes of the

cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack

and placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and wine given him to drink. The woman

crept near and looked on, eagerly, lov ingly, but timorously, like one who fears a repulse; indeed, she

tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped back, the picture of fright, when I turned

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

Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it a kindness that it understands. The baby was

out of her way and she had her cheek against the man's in a minute. and her hands fondling his hair, and her

happy tears running down. The man revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he could do. I

judged I might clear the den, now, and I did; cleared it of all but the family and myself. Then I said:

The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But the woman looked pleased as it seemed to me pleased

"If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should not be afraid to speak."

"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

And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still imploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I

could not quite get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said:

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

"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider how these his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will

"What ARE you maundering about? He's going out from here a free man and whole he's not going to die."

The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy, and

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

"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all. You stood the torture and refused to confess;

which shows plain enough to even the dull est understanding that you had nothing to confess "

"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow and

his orphans. They could torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they could not rob your

wife and baby. You stood by them like a man; and YOU true wife and the woman that you are you

would have bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death well, it

humbles a body to think what your sex can do when it comes to selfsacrifice. I'll book you both for my

colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into MEN."

WELL, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home. I had a great desire to rack the executioner;

not because he was a good, painstaking and paingiving official, for surely it was not to his discredit that

he performed his functions well but to pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise dis tressing that

young woman. The priests told me about this, and were generously hot to have him punished. Something of

this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed that not all priests

were frauds and selfseekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground

among the common people, were sincere and righthearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles

and sufferings. Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted about it, and never many

minutes at a time; it has never been my way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did not

like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people reconciled to an Estab lished Church. We MUST have

a religion it goes without saying but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will

police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political

machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is

nursed, cradled, pre served for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not

better do in a splitup and scattered condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion

my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's or any less, for

Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook the just complaint of the priests. The man

must be punished somehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him leader of the band

the new one that was to be started. He begged hard, and said he couldn't play a plausible excuse, but too

The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found she was going to have neither Hugo's life

nor his property. But I told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom she certainly was

entitled to both the man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the

king's name I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sud den

passion, and not for gain; and he had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection

of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't make her see that sudden passion is an ex tenuating

circumstance in the killing of venison or of a person so I gave it up and let her sulk it out I DID think I

was going to make her see it by remark ing that her own sudden passion in the case of the page modified

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

Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training training is everything; training is all there is TO a

person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name

is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are

transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or dis creditable to

us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by,

and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adamclam or

grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and un profitably

developed. And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the

eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic

atom in me that is truly ME: the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.

No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough, but her training made her an ass that is,

from a manycenturieslater point of view. To kill the page was no crime it was her right; and upon her

right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. She was a result of generations of training in the

unexamined and unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject when she chose was a

Well, we must give even Satan his due. She de served a compliment for one thing; and I tried to pay it, but

the words stuck in my throat. She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to pay for him.

That was law for some other people, but not for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a large and

generous thing to pay for that lad, and that I ought in common fairness to come out with some thing

handsome about it, but I couldn't my mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that poor old

grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and

vanities laced with his golden blood. How could she PAY for him! WHOM could she pay? And so, well

knowing that this woman, trained as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not able to utter

it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak and the

Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived. Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too

bad. A master might kill his slave for nothing for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time just as we

have seen that the crowned head could do it with HIS slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could kill a

free commoner, and pay for him cash or gardentruck. A noble could kill a noble without ex pense, as

far as the law was concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. ANYbody could kill SOME body,

except the commoner and the slave; these had no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law

wouldn't stand murder. It made short work of the experimenter and of his family, too, if he mur dered

somebody who belonged up among the orna mental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much as a

Damiensscratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to

rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have a good time;

and some of the performances of the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any

that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his chapter about the dismember ment of Louis XV.'s

I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted to leave, but I couldn't, because I had

something on my mind that my conscience kept prod ding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. If I had the

remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a

person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would

be much better to have less good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and I am only one man;

others, with less experience, may think differently. They have a right to their view. I only stand to this: I have

noticed my conscience for many years, and I know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I

started with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because we prize anything that is ours; and yet how

foolish it was to think so. If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if I had an anvil in me

would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you come to think, there is no real difference between a

conscience and an anvil I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand times. And you could dissolve an

anvil with acids, when you couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can work off a

There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it.

Well, it bothered me all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king, but what would be the use?

he was but an extinct volcano; he had been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, he was

only a stately ashpile now; gentle enough, and kindly enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable.

He was nothing, this socalled king: the queen was the only power there. And she was a Vesuvius. As a

favor, she might consent to warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very opportunity

to turn herself loose and bury a city. However, I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are

So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness. I said I had been having a general

jaildelivery at Camelot and among neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like to examine her

collection, her bricabrac that is to say, her prison ers. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she

finally consented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about ended my discomfort. She called her

guards and torches, and we went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castle's foundations,

and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living rock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of

them was a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer a question or speak a word,

but only looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing it

might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless dull dream that was become her life; after

that, she sat bowed, with her dirtcaked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave no further sign. This

poor rack of bones was a woman of middle age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine

years, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner, and had been sent here on her bridal night

by Sir Breuse Sance Pite, a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said lord she had

refused what has since been called le droit du seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and

spilt half a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had interfered at that point. be lieving the

bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and trembling wedding guests,

in the parlor, and left him there aston ished at this strange treatment, and implacably embit tered against

both bride and groom. The said lord being cramped for dungeonroom had asked the queen to accommodate

his two criminals, and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, they had come before their

crime was an hour old, and had never seen each other since. Here they were, ken neled like toads in the

same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet of each other, yet neither knew whether the

other was alive or not. All the first years, their only question had been asked with beseechings and tears

that might have moved stones, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?" But

they had never got an answer; and at last that question was not asked any more or any other.

I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirtyfour years old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a

squared block of stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair hanging like

a fringe before his face, and he was muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly over, in a

listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again

and took no further notice of us. There were some pathetically suggestive dumb witnesses present. On his

wrists and ankles were cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which he sat was a chain

with manacles and fetters attached; but this apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chains

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 wonderwork, the

masterwork of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe

young grace, and beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams as he thought and to no

But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and looked dimly wondering into each other's

faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curi osity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their

eyes, and you saw that they were away again and wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we

I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not like it much. Not that she felt any personal

interest in the matter, but she thought it dis respectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However, I assured her that

I set fortyseven prisoners loose out of those awful ratholes, and left only one in captivity. He was a lord,

and had killed another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord had ambushed him to assassinate

him, but this fellow had got the best of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that I left him

jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public well in one of his wretched villages. The queen was

bound to hang him for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was no crime to kill an assassin. But I

said I was willing to let her hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with that, as it was

Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those fortyseven men and women were shut up there! In

deed, some were there for no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite; and not always the

queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He

said he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes. He said he

believed that if you were to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he couldn't tell the

king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel clerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not

been reduced to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose and sent him to the Factory.

Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these an

arrowslit had been pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun

for his comfort. The case of one of these poor fel lows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's hole

high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the arrowslit and see his own home off

yonder in the valley; and for twentytwo years he had watched it, with heartache and longing, through that

crack. He could see the lights shine there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and come out

his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though he could not make out at that dis tance. In the

course of years he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered if they were weddings or what

they might be. And he noted funerals; and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin, but he could

not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was wife or child. He could see the procession form,

with priests and mourn ers, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with them. He had left behind him

five children and a wife; and in nineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them humble

enough in pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost five of his treasures; there must still be one remaining

one now infinitely, unspeakably precious, but WHICH one? wife, or child? That was the question that

tortured him, by night and by day, asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest, of some sort, and half a ray of

light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great support to the body and preserver of the intellect. This man was in

pretty good condi tion yet. By the time he had finished telling me his distressful tale, I was in the same state

of mind that you would have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity; that is to say, I was

as burning up as he was to find out which member of the family it was that was left. So I took him over home

myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and

whole Niagaras of happy tears; and by George! we found the aforetime young matron graying toward the

imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all men and women, and some of them married and

experimenting familywise themselves for not a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the ingenious

devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for this prisoner, and she had INVENTED all those

funer als herself, to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving

the familyinvoice a funeral SHORT, so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing.

But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him with her whole heart, and she never

would have softened toward him. And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate

depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red headed

Consider it: among these fortyseven captives there were five whose names, offenses, and dates of incar

ceration were no longer known! One woman and four men all bent, and wrinkled, and mindextinguished

patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories

about them, nothing definite and nothing that they re peated twice in the same way. The succession of

priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the captives and remind them that God had put them there,

for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppres sion

was what He loved to see in parties of a subordi nate rank, had traditions about these poor old human ruins,

but nothing more. These traditions went but little way, for they concerned the length of the incar ceration

only, and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of tradition the only thing that could be proven

was that none of the five had seen daylight for thirtyfive years: how much longer this privation has lasted

was not guessable. The king and the queen knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were

heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former firm. Nothing of their history had been

transmitted with their persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no value, and had felt no

The question was a puzzler. She didn't know WHY she hadn't, the thing had never come up in her mind. So

here she was, forecasting the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If, without knowing it. It

seemed plain to me now, that with her training, those inherited prisoners were merely property noth ing

more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit prop erty, it does not occur to us to throw it away, even when we

When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world and the glare of the afternoon sun

previously blindfolding them, in charity for eyes so long untortured by light they were a spectacle to look

at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy by

You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don't know the meaning of a new big word.

The more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads.

The queen was just one of that sort, and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She

hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she would do it for

I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography? But it was a poor time to be thinking.

Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have seen a good many kinds of women in my

time, but she laid over them all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode was. She had

no more idea than a horse of how to photo graph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try

SANDY and I were on the road again, next morn ing, bright and early. It was so good to open up one's

lungs and take in whole luscious barrelsful of the blessed God's untainted, dewfashioned, woodland

scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two days and nights in the moral and physical

stenches of that intolerable old buzzardroost! mean, for me: of course the place was all right and agreeable

Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while, and I was expecting to get the conse quences.

I was right; but she had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily supported and reinforced

me with gigantic foolishnesses which were worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so I

thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward "

"Are you going to see if you can work up another halfstretch on the trail of the cowboys, Sandy?"

"Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it. Begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty winter of age southward. And so they

came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last they

came into a courtelage where abode the duke of South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And on the

morn the duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad him make him ready. And so Sir Marhaus arose and armed

him, and there was a mass sung afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in the court of

the castle, there they should do the battle. So there was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his

six sons by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they encountered, whereas the duke and his

two sons brake their spears upon him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched none of them. Then

came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake their spears, and so did the other two. And all this

while Sir Marhaus touched them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke, and smote him with his spear that

horse and man fell to the earth. And so he served his sons. And then Sir Marhaus alight down, and bad the

duke yield him or else he would slay him. And then some of his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir

Marhaus. Then Sir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will do the uttermost to you all. When

the duke saw he might not escape the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them to Sir Mar

haus. And they kneeled all down and put the pom mels of their swords to the knight, and so he received

them. And then they holp up their father, and so by their common assent promised unto Sir Marhaus never to

be foes unto King Arthur, and thereupon at Whit suntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in the

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

"Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now ye shall wit that that very duke and his six sons are they

"Well, well, well, now who would ever have thought it? One whole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it

was an elegant haul. Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I

begin to see that there IS money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it as a

business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A

successful whirl in the knighterrantry line now what is it when you blow away the non sense and come

down to the cold facts? It's just a corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. You're

rich yes, suddenly rich for about a day, maybe a week; then somebody cor ners the market on

"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple language in such sort that the words do

"There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around it that way, Sandy, it's SO, just as I say. I

KNOW it's so. And, moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knighterrantry is WORSE than

pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market

breaks, in a knighterrantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his checks, what have you got for

assets? Just a rubbishpile of bat tered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can you call THOSE

"Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters whereunto the confusions of these but

late adventured haps and fortunings whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us, meseem eth

"No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far as it goes, but you don't know business; that's

where the trouble is. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong to be always trying. However,

that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's court. And

speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this is for women and men that never get old. Now there's

Morgan le Fay, as fresh and young as a Vassar pullet, to all appearances, and here is this old duke of the

South Marches still slashing away with sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family as he

has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawaine killed seven of his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhaus

and me to take into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winter of age still excursioning around in

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

BETWEEN six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse carrying triple man, woman,

and armor; then we stopped for a long noon ing under some trees by a limpid brook.

Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he made dolorous moan, and by the words of it

I perceived that he was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of his coming, for that I saw he

I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la

Montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinc tion was that he had come within an ace of sending Sir

Launcelot down over his horsetail once. He was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some

pretext or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact of nearly the same size, which he never

pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he didn't quite

succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down over horsetail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not

see any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very

valuable. And he was so fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand leonine set of his

plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint device of a gauntleted hand clutch ing a prophylactic

toothbrush, with motto: "Try Noyoudont." This was a toothwash that I was introducing.

He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not alight. He said he was after the

stovepolish man; and with this he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletinboarder referred to

was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of considerable celebrity on account of his having tried

conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul that Sir Gaheris himself although not

successfully. He was of a light and laughing disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was

for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stovepolish sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so

there could be nothing serious about stovepolish. All that the agent needed to do was to deftly and by

degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections toward neatness

Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. He said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet

he would not get down from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until he

should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this ac count. It appeared, by what I could piece together of the

unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been

told that if he would make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he could

head off a company of travelers who would be rare customers for prophylactics and toothwash. With

characteristic zeal Sir Madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful

crosslot riding had overhauled his game. And behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from

the dungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all of twenty years since any one of them had

"Blankblankblank him," said Sir Madok, "an I do not stovepolish him an I may find him, leave it to me;

for never no knight that hight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide on live, an I may find

And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and gat him thence. In the middle of the after

noon we came upon one of those very patriarchs our selves, in the edge of a poor village. He was basking in

the love of relatives and friends whom he had not seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were

also descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now; but to him these were all strangers,

his memory was gone, his mind was stag nant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast half a century

shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old wife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could

remember him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, when he kissed his child and

delivered it to its mother's hands and went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castle could not tell

within half a genera tion the length of time the man had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten

offense; but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there among her married sons and

daughters trying to realize a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all

her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set before her face.

It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that ac count that I have made room for it here, but on account of a

thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these

downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of

cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious

revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced

to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might

befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man, he has struck

I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to en counter

who was planning out a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the un

getaroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philoso phizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in

the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law

that all revolutions that will succeed must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history

teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I

Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement and feverish expectancy. She said we

were approaching the ogre's castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object of our quest had

gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing

for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's excitement increased every moment; and so did

mine, for that sort of thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reason with your heart; it has its

own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. Pres ently, when Sandy slid from the horse,

motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of

bushes that bordered a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And they kept it up while she was

gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse over the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side on

my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her finger, and said in a panting whisper:

She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out of her face; and during many moments she was

"It was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion, as if to herself. "And how strange is this

marvel, and how awful that to the one per ception it is enchanted and dight in a base and shame ful

aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and

stately still, girt with its moat and waving its ban ners in the blue air from its towers. And God shield us,

how it pricks the heart to see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces! We

I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to ME, not to her. It would be wasted time to try to argue her out of

"This is a common case the enchanting of a thing to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another.

You have heard of it before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. But no harm is done. In

fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be necessary

to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible if one failed to find out the par ticular process of the

enchantment. And hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the true key, you are liable to

err, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by reducing

your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas which you can't follow which, of course, amounts

to the same thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under the enchantment, and so it is of

no consequence to dissolve it. These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to everybody else;

and at the same time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is a

"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I know that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou

art minded to great deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will and to do, as any that is

"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling

"The ogres, Are THEY changed also? It is most wonderful. Now am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with

sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily, fair sir; this is a

"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how MUCH of an ogre is invisible; then I know how to locate his

vitals. Don't you be afraid, I will make short work of these buncosteerers. Stay where you are."

I left Sandy kneeling there, corpsefaced but plucky and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up

a trade with the swineherds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen

pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the manor,

and the rest of the taxgatherers would have been along next day and swept off pretty much all the stock,

leaving the swineherds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But now the tax people could be

paid in cash, and there would be a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and he said that last

year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and

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

How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day, under this same old Established Church,

which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise.

I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned Sandy to come which she did; and

not leisurely, but with the rush of a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon those hogs, with tears

of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them

reverently by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race.

We had to drive those hogs home ten miles; and no ladies were ever more fickleminded or contrary.

They would stay in no road, no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all

directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest places they could find. And they must not be struck, or

roughly accosted; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. The

troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoy ing

and difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. There was one small countess, with an iron ring in her

snout and hardly any hair on her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a race of an hour, over

all sorts of country, and then we were right where we had started from, having made not a rod of real

progress. I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing. When I overtook Sandy she was

horrified, and said it was in the last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train.

We got the hogs home just at dark most of them. The princess Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and

two of her ladies in waiting: namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, the

former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one

with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side a couple of the tryingest blis

ters to drive that I ever saw. Also among the missing were several mere baronesses and I wanted them to

stay missing; but no, all that sausagemeat had to be found; so servants were sent out with torches to scour

Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great guns! well, I never saw anything like it.

Nor ever heard anything like it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like an insurrection in a gaso meter.

WHEN I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of the longtense

muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as I could get sleep was out of the question for

the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was

pandemonium come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts were busy, of course; and

mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom

could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like a crazy woman. My land, the power of

training! of influence! of education! It can bring a body up to believe any thing. I had to put myself in

Sandy's place to realize that she was not a lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it is to

seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have been taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a

wagon, uninfluenced by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man, unequipped with magic

powers, get into a basket and soar out of sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's

help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles away, Sandy would not merely have

supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in enchant

ments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs,

would have been the same as my doubting among Con necticut people the actuality of the telephone and its

wonders, and in both cases would be absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy

was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane to Sandy I must keep my superstitions about

unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed that the

world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to sup port it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of

water that occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious

and criminal opinions, I recognized that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if I did

The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the diningroom and gave them their breakfast, waiting

upon them personally and manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of her island,

ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its outward casket and the mental and moral contents be

what they may. I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my lofty official rank; but I

hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at the

"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary per formance. The effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We

blandly march into a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility the sun has yet

discovered in the earth, and then it turns out that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever

venture to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was your home. What will the man say?"

"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to

have the honor twice in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace his house withal?"

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

"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech and due humility; he were a dog, else,

To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so. It might be a good idea to muster the

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

"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth! Each must hie to her own home; wend you we

might do all these journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created life, and thereto death

likewise with help of Adam, who by sin done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon

and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated

and set apart unto that evil work by over mastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through fell

ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining

multitudes its brethrenborn in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein all such as native be to that rich

"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't you see, we could distribute these people

around the earth in less time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. We mustn't talk now, we

must act. You want to be careful; you mustn't let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. To

This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpected ness; and the relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner.

"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully ended, I will go home and report; and if

"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor. I may not part from thee until in knightly

encounter in the field some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were to blame an I

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

While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that whole peerage away to the servants. And I

asked them to take a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and prom

enaded; but they considered that that would be hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave

departure from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure from custom that settled it; it was a

nation capable of committing any crime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion

grown sacred through immemorial observ ance; they would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls,

and then the evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. It was a kind of satire on

Nature: it was the scientific method, the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in a stratified

record; and the antiquary could dig through it and tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the

The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. It was not going our way, but we joined it,

nevertheless; for it was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would govern this country wisely, I must

be posted in the details of its life, and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny.

This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it had in it a sample of about all the upper

occupations and professions the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. There were

young men and old men, young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules

and horses, and there was not a sidesaddle in the party; for this specialty was to remain unknown in England

It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and full of unconscious coarsenesses and

innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused no more

embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes

worthy of the English wits of the first quarter of the faroff nineteenth century were sprung here and there

and yonder along the line, and compelled the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was

made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward the other, you could note its progress all

the way by the sparkling spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along; and also by the

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

"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of the godly hermits and drink of the miracu lous

"It lieth a twoday journey hence, by the borders of the land that hight the Cuckoo Kingdom."

"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time there lived there an abbot and his monks. Belike

were none in the world more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious books, and spoke not

the one to the other, or indeed to any, and ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed

much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it fell from their bodies through age and

decay. Right so came they to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and visited by rich

"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time, the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a

great stream of clear water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the fickle monks tempted of the

Fiend, and they wrought with their abbot un ceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct

a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more, he said have ye your will, then, and

granted that they asked. Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which He loveth, and

wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed

as white as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, in miraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters

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

"Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect life for long, and differing in naught from the

angels. Prayers, tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water to flow again. Even

processions; even burntofferings; even votive candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in

"How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, and at times sees its assignats and

greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy."

"And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble surrender and destroyed the bath. And

behold, His anger was in that moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even unto this

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

"Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroad into all lands. From every land came monks

to join; they came even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building to building, and yet

others to these, and so spread wide its arms and took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yet

more; and built over against the mon astery on the yon side of the vale, and added building to building, until

mighty was that nunnery. And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving labors together,

and together they built a fair great foundling asylum midway of the valley between."

"These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermit thriveth best where there be multi tudes of

pilgrims. Ye shall not find no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit of a kind he thinketh

new and not to be found but in some far strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and

swamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be his breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of

I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat goodhumored face, purposing to make myself agree able

and pick up some further crumbs of fact; but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintance with him when he

began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the immemorial way, to that same old anecdote the one Sir

Dinadan told me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagramor and was challenged of him on ac count of

it. I excused myself and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this

troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and

monotonous defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many

Early in the afternoon we overtook another proces sion of pilgrims; but in this one was no merriment, no

jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both were here,

both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men and women of middle age, young hus bands,

young wives, little boys and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children were smileless; there was

not a face among all these half a hundred people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of

hopelessness which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with despair. They were slaves.

Chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled hands to a soleleather belt about their waists; and all

except the children were also linked together in a file six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to

collar all down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped three hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the

cheapest odds and ends of food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these chains every night, bundled

together like swine. They had upon their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be clothed.

Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their

naked feet were torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a hundred of these

unfortunates, but about half had been sold on the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried a

whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he

cut the shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and straightened them up. He did not speak;

the whip conveyed his desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as we rode along by; they

showed no con sciousness of our presence. And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful

clank of their chains from end to end of the long file, as fortythree burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The

All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seen the like of this coating upon furniture in

unoccupied houses, and has written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was reminded of this when I

noticed the faces of some of those women, young mothers carrying babes that were near to death and

freedom, how a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their faces, plain to see, and lord, how

plain to read! for it was the track of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, and it hurt me to the

heart to read that writing, and reflect that it was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought

not to know trouble yet, but only the glad ness of the morning of life; and no doubt

She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash and flicked a flake of skin from her naked

shoulder. It stung me as if I had been hit in stead. The master halted the file and jumped from his horse. He

stormed and swore at this girl, and said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this was

the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. She dropped on her knees and put up her

hands and began to beg, and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave no attention. He

snatched the child from her, and then made the menslaves who were chained before and behind her throw

her on the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he laid on with his lash like a madman till

her back was flayed, she shriek ing and struggling the while piteously. One of the men who was holding her

All our pilgrims looked on and commented on the expert way in which the whip was handled. They were

too much hardened by lifelong everyday familiar ity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in

the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what one may

call the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pil grims were kindhearted people, and they would not

I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that would not do. I must not interfere too much

and get myself a name for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights roughshod. If I lived and

prospered I would be the death of slavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so that when I

Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a

few miles back, deliverable here where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; then there was a

squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to which should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl

was delivered from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings, into the arms of the slave who

had turned away his face when she was whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered her face and

the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain of his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it

was husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled

and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and even after that, we

could still make out the fading plaint of those receding shrieks. And the hus band and father, with his wife

and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life? well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and

so I turned away; but I knew I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there it is to this day, to

We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was

ware where a knight came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him for knight of mine

Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was

plug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor of the time up to where his helmet ought to

have been; but he hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stovepipe hat, and was ridiculous a spectacle as one

might want to see. It was another of my surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it

grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's sad dle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every time he

overcame a wandering knight he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made him wear it.

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

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

"I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring in the monkery, more than com mon?"

"By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown;

so get ye lightly to the stable and do even as I bid...... Sir, it is parlous news I bring, and be these pilgrims?

Then ye may not do better, good folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith it concerneth you,

forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for

my word, and my word and message being these, namely: That a hap has happened where of the like has not

been seen no more but once this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that that said misfortune

strake the holy valley in that form by commandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causes

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

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

"None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry. The prayers that did begin then, and the

lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night nor day;

and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon

parchment, sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at last they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try

magic and enchantment; and if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin, and he is there

these three days now, and saith he will fetch that water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to

accomplish it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his hellions to hie them hither and

help, but not a whiff of moisture hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon a copper

mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task;

Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozana these words which I had written on the

inside of his hat: Chemical Department, Labor atory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two of first size, two

of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the proper complementary details and two of my trained

"Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and show the writing to Clarence, and tell him

to have these required matters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch."

THE pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and

difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they

had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angleworms would probably have done

turn back and get at something profitable no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous

fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is

We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood upon the high confines of the Valley of

Holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, its large features. These were

the three masses of buildings. They were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy con structions in

the lonely waste of what seemed a desert and was. Such a scene is always mournful, it is so impressively

still, and looks so steeped in death. But there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness only to add to

its mournfulness; this was the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing

breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.

We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were given lodging, but the women were sent

over to the nunnery. The bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote upon the ear like a

message of doom. A superstitious despair pos sessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his

ghastly face. Everywhere, these blackrobed, softsandaled, tallowvisaged specters appeared, flitted about

and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.

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

"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring not the water back again, and soon, we are ruined,

and the good work of two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantments that be holy, for the

"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's work connected with it. I shall use no arts that come of

the devil, and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlin working strictly on pious lines?"

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

"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it be professional courtesy. Two of a trade must not

underbid each other. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would arrive at that in the end. Merlin

"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emer gency and the act is thereby justified. And if it were not so,

who will give law to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what she wills to do, that she may do,

"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power is supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no

injury; but we poor magicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magician in a small way, and has

quite a neat provincial reputation. He is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be etiquette

"Nono, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he were persuaded against his will, he would load that

well with a malicious enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret. It might take a month. I

could set up a little enchantment of mine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out its secret in a

hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block me for a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry

"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have it thy way, my son. But my heart is heavy

with this disappointment. Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as I have

done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign

Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half a day,

since he would never be able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time; which is to say, the

big miracles, the ones that gave him his repu tation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but

Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a

magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic

on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire

from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and I could not do that until I got my

My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal; insomuch that they ate a square meal

that night for the first time in ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced with food,

their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to go round they rose faster. By the time everybody was

halfseas over, the holy com munity was in good shape to make a night of it; so we stayed by the board and

put it through on that line. Matters got to be very jolly. Good old ques tionable stories were told that made

the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round bellies shake with laughter; and

questionable songs were bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells.

At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it. Not right off, of course, for the native of

those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous thing; but the fifth time I

told it, they began to crack in places; the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth repetition

they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This

language is figurative. Those islanders well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return for your

investment of effort, but in the end they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.

I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchanting away like a beaver, but not raising the

moisture. He was not in a pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract was a shade too

hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and cursed like a bishop French bishop of the Regency days, I

Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dug in the

ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie that had created

its reputation was not miraculous; I could have told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in

a dark chamber which stood in the center of a cutstone chapel, whose walls were hung with pious pictures

of a workmanship that would have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative of curative

miracles which had been achieved by the waters when nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they

are always on deck when there is a miracle to the fore so as to get put in the picture, perhaps. Angels are

The wellchamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks,

and poured into troughs which delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel when there was

water to draw, I mean and none but monks could enter the wellchamber. I entered it, for I had tempo

rary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. But he hadn't entered it

himself. He did everything by incantations; he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used

his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured the well by natural means, and then turned it

into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who believed in his own

magic; and no magician can thrive who is handicapped with a superstition like that.

I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen and

exposed fissures that allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain 98 feet. Then I called in couple of

monks, locked the door, took a candle, and made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid

out, the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing a good big

I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was correct, because I had another one that had a

showy point or two about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, many centuries later, when an oil

well ceased to flow, they used to blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well dry and no

explanation of it, I could astonish these people most nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a

dynamite bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was plain that there was no occasion for

the bomb. One cannot have everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to be depressed by a

disappointment, any way; he ought to make up his mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I

When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down a fishline; the well was a hun dred

and fifty feet deep, and there was fortyone feet of water in it I I called in a monk and asked:

"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testi mony goeth, brought down to us through our prede

It was true as to recent times at least for there was witness to it, and better witness than a monk; only

about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty. What had

happened when the well gave out that other time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and

mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful

bath were destroyed the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and these children would

have prayed, and processioned, and tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew away,

and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop a fishline into the well or go down in it and

find out what was really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the

world. It transmits itself like physical form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea that

his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion of being illegitimate. I said to the monk:

"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother

Merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the parlormagic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, is not

likely to succeed. But that should be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do THIS kind of miracle

"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do this miracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I

shall do this miracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occult powers to the

"None knoweth that truth better than the brother hood, indeed; for it is of record that aforetime it was

parlous difficult and took a year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end will we pray."

As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around that the thing was difficult. Many a small

thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up with the diffi culty of

this enterprise; he would fill up the others. In two days the solicitude would be booming.

"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 "

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

I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow that I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel

and taught of none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning that do anoint with a

sovereignty him that partaketh of that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to the mental

eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but

a symbol of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the pitying eye with sackcloth trappings

whereon the ashes of grief do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the darkness of his

mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery, these shutupshops, and drawthegame, and

bankthefires, it is but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that can beget, and tongue

that can deliver so great and mellowsounding miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that

humbler mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so be this miscomprehension is

not vain but sooth and true, wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and may not

lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this complexion of mood and mind and understood that

that I would I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might NOR could, nor mightnot nor

couldnot, might be by advantage turned to the desired WOULD, and so I pray you mercy of my fault, and

that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good my master and most dear lord."

I couldn't make it all out that is, the details but I got the general idea; and enough of it, too, to be

ashamed. It was not fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the untutored infant of the

sixth and then rail at her because she couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best drive

at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we

meandered pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse together, and better friends than

I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she

pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental

sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the

German Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sen

tences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been

water, I had been drowned, sure. She had ex actly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be

delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a

single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to

see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most strange menagerie. The chief emulation

among them seemed to be, to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin.

Their manner and attitudes were the last expression of complacent selfrighteousness. It was one anchorite's

pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister him unmolested; it was another's to lean

against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it was another's

to go naked and crawl around on all fours; it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,

eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the thornbushes

and snore when there were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of age, and no other

apparel, was black from crown to heel with fortyseven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of

gazing pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost in reverent wonder, and envious of

the fleckless sanctity which these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.

By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was a mighty celebrity; his fame had

penetrated all Christendom; the noble and the re nowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe to

pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part of the valley; and it took all that space to

His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on the top of it. He was now doing what he had

been doing every day for twenty years up there bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet.

It was his way of praying. I timed him with a stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 min utes and

46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in

mechanics, the pedal movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a

system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got

five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thou sand firstrate

towlinen shirts, which was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays, the same as

week days, and it was no use to waste the power. These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the

materials I furnished those myself, it would not have been right to make him do that and they sold like

smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded race horse in

Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights

everywhere, with the paintpot and stencilplate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead

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

There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. As it extended, I brought out a line of

goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the fore hatch and

the runninggear clewed up with a feather stitch to leeward and then hauled aft with a backstay and triced

up with a halfturn in the standing rigging forward of the weathergaskets. Yes, it was a daisy.

But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to standing on one leg, and I found that there

was something the matter with the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking Sir Bors de

Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the

When I saw him that first time however, his per sonal condition will not quite bear description here. You

[* All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from Lecky but greatly modified. This book

not being a history but only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too strong for

SATURDAY noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin was still burning smokepowders, and

pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty downhearted, for of course he

"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the oc cult

arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish."

He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for the

hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He poured

out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most

extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and about exhausted. Now

arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple

of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement. The abbot

"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these waters, this which I have but just essayed had

done it. It has failed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is a truth established; the sign of

this failure is, that the most potent spirit known to the magicians of the East, and whose name none may utter

and live, has laid his spell upon this well. The mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the

secret of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. The water will flow no more forever, good

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

"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't neces sarily true. There are conditions under which an effort to

break it may have some chance that is, some small, some trifling chance of success."

"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the well and the surroundings for the space of half a mile,

entirely to myself from sunset today until I remove the ban and nobody allowed to cross the ground but

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

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

"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? Haha! Knew ye

"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thing for YOU to do is to go home and work the

It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst weatherfailure in the kingdom. When

ever he ordered up the dangersignals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure, and every time he

prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine his

reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead of starting home to report my death, he said he

My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had traveled double tides. They had

packmules along, and had brought everything I needed tools, pump, lead pipe, Greek fire, sheaves of big

rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries everything necessary

for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out

through a solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed the required condi tions. We took

possession of the well and its sur roundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up

of a well to the construct ing of a mathematical instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended

in shipshape fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our fire works in the chapel, locked up

Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there was a deal to do yet, and I was deter

mined to spring the miracle before midnight, for busi ness reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for the

Church on a weekday is worth a good deal, it is worth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine

hours the water had risen to its customary level that is to say, it was within twentythree feet of the top.

We put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored into a stone

reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the wellchamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was

long enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the gushing water

would be visible to the two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be present on the flat

We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel,

where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we

stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there

are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We grounded the wire of a pocket electrical

battery in that powder, we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the roof blue on one

corner, green on another, red on another, and purple on the last and grounded a wire in each.

About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on

it, and so made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped it off

with the abbot's own throne. When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in

every detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye; you want to

make matters comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all

they are worth. I know the value of these things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too much style

into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the

wires to the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground to the platform, and hid the

batteries there. We put a rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common

multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open at 10:30, per formance to begin at 11:25

sharp. I wished I could charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed my boys to be in

the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and

The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time; and now for two or three days a steady

avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was become one huge

camp; we should have a good house, no question about that. Criers went the rounds early in the eve ning

and announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever heat. They gave notice that the abbot

and his official suite would move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the region

which was under my ban must be clear; the bells would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be

I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the abbot's solemn procession hove in sight

which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black night and no torches

permitted. With it came Merlin, and took a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.

One could not see the multitudes banked together be yond the ban, but they were there, just the same. The

moment the bells stopped, those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave, and for

as much as a half hour it continued to flow, and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon a

We had a solemn stagewait, now, for about twenty minutes a thing I had counted on for effect; it is

always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence a

noble Latin chant men's voices broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of

melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished I stood

up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted that always

produces a dead hush and then slowly pro nounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which

Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched off one of my electric connections and all

that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense that effect! Lots of

people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot

and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip,

but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that, before. Now

was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted my hands and groaned out this word as it were in agony:

and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that

and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and

and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! four

furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to

the furthest confines of that valley. In the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid

against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at

"The time is come, Father. I am about to pro nounce the dread name and command the spell to dis solve.

You want to brace up, and take hold of some thing." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in another

minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. If it break, all will know it, for you will see the

I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread my announcement to those who couldn't

hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and gesturing,

"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal

fires that still remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie bound a

Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself

toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in midsky into a storm of flashing jewels! One mighty groan

of terror started up from the massed people then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy for there,

fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping forth! The old abbot could not speak a

word, for tears and the chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms and

mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech. And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were

You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet

it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear names they gave their

darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it

I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down like a landslide when I pronounced that

fearful name, and had never come to since. He never had heard that name before, neither had I but to

him it was the right one. Any jumble would have been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's

own mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did. He never could under stand how I

survived it, and I didn't tell him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. Merlin spent

three months working enchantments to try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and

When I started to the chapel, the populace un covered and fell back reverently to make a wide way for me,

as if I had been some kind of a superior being and I was. I was aware of that. I took along a night shift of

monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of

the people out there were going to sit up with the water all night, consequently it was but right that they

should have all they wanted of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle itself, and they

were full of wonder over it; and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance.

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

MY influence in the Valley of Holiness was some thing prodigious now. It seemed worth while to try to

turn it to some valuable account. The thought came to me the next morning, and was sug gested by my

seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come riding in. According to history, the monks of this

place two centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. It might be that there was a

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

"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy.

Would God I might wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden."

And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved he should have at least one layer of his real

estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I went to the abbot and asked

for a permit for this Brother. He blenched at the idea I don't mean that you could see him blench, for of

course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I

knew the blench was there, just the same, and within a bookcover's thickness of the surface, too

"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted out of a grateful heart but this, oh,

"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge which teaches me that there was an error

that other time when it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain." A large interest began

to show up in the old man's face. "My knowledge informs me that the bath was inno cent of that misfortune,

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

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

I and my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the

monastery, not a stone missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear,

as things accursed. In two days we had it all done and the water in a spacious pool of clear pure water that

a body could swim in. It was running water, too. It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old

abbot kept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down black and shaky, leaving the whole black

community above troubled and worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game

It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness, and I was very well satisfied, and ready to

move on now, but I struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheuma

tism of mine. Of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This was the

place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what time he was moved to testify his gratitude

When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But every body was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these

brought cheer back into my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward health

Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn out and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the

nunnery to rest up. My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through the

country a week or two on foot. This would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest

class of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life

and the operation of the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman, there would be restraints and

conventionalities which would shut me out from their private joys and troubles, and I should get no further

One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which

bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low

precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermit age which had often been pointed out to me from a

distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had lately been offered a

situation in the Great Sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermitlife peculiarly attractive and

difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought I would look in and see how the atmosphere

My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. Then there was another surprise. Back in the

gloom of the cavern I heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:

"Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot? Be hold, thou mayst glad thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the

wonderful when that it cometh in unex pected guise and maketh itself manifest in impossible places here

standeth in the flesh his mightiness The Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!"

Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities; what a

fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables the home of the bogus miracle become the home of

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

"But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you. We saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it well to

make a station, for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size."

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

"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my comradeship moved hence upon their labors,

leaving me in charge, I got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when I waked, and report the place's name

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

"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late wonders that have happened here! You didn't

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

"Why THEY know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything about the great miracle of the

"Oh, THAT? Indeed yes. But the name of THIS valley doth woundily differ from the name of THAT one;

"THAT explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound

that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know the name of the place now.

He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy's voice again. It was like being home. After

"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this hour, to go to your valley to pay pious

homage to the waters ye have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place where the infernal

spirit spouted true hellflames to the clouds an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me

likewise smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those flames from out our stock and sent them by

"The king? no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads that holp you with your miracle will be

his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night."

"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested to him; one regiment is complete and

"The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that my self. There is only one body of men in the kingdom that are

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

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

"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this these officers be all of noble family, and are born

"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do travel hence with the king young nobles

"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in, anyway. Mount a man and send him to that

school with a message; let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before sunset tonight and say

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

It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning communication with distant regions, I was

breathing the breath of life again after long suffo cation. I realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate

horror this land had been to me all these years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to

I gave my order to the superintendent of the Acad emy personally. I also asked him to bring me some paper

and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doing without these conveniences.

I could have them now, as I wasn't going to wear armor any more at present, and there fore could get at my

When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interest going on. The abbot and his monks were

assembled in the great hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a

fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian

medicineman wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures in the

air and on the floor, the regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia so he said, and that was

enough. That sort of evidence was as good as gold, and passed current everywhere.

How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's terms. His specialty was to tell you what

any individual on the face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done at any time in the

past, and what he would do at any time in the future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of

the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer

this reverend crowd WOULD like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud went

"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put money in the palm of a holy begging friar

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

Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing? Yes. He told them what the Supreme

Lord of Inde was doing. Then he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King of the

Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy

rose higher and higher. They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; but no, he never had

to hesitate, he always knew, and always with unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose

my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I should be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in

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

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

You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks

"If you make no mistake if you tell me truly what I want to know I will give you two hundred silver

"Ahh!" There was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd that simple

trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician was hit hard; it was an

emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet

it. He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "Come," I said, "what are you waiting for? Is it

possible you can answer up, right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is doing, and yet

can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing

with my right hand they will indorse you if you tell correctly." He was still dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you

why you don't speak up and tell; it is because you don't know. YOU a magician! Good friends, this tramp is a

This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used to hearing these awful beings called names,

and they did not know what might be the con sequence. There was a dead silence now; superstitious

bodings were in every mind. The magician began to pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an

easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated that his mood was not destruc tive.

"It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any

who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any

but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur

the great king is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but the doings of a subject interest me not."

"Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody,' and so I supposed 'anybody' included well,

"That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his opportunity to smooth things and avert

disaster, "for it were not likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for the revelation of the

concerns of lesser beings than such as be born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king "

Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the incorrigible idiots. They watched the incan

tations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "There, now, what can you say to that?" air, when the

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

"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself; "may that sleep be to the refresh ment of his

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

Here was trouble again a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which of us to believe; I still had some

"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and magicians in my life days, but none be fore

that could sit idle and see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help."

"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantations myself, as this good brotherhood are

When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up. That jab made this fellow squirm.

"That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements, the queen and the other half are not

sleeping, they ride. Now perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king and queen and all

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

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

THAT was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl of excitement, and it rocked the en

"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 king had passed through two towns that were on

the line. I spotted his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these matters to myself. The

third day's reports showed that if he kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There was still

no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed to be no preparations making to receive him in

state; a strange thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that other magician had been cut ting under

me, sure. This was true. I asked a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician had tried

some further enchantments and found out that the court had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at

home. Think of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. These people had seen me

do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive value,

and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer who could offer no evidence of his powers but his

However, it was not good politics to let the king come without any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down

and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and started them out at two

o'clock to meet him. And that was the sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage and

humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed him the head of the state marching in and never

a monk on hand to offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joybell to glad his spirit. He took one

look and then flew to rouse out his forces. The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various

buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a rush toward the coming pro cession; and

with them went that magician and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation was in the

mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can keep his trademark current in such a country, but he

can't sit around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business right along.

WHEN the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished to

bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was a fashion of the time.

The Commission charged with the ex amination of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to

the Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just as well at home. And although this

expedition was strictly a holiday excur sion for the king, he kept some of his business func tions going just

the same. He touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was

He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best

and fairest, according to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights I mean his rearing often

colored his decisions. Whenever there was a dispute 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 should be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral

perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of

slaveholders under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any even to

the noble himself unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. The

repulsive feature of slavery is the THING, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the

classes that are below him to recognize and in but indifferently modified measure the very air and tone

of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feel ing.

They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of re garding

himself as a superior being. The king's judg ments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of

his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the

average mother for the position of milk distributor to starving children in faminetime; her own children

One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate, married

a fine young fellow who had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory held by the Church. The

bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that she

had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory the

one heretofore referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. The

girl's defense was, that the lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the par ticular right here

involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older

law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising it. It was a very odd case, indeed.

It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of

London raised the money that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the Sacrament according

to the Anglican rite could not stand as a candidate 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 bylaw imposing a fine of L400 upon any one

who should refuse to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after being elected

sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it

up until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately Man sion House to this day, to keep

the blushing citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees slipped into London

and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good and

The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just as strong. I did not see how the king was going

"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a child's affair for simpleness. An the young bride

had conveyed notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master and protector the bishop, she had

suffered no loss, for the said bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary con veniency,

eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus would she have kept all she had. Whereas, fail ing in her

first duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must

fall; it being no defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any deliverance from his peril, as

he shall find. Pardy, the woman's case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that she forfeit to the

said lord bishop all her goods, even to the last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in the

Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months old. Poor young creatures! They had

lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets they were wearing

were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and

in these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying to 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

Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to the Church and the rest of the aristoc racy,

no doubt. Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact re mains that

where every man in a State has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor

material for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have

been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had

been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's

mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning the sense and meaning implied when it is used;

that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of self

government"; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other

which WASN'T capable of it wasn't as able to govern itself as some selfappointed specialists were or

would be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the

mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only not from its privileged classes; and so, no matter

what the nation's intellectual grade was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of

its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to

govern itself. Which is to assert an always selfproven fact: that even the best governed and most free and

most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the same is true

King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations. I had not sup posed he

would move in the matter while I was away; and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining the merits

of officers; I had only remarked that it would be wise to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching

examination; and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications that no body could answer

to but my West Pointers. That ought to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken with the

idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of

I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much more admirable was the one which I should

display to the Examining Board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity When the Board

was assembled, I followed him in; and behind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a bright

young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my West Point pro fessors.

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 Norroy KingatArms! The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his depart ment;

and all three were priests, of course; all officials who had to know how to read and write were priests.

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

The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one clerk fainted, and the others came near it.

But I appealed to the king. I begged that my can didate might be examined. The king was willing, but the

Board, who were all wellborn folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's

son. I knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king

turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus

began. It was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in de tails of battle and siege,

of supply, transportation, mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal

service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth

bores, musket practice, revolver practice and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or

tail of, you under stand and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the

blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like nothing, too all about eclipses, and

comets, and solstices, and constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and

every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with

and make him wish he hadn't come and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, I

was proud enough to hug him, and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly

drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judged that the cake was ours, and by a large majority.

Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had come to West Point so ignorant that when I

asked him, "If a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, what ought he to

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

"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments. You are not here to air your blood or

"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in

my lifedays occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowl edge."

"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 de livery, because bitten by the same, who mistook him for D,

what sum is still due to A from B, and which party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money? If A, is

the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of additional money to represent the

possible profit which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned incre ment, that is to say,

"Verily, in the allwise and unknowable providence of God, who moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to

perform, have I never heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and congestion of the ducts

of thought. Wherefore I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless

names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine,

for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the

"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did pro mulgate them whilst that I lay sick about the beginning

"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like small

offices and titles of honor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heard of before; peradventure it

Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official position, of any kind under the sun! Why, he

had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emen

dations of your grammar and punctuation. It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sort

out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the

disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After nagging him a little more, I let the

professors loose on him and they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and found him empty, of

course. He knew somewhat about the warfare of the time bushwhacking around for ogres, and bullfights

in the tournament ring, and such things but otherwise he was empty and useless. Then we took the other

young noble in hand, and he was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. I delivered them into the

hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortable consciousness that their cake was dough. They were

"We had none, worshipful sir, the line failing be fore it had reached so far back."

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

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

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

"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that qualification."

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

"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our

"For that she hath established the selfsame rule regarding saints. By her law none may be canonized until he

"I see, I see it is the same thing. It is wonder ful. In the one case a man lies deadalive four genera

tions mummified in ignorance and sloth and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their

weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four

generations, and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's grace approve of this

"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange. All places of honor and of profit do belong, by natural right,

to them that be of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so without

this or any rule. The rule is but to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring

into contempt these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I were to

blame an I permitted this calamity. YOU can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated

authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to any."

"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and State did the founder of your great line lift

"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military com

mand, and doth hold his case open for decision after due examination of his competitor."

The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility himself. So there was a tie in

"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was gracious and pure and chari table, of

a blameless life and character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land."

"That will do. Stand down." He called up the competing lordling again, and asked: "What was the rank and

condition of the greatgrandmother who con ferred British nobility upon your great house?"

"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen merit from the sewer

"Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord.

Hold it not in contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an

I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised myself an easy and zenithscouring triumph,

I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face. I told him to go home and be patient,

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 good idea to add five

hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country,

even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it; and thus make it the crack

regiment, the envied regiment, the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own

way, and go whither it would and come when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent.

This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy.

Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materi als, and officer it with

nobodies, as was proper nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency and we would make this

regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, 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 go off for a change

and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that

matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual. The

When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thought I saw my way out of an old and stubborn

difficulty at last. You see, the royalties of the Pen dragon stock were a longlived race and 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. Be

cause the event meant another call for a Royal Grant. Long was the list of these royalties, and they were a

heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not

believe this latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects for substituting something in the

place of the royal grants. If I could have per suaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these

outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have made a grand todo over it, and it would have had a good

effect with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He had something like a religious passion for

royal grant; he seemed to look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate him in any way so

quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution. If I ven tured to cautiously hint that

there was not another respectable family in England that would humble itself 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 crack regiment out of officers alone not a single

private. Half of it should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to MajorGeneral, and serve

gratis and pay their own expenses; and they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest of

the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. These princes of the blood should range in

rank from LieutenantGeneral up to Field Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the

state. Moreover and this was the master stroke it should be decreed that these princely gran dees

should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awecompelling title (which I would presently in

vent), and they and they only in all England should be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood should

have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a

grant. Neatest touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be BORN into the regiment, and

start fair, with good wages and a per manent situation, upon due notice from the parents.

All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existing grants would be relinquished; that the newly born

would always join was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant,

would cease to be a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past.

WHEN I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the country and familiarize

myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing in a minute, and was

bound to take a chance in the adven ture himself nothing should stop him he would drop everything

and go along it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a 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 billed for the king'sevil

to touch for it, I mean and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay

worth considering, any way, it was only a onenight stand. And I thought he ought to tell the queen he was

going away. He clouded up at that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when he said

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

Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was

pretty slack. I never meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate to see the way things

were going on, and I don't mind saying that much. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen Sir

Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for the king I didn't happen to be around at the time.

There was a very good layout for the king'sevil business very tidy and creditable. The king sat under a

canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. Conspicu ous, both

for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel, a hermit of the quackdoctor species, to introduce the sick.

All abroad 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 being gotten up for that, though

it wasn't. There were eight hundred sick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interest of novelty

for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required

me to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who

only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound but wanted the

immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece

of coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third

of a dollar. When you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how

usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king'sevil appropriation

was just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury and the chance it

afforded for skinning the surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king'sevil.

I covered six sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my

adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into five cent nickels and delivered into the hands

of the head clerk of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do

its work for it. It might strain the nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not approve of

water ing stock, but I considered it square enough in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you

can water a gift as much as you want to; and I gener ally do. The old gold and silver coins of the country

were of ancient and unknown origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were illshapen, and

seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they were hammered, not minted, and they were so

worn with use that the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them. I judged that a

sharp, bright new nickel, with a firstrate like ness of the king on one side of it and Guenever on the other,

and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the

scrofulous fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm. The

saving in expense was a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched a trifle over 700 of

the 800 patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled

through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. To appreciate the full magnitude of this

stroke, consider these other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of

a contribution of three days' average wages of every individual of the population, counting every individual

as if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average wages are $2 per day, three days'

wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. In my day,

in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign

importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the American

people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100millionaire

and the annual cost to the sucking child of the daylaborer was pre cisely the same each paid $6.

Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the

united popu lations of the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,OOO,OOO. A mechanic's

average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national government's expenses

were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. Thus, by the substitu tion of nickels for gold on a king'sevil day,

I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved fourfifths of that day's

national expense into the bargain a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day

in America. In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source the wisdom

of my boyhood for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin: in

my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. The

buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than the

Marinel took the patients as they came. He ex amined the candidate; if he couldn't qualify he was warned

off; if he could he was passed along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shall lay their hands

on the sick, and they shall recover." Then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the

patient graduated and got his nickel the king hanging it around his neck himself and was dismissed.

Would you think that that would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong

in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese

around there the girl said so herself and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it

representing the occur rence a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach;

whereas, on the con trary, thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went

away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. Of course, when I was told these things

I did not be lieve them; but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the cures 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 crutches and walk off without a

limp. There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. In others,

experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients

went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king'sevil you can be sure that the most

valuable superstition that supports his throne the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his

sovereign has passed away. In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but

there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it fortynine times in fifty.

Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the

sick were still pressing forward 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 his

repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on the sick"

when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless

irruption only two cents all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greater than kings

had arrived the newsboy. But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this

I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the Adamnewsboy of the world went around the

corner to get my change; is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was

conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display headlines. I had lived in a

clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through

and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way

about it, but now its note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas.

Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their

advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had

undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little

irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life.

There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:

Sir Launcelot met up with old King Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last weok over on the moor south of

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

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 today 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

The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the Cattlemen's

Young Barker the bellowsmender is hoMe again, and looks much improved by his vacation roundup

Of course it was good enough journalism for a be ginning; I knew that quite well, and yet it was some how

disappointing. The "Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respect fulness was a

distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved. Do

what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that. There is a

profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle

and enthuse. The best way to manage in fact, the only sensible way is to disguise repeti tiousness of

fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It de ceives the eye;

you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you,

and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup

made out of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and

On Monday, the king rode in the park. " Tuesday, " " " " Wendesday " " " " Thursday " " " " Friday, " " " "

However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. Little crudities of a mechanical sort were

observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough

Arkansas proofreading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the

grammar was leaky and the construc tion more or less lame; but I did not much mind these things. They are

common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand

I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but I got only a few

bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager ques tions: What

is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a handkerchief? 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 it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They sus pected it was writing,

because those among them who knew how to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of

the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole. I put my information in the simplest

"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 explain what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by 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 all broke out with exclamations of surprise and

I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing

distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by aston

ished and reverent ejaculations all through: "Ahhh!" "How true!" "Amazing, amazing!" "These be the very

haps as they happened, in marvelous exact ness!" And might they take this strange thing in their hands, and

feel of it and examine it? they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, hand ling it as cautiously and

devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture,

caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with

fascinated eyes. These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speak ing eyes how beautiful to

me! For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent

tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or

friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it

in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the uni verse vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it

were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king,

conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches halfway to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a con

During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge

hall, and my happy eye was 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.

ABOUT bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get the hang of the lowly

raiment he was to wear. The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but hanging to the

shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both;

the slaves were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverted a bowl over his head and cut away

all the locks that hung below it. I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a

halfinch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and succeeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got

his lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, which hung straight from his neck to

his anklebones, he was no longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest and most

commonplace and un attractive. We were dressed and barbered alike, and could pass for small farmers, or

farm bailiffs, or shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our costume being in effect

universal among the poor, because of its strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheap to a

very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest material there was for male attire manufactured

We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sunup had made eight or ten miles, and were in the

midst of a sparsely settled country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions pro

visions for the king to taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage.

I found a comfortable seat for the king by the road side, and then gave him a morsel or two to stay his

stomach with. Then I said I would find some water for him, and strolled away. Part of my project was to get

out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence;

even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending

over hours; then I had a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable

as the toothache. I didn't want to break him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sit together

now when in company, or people would notice; but it would not be good politics for me to be playing

I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been resting about twenty minutes, when I heard

voices. That is all right, I thought peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be stirring this early. But

the next moment these comers jingled into sight around a turn of the road smartly clad people of quality,

with luggagemules and servants in their train! I was off like a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut.

For a while it did seem that these people would pass the king before I could get to him; but desperation gives

you wings, you know, and I canted my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew. I

"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony jump! Jump to your feet some quality are coming!"

"But my liege! You must not be seen sitting. Rise! and stand in humble posture while they pass. You are a

"True I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war with Gaul" he was up by this time, but a

farm could have got up quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate "and rightso a thought

"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 looked as humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is

the most you could say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all

along the line, and a gorgeous flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in time and was under

it when it fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which fol lowed, I spoke up sharply and

warned the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax; he wanted to

"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being without weapons, could do nothing with that

armed gang. If we are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the peasant but act the

"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 child going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day long, and an anxious mother at

its heels all the while, and just saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with each new

If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, I should have said, No, if anybody wants to

make his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; I can do better with a menagerie, and

last longer. And yet, during the first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or other dwelling. If he

could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these

places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? He didn't improve a

He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh astonishers, in new and unexpected places.

Toward evening on the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk from inside his robe!

"We have escaped divers dangers by wit thy wit but I have bethought me that it were but prudence if I

"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What would 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 as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself. We walked along,

"When ye know that I meditate a thing incon venient, or that hath a peril in it, why do you not warn me to

It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite know how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of

"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magic thou art. But prophecy is greater than magic.

I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground. After a deep reflection and careful plan ning, I

"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are two kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell

things that are but a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that are whole ages and centuries

"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and future kingship that were twenty years away."

"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit of some of the great prophets has been a

"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four hundred and six hundred years, and one whose

"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay

My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, and lift the earth's entire atmos phere as

much as an inch! That settled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his facts, with these people;

all he had to do was to state them. It never 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 keep in practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because the other is beneath

my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort stumptail prophets, as we call them in the pro fession. Of

course, I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not often hardly ever, in fact. You will

remember that there was great talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about my having prophesied

"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and piled on a thousand times more detail into the

"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing

"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should be five hundred times as easy to fore tell the

last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almost see 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

I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. The king was as hungry to find out everything that was

going to happen during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live in them. From that time out,

I prophesied myself baldheaded trying to supply the demand. I have done some indiscreet things in my day,

but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't

have to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no

use in professional work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of prophecy comes upon you,

you merely cake your intellect and lay it off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone;

Every day a knighterrant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time.

He would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious shade or so above

his ostensible degree, and so I always got him well out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look

with all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and his nostrils would inflate like a warhorse's,

and I knew he was longing for a brush with them. But about noon of the third day I had stopped in the road to

take a precaution which had been suggested by the whipstroke that had fallen to my share two days before;

a precaution which I had afterward decided to leave untaken, I was so loath to institute it; but now I had just

had a fresh reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and intellect at rest, for I was

prophesying, I stubbed my toe and fell 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 was a good thing to have along; the time would come when I could do a valuable miracle with it,

maybe, but it was a nervous thing to 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 get along 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 for gotten himself again, of course and before I could get a word of warning out, it was time for him

to skip, and well that he did it, too. He supposed they would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant

dirt under foot? When had he ever turned aside himself or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant saw

him or any other noble knight in time to judiciously save him the trouble? The knights paid no attention to the

king at all; it was his place to look out himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly ridden

The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor. The

knights were some little distance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and

looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth while to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled

and started 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 a hairlifting soul scorching thirteenjointed insult which made the king's effort poor

and cheap by comparison. I got it out of the nineteenth century where they know how. They had such

headway that they were nearly to the king before they could check up; then, frantic with rage, they stood up

their horses on their hind hoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to

breast. I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up a great bowlder at the roadside. When they were

within thirty yards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed their mailed heads, and so, with

their horsehair plumes streaming straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express came tearing

for me! When they were within fifteen yards, I sent that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just

Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembled a steamboat explosion on the Mis sissippi;

and during the next fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and

hardware and horseflesh. I say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his

breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for

some years to come in trying to ex plain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service would be

comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few peasants of that seignory; and they

But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with a dynamite bomb, This information did him no

damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noble miracle, in his eyes, and

was another settler for Merlin. I thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that

it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it

every time we had a good sub ject, and that would be inconvenient, because I hadn't any more bombs along.

ON the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had 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 be taken in hand

and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats

would know this masquerader for a hum bug and no peasant. So I called a halt and said:

"Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy; but as between your

clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your soldierly stride,

your lordly port these will not do. You stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares

of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the

eyeglance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and

unsure step. It is the sordid cares of the 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 sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction

to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the

"Pretty fair pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please there, very good. Eyes too high; pray don't look at the

horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in front of you. Ah that is better, that is very good. Wait, please; you

betray too much vigor, too much decision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please this is what I

mean......Now you are get ting 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 what it is. Please walk thirty yards, so

that I can get a perspective on the thing......Now, then your head's right, speed's right, shoulders right, eyes

right, chin right, gait, carriage, general style right every thing's right! And yet the fact remains, the

aggre gate's wrong. The account don't balance. Do it again, please......NOW I think I begin to see what it is.

Yes, I've struck it. You see, the genuine spirit lessness is wanting; that's what's the trouble. It's all

AMATUEUR mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except

"Let me think......I can't seem to quite get at it. In fact, there isn't anything that can right the matter but

practice. This is a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your stately gait, a region not liable to

interruption, only one field and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could see us from there. It

will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling you, sire."

"Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are before us. Proceed, please

The king unconsciously straightened up like a monu ment, and said, with frozen austerity:

"That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother."

"It is even true. I will say it. Brother, bring a seat, and thereto 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

The king looked puzzled he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. His head was an hourglass; it

could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

"If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals and playing the

"It is well and truly said! How wonderful is truth, come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may! Yes, he

must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin with more show of

"And there is even yet a detail that needs correct ing. He must bring nothing outside; we will go in in

among the dirt, and possibly other repulsive things, and take the food with the household, and after the

fashion of the house, and all on equal terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there will be no

ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Please walk again, my liege. There it is better it is the

best yet; but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not

"Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that

stoopeth the 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

He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man I had ever seen. But

it was an obstinate pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of stooping with any sort of

"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors; you are out of work which is

horseshoeing, let us say and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are crying because they

And so on, and so on. I drilled him as represent ing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire

privations and misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words they meant nothing in the world to

him, I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have

suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so

knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard in

tellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger

pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other.

But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me

to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as

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 heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddlebow in his hand

who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing 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 utterly unfair but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment

the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of those

WHEN we arrived at that hut at midafternoon, we saw no signs of life about it. The field near by had been

denuded of its crop some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had it been har vested and

gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had a ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was around

anywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful, it was like the stillness of death. The cabin was a

The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily on tiptoe and at halfbreath for that is the way

one's feeling makes him do, at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knocked again. No

answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in. I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up

from the ground and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. Presently she found her voice:

"Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly!

I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow eyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated

"I tell you the place is under the Church's ban. Save yourself and go, before some straggler see thee here,

"Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for the Church's curse. Let me help you."

"Now all good spirits if there be any such bless thee for that word. Would God I had a sup of water!

but hold, hold, forget I said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that feareth not the Church must

fear: this disease whereof we die. Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such whole and

But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing past 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 opening the shutter that closed

the windowhole, to let in air and light. The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman's

lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came open and a strong light flooded her face.

"Out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two

"Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame that a king should know fear, and shame that

belted knight should withhold his hand where be such as need succor. Peace, I will not 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 with a heavy

It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his life, but it was no use to argue with him. If

he considered his knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he would 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

"God be thanked for that one charity, yes these three hours. Where shall I pay to the full, my grati tude!

"Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none insult 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 find neither abbot nor yet

bishop. We were boy and girl together; we were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never

separated till 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 were boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in that innocent

glad converse wandered he far and farther, still lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know

not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was no parting, for in his fancy I went with him;

he knew not but I went with him, my hand in his my young soft hand, not this withered claw. Ah, yes, to

go, and know it not; to separate and know it not; how could one go peace fuller than that? It was his

There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king

descending. I could see that he was bearing some thing in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He

came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was

dying of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was

challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the

contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bear ing

was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal

fight and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ances tors in

his palace should have an addition I would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or

a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother

He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an overflowing heart,

and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that was all. The mother hung

over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. I

"No she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her back to life. None that be so good and kind as ye

are would do her that cruel hurt. For look you what is left to live for? Her brothers are gone, her father is

gone, her mother goeth, the Church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her even though she

lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here

overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left the poor thing forsaken "

"I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah, my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon

And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing

her and calling her by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes. I

saw tears well from the king's eyes, and trickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said:

"Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's

the time, that the little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and the daily insults of your

The king winced under this accidental homeshot, but kept still; he was learning his part; and he was playing

it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the woman food and liquor, but she

refused both. She would allow noth ing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped away

and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. This broke her down again, and there was another

scene that was full of heart break. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story.

"Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it for truly none of our condition in Britain escape it. It is the

old, weary tale. We fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that we lived and did not die;

more than that is not to be claimed. No troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them;

then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us. Years ago the lord of the manor planted

certain fruit trees on our farm; in the best part of it, too a grievous wrong and shame "

"None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean any thing, what is the lord's is his, and what is mine is his also.

Our farm was ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he would. Some little time ago, three

of those trees were found hewn down. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. Well, in his

lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie and rot till they confess. They have naught to

confess, being innocent, where fore there will they remain until they 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 planted by so much

greater force, yes, and pro tect it night and day from pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must

not be hurt by any of our sort. When my lord's crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours; when

his bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that I and my two girls

should count for our three captive sons, but for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined.

All this time our own crop was perishing through neg lect; and so both the priest and his lordship fined us

because their shares of it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate up our crop and they

took it all; they took it all and made us harvest it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. Then the

worst came 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 misery and 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 dis ease, and it

was to the priest I said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening

hand of God. He carried my trespass to his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head and

"Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None has come near this hut to know whether we live

or not. The rest of us were taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother will. It was little

they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gave them

that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But the end came yesterday; my strength broke down.

Yesterday was the last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. I have lain here all these

She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, "Oh, my darling!" and feebly gath ered

AT midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses. We covered them with such rags as we

could find, and started away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must be these people's grave, for they

could not have Christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers,

and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these

We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel. My heart flew to my throat.

We must not be seen coming from that house. I plucked at the king's robe and we drew back and took shelter

"Now we are safe," I said, "but it was a close call so to speak. If the night had been lighter he might have

"True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute and let it get by and out of the way."

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 our trepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm. There

was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the

"Mother! Father! Open we have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and

The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard the door give way, and knew that those

"Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then will follow that which it would break your

He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the road I ran; and after a moment he threw dig nity

aside and followed. I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut I couldn't bear it; I wanted to

drive it out of my mind; so I struck into the first subject that lay under that one in my mind:

"I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear; but if you have not had it also "

He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was troubling him:

"These young men have got free, they say but HOW? It is not likely that their lord hath set them free."

"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear.

"I should not call it by that name though. I do suspect that they escaped, but if they did, I am not sorry,

"IF they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their lord;

for it is not seemly that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and highhanded outrage from persons

There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He was born so, educated so, his veins were full of

ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a

long procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these men

without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were merely peasants and subject to the will

and pleasure of their lord, no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to break out of unjust

captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew

I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the subject and even then an outside matter

did it for me. This was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill a red

Fires interested me considerably, because I was get ting a good deal of an insurance business started, and

was also training some horses and building some steam fireengines, with an eye to a paid fire department by

and by. The priests opposed both my fire and life in surance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to

hinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did not hinder the decrees in the least, but only

modified the hard consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they retorted that that was

gambling against the decrees of God, and was just as bad. So they managed to damage those in dustries

more or less, but I got even on my Accident business. As a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some times even a

labrick, and hence open to pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a supersti tionmonger, 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 the result without finding one of my accidenttickets in every helmet.

We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and

trying to make out the meaning of a faraway murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. Some times it

swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause

and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. We started down the hill in its direction, and

the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness darkness that was packed and crammed in

between two tall forest walls. We groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and

more distinct all the time. the coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of

wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the lead. I ran against

something a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment

the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face 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, and the 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 that there might be life in him yet,

mustn't we? The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight.

One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense 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 to his lord; so let him be. If others hanged him,

"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet another reason. When the lightning cometh again

"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you. Come it is

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms

by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur no longer,

it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. A man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men

chasing him. They disappeared. Pres ently another case of the kind occurred, and then an other and

another. Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire it was a large manor house, and

little or nothing was left of it and every where men were flying and other men raging after them in

I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light, until

matters should improve. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood. From this hidingplace we

saw both men and women hunted by the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then, the fire

being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness

We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until

we had put this place some miles behind us. Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got

what was to be had. A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shakedown, on the

clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been

wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible

goingson at the manorhouse of Abblasoure. Yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest

"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that

It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle iron

face. I had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made us entirely

welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was im mensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of

course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who

was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she

strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable.

We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the

king, the more particularly as it was scant in quan tity. And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt,

and the national black bread�made out of horse feed. The woman told us about the affair of the even ing

before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manorhouse burst into flames. The

countryside swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master. He did not

appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the

burning house seeking that valuable personage. But after a while he was found what was left of him

which was his corpse. It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.

Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated

with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their

relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough; my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade

against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman's husband had been

active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out what the

general result had been. While we were still talking he came back from his quest. His report was revolting

enough. Eighteen persons hanged or butch ered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire.

"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?"

"None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; where fore it

was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. None

"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track,

I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager

interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in

their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the

effects produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had some how

changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' con tinued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only

pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation

around toward other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it

The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community

had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and

woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural

and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for

him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping

to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against

them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife

This was depressing to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen

centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by

the slavelords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their

midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slavelords in all political moves for the upholding

and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to

prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming

feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did de test

the slavelord, and did feel 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 it doesn't show on the outside.

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the Southern "poor white" of the far future.

"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will mis carry. Think ye the criminals will abide in their father's

house? They are fleeing, they are not wait ing. You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their

The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. I said:

"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction I think they would try to take. If

they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try to protect them from capture;

but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter."

The last remark was for the king to quiet him. On the road the man pulled his resolution together, and

began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:

He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling.

"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an I failed of my duty."

"Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. They've done

He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with ap prehension at the same time. He looked up and down the

"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, 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 any body I

"Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating it. I think devil's work has been done last

night upon those innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way. all his

Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their

"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 others like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good 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 my

neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal 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 seemingly sorrowing, and shedding

the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that

have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to

There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the

manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mis take is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good

enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed even the Russians; plenty of

manhood in them even in the Germans if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy,

to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it.

We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were

done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful

trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of

the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while.

WE strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked. We must dispose of about the amount of

time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers

and get back home again. And mean time 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 chance passersby toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl

tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coalburner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman

he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave

passed by with a counte nance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air he couldn't even see

him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of halfnaked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods,

scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored

help, but they were so beside them selves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we

plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a

little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. We

rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their

elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious

It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well. I made various acquaintance

ships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which natur

ally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during

the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's

prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the nation is

prosperous; if low, it isn't. Which is an error. It isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it,

that's the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name. I

could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth cen tury. In the North a

carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty pay able in Confederate

shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost three 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 were in the South, because the one wage had that much more

Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified 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 commonalty generally; 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 quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twentydollar gold piece. They furnished it

that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where I

got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and

perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, I went right on and furnished them

a lot of informa tion voluntarily; told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife was 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 wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so

on, and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put

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 of his 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 walking into a

paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two thousanddollar bill

for you all of a sudden. He could do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer

happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's thought,

too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration.

Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already glibly in use; that is to

say, people had dropped the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars

or cents or mills or milrays now. It was very gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure.

I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among them was the black

smith, Dowley. He was a live man and 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 of having such a man for a friend. He had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment

which bought so much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he was on

with this great man. Dowley and I fraternized at once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows,

under me in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to come out to Marco's

Sunday, and dine with us. Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee accepted, he was

Marco's joy was exuberant but only for a mo ment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when he

heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too,

the coaldust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it

was the expense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered. However, on our

"You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also allow me to pay the costs."

"But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well bear a burden like to this alone."

"Now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. I am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor,

nevertheless. I have been very fortunate this year you would be astonished to know how I have thriven. I

tell you the honest truth when I say I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never care

THAT for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers. I could see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's

estimation, and when I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style and altitude. "So you

see, you must let me have my way. You can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's SETTLED."

"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in the most generous way; Jones was remark ing

upon it today, just before you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely to say such a

thing to you because Jones isn't a talker, and is diffident in society he has a good heart and a grateful,

and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very hospitable

"But it IS something; the best a man has, freely given, is always something, and is as good as a prince can do,

and ranks right along beside it for even a prince can but do his best. And so we'll shop around and get up

this layout now, and don't you worry about the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever was born.

Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend but never mind about that you'd never believe

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shop

keepers about the riot, and now and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of shunned

and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from them and their parents

butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse towlinen and linseywoolsey

respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been

added, township by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hand'sbreadth of the original

garments was surviving and present. Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that

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

already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would be just the thing to back it up with

"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit out of kindness for Jones because you

wouldn't want to offend him. He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so

diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little things and give them to you

and Dame Phyllis and let him pay for them with out your ever knowing they came from him you know

how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well,

"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 good form, 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't

forget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he had anything to do with it. You can't think how

curiously sensitive and proud he is. He's a farmer pretty fairly welltodo farmer an I'm his bailiff;

BUT the imagination of that man! Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off,

you'd think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred years and never take

him for a farmer especially if he talked agriculture. He THINKS he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinks he's old

Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privately he don't know as much about farming as he does

about running a kingdom still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your underjaw and listen, the

same as if you had never heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die

It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; but it also prepared him for acci dents;

and in my experience when you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and can't remember

This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils and

drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. I concluded I would bunch my 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 and

the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be

theatrical or I don't take any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the

shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he

could read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could. He said he had been educated by a priest, and

could both read and write. He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy bill.

Well, and so it was, for a little concern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and

ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of

Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinnertime Sunday. He said I could depend upon his

promptness and exacti tude, it was the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in a couple

of millerguns for the Marcos gratis that everybody was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that

He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them with me. I couldn't venture to tell him that the

millergun was a little invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the

kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at government price which was the merest trifle, and the

The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. He had early dropped again into his dream of a

grand invasion of Gaul with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped

WELL, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Sat urday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos

from fainting. They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories

to this bankruptcy. You see, in addi tion to the dinnermaterials, which called for a suffi ciently 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 tables of their class as was icecream to a hermit's; also a sizeable deal dinnertable;

also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery,

stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructed the Marcos to keep quiet about this

sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning the new

clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly

daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was

due. Then their pleasure not to say delirium was so fresh and novel and in spiring that the sight of it

paid me well for the inter ruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual like the

dead. The Marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they

could think of to make him see how grateful they were. Which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any

It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a June day toned down to a degree where

it is heaven to be out of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were

soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble

to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at first. 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 thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any.

Because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn't warn

him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain.

Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own

history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. Selfmade man,

you know. They know how to talk. They do deserve 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 how he had begun life an orphan lad without

money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how

his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him

in a halffed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who

came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take

him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade or

"mystery" as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw

that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion

should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship,

but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spangnew towlinens and made him feel

"And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe they were thine own; in faith I could not."

"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was like to lose my character, the neighbors wend ing

I had mayhap been stealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that."

Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year,

and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley

"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

"I know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same reverent fashion.

"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year," added the master smith, with solemnity. "I

"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is. " He waved his hand in fine gesture of

granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would

"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workman ship at that, albeit your family is but three," said the

"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to cat and drink from withal," said the

mason, impressively. "And I 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 the smith, with a fine and friendly conde

scension, "and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of

outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye

well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and

equal that carrieth a 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 mouth we are equals equals " and he smiled around on the company

with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it.

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a

fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being

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 a sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still when 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 simonpure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the black

smith'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 new stools whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the

eyes of every 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, and the

As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said

So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't have played the hand better myself.

From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a

hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped "Oh's" and

"Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery new, and plenty of it; new wooden

goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a

small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid

everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. And while they sat there just

simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son

"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

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 linseywoolsey 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

"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light mo ment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it

"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and

"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only

I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to

weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen them stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go

"Verily this being is MADE of money! He throweth it away even as if it were dirt."

The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife:

"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you" hand ing the millerguns as if it were a matter of no conse

quence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces

with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don't know that I ever put a situation together better, or got

happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith well, he was simply mashed.

Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing

and bragging about his grand meatfeast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat

twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round all for a family of three; the entire cost for

the year not above 69.2.6 (sixtynine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along

a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blowout; and not only that, but acts as if it made him

tired to handle such small sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunkup and collapsed; he had

HOWEVER, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy

again. It was easy to do in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country where they have ranks and

castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You prove your

superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it he knuckles down. You can't

insult him after that. No, I don't mean quite that; of course you CAN insult him, I only mean it's difficult; and

so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had the smith's reverence now,

because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some

little gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner's in 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 the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into

the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble

clotheshorses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world after God Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright,

The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or ironclad duel, he

dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg

handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into

matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort busi ness and wages, of course. At a first glance, things

appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom whose lord was King Bagdemagus

as compared with the state of things in my own region. They had the "protection" system in full force here,

whereas we were working along down toward freetrade, by easy stages, and were now about half way.

Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley warmed to his

work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones

"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swine herd?"

"With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanic get carpenter, dauber, mason,

"Hoho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out

the tailor, but not the others they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more yes,

up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen my self, within the

And his face shone upon the company like a sun burst. But I didn't scare at all. I rigged up my piledriver,

and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth drive him ALL in drive him in till not

even the curve of his skull should show above ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:

"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton when you buy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the

"We pay 6. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?"

"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents." I prepared now to

sock it to him. l said: "Look here, dear friend, WHAT'S BECOME OF YOUR HIGH WAGES YOU WERE

BRAGGING SO ABOUT A FEW MINUTES AGO?" and I looked around on the company with placid

satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever

noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become of those noble high wages of yours? I seem to have

But if you will believe me, he merely looked sur prised, that is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't

know he had walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was IN a trap. I could have shot him, from sheer

"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is PROVED that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that

thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing? an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under

Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlookedfor stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so

manifestly sided with him and were of his mind if you might call it mind. My position was simple enough,

"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are merely higher than ours in NAME, not in

"Yesyes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to do with it; the AMOUNT of the wages in mere

coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with 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 mechanic

is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventyfive "

"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say is this. With us HALF a dollar buys more than a

DOLLAR buys with you and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest kind of

"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back."

"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head? Now look here let me

illustrate. We pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than

"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and "

"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll understand it. For instance, it takes your

woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day 7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in 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, and two 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 spoke at last and be trayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his

"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your jour neymen goes out and buys the following articles:

"1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 towlinen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5

"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days to earn the money 5 weeks and 2 days. Let

him come to us and work 32 days at HALF the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2

cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carry

it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every two months, YOUR man nothing; thus saving

five or six weeks' wages in a year, your man not a cent. NOW I reckon you understand that 'high wages' and

'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will BUY the

But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those people valued was HIGH WAGES; it didn't seem

to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. They stood for

"protection," and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into

the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a

century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us,

in a shorter time, wages had ad vanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. But it

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Un deserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften the

smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the

bestinformed man in the entire world, the loftiest un crowned head that had moved through the clouds of

any political firmament for centuries, sitting here ap parently defeated in argument by an ignorant country

blacksmith! And I could see that those others were sorry for me which made me blush till I could smell

my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt wouldn't

YOU have struck below the belt 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 only saying 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 out a lovetap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm

going to hit him at all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a

blundering halfway business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so

that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and

he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That is the way I went for brother Dowley. I started to

talking lazy and com fortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world

couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting 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 also unwritten laws THEY are eternal. Take the un written law

of wages: it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries. And notice how it

works. We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's the

wages of today. We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years

ago; that's as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the

periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining

what 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 can tell you what people's

wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years."

"Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and

"I would't I might die now and live then!" inter rupted Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow

"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 attention now a mechanic's wages will be mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a

There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands:

"Riches! of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with ex citement.

"Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three

hundred and forty years more there'll be at least ONE country where the mechanic's average wage will be

It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then

"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of

Bagdemagus that hath an income like to that. Income of an earl mf! it's the income of an angel!"

"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as re gards 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 to earn 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, and servant shall be for that year?"

"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town coun cil; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general

"Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to HELP him fix their wages for them, does he?"

"Hm! That WERE an idea! The master that's to pay him the money is the one that's rightly concerned in that

"Yes but I thought the other man might have some little trifle at 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 shall have who DO work. You see? They're a 'combine' a

trade union, to coin a new phrase who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what

they choose to give. Thirteen hundred years hence so says the unwritten law the 'combine' will be the

other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent

tyranny of trade unions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away

down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wageearner will consider that a couple of

thousand years or so is enough of this onesided 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 humiliation to settle."

"That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then."

"Oh, and there's another detail. In that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or

"It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch

"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 town whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him! and they can't put him

"Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong indignation. "An age of dogs, an age barren of

"Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that in stitution. I think the pillory ought to be abolished."

"Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime?"

"Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punish ment for a small offense and then kill him?"

There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first time, the smith wasn't up and ready. The

"You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future

age that isn't going to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What usually happens when a poor

fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? The mob try to

"They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod and get

"Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob and here and there a man or a woman with a

secret grudge against him and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or

his prosperity, or one thing or another stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't

"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? jaws broken, teeth smashed out? or legs mutilated, gan

"And if he is unpopular he can depend on DYING, right there in the stocks, can't he?"

"I take it none of YOU are unpopular by reason of pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of

those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? YOU wouldn't think it much of a

Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray it by any spoken word. As for the others,

they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a

man's chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick

"Well, to change the subject for I think I've established my point that the stocks ought to be abol ished. I

think some of our laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks,

and you know I did it and yet keep still and don't report me, YOU will get the stocks if anybody informs on

"Ah, but that would serve you but right," said Dowley, "for you MUST inform. So saith the law."

"Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's one thing which certainly isn't fair. The

magistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at 1 cent a day, for instance. The law says that if any master shall venture,

even under utmost press of business, to pay anything OVER that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be

both fined and pilloried for it; and who ever knows he did it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and

pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly

confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil "

Oh, I tell YOU it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just

slipped up on poor smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected any

thing was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.

A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever pro duced, with so little 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 scare them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they had been a whole lifetime

learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them

distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and report well, it was awful, and they couldn't

seem to recover from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful?

Why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought they

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 oppressed and suspicious

people, a people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just

or kind treat ment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. Appeal to ME to be gentle, to

WELL, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must get up a diversion; anything to employ me

while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again. There sat Marco,

petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his millergun turned to stone, just in the attitude he was in

when my piledriver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed

to explain its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race

I never saw such an awkward people, with machin ery; you see, they were totally unused to it. The

millergun was a little doublebarreled tube of tough ened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it,

which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into

your hand. In the gun were two sizes wee mustard seed shot, and another sort that were several times

larger. They were money. The mustardseed shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun was a

purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry

it in your mouth; or in 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

metal cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I was the 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 knew it

would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth cen tury, yet none would suspect how and

The king joined us, about this time, mightily re freshed by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could make

me nervous now, I was so uneasy for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to detect a com

placent something in the king's eye which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a

performance of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose such a time as this?

I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up

to the subject 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's confidence; DON'T

waste any of this golden time." But of course I couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we were

conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and

mooned along about his damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the

dangersignal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and

confusion and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering

plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I

" were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this

point, some contending that the onion is but an un wholesome berry when stricken early from the tree "

The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes in a surprised and troubled way.

" whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instanc

" yet are they clearly wholesome, the more espe cially when one doth assuage the asperities of their

The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and one of them muttered, "These be errors, every

one God hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer." I was in miserable apprehension; I sat upon thorns.

" and further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the

green fruit of the creature, is the better, all con fessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore

engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in con nection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome

They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, "The one would betray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill

them!" they flung themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! He might be lame in agriculture,

but this kind of thing was just in his line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. He hit the

blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "St.

George for Britain!" and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but I laid him out like nothing. The

three gathered them selves up and came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating this,

with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they

couldn't tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammer ing away with what might was left in

them. Ham mering each other for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and

gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. We

looked on with out apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the

Well, while they were gradually playing out, it sud denly occurred to me to wonder what had become of

Marco. I looked around; he was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled the king's sleeve, and

we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco there, 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 into the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants

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 depths we would take to a tree and

let them whistle. Ah, but then came another sound dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. It magnified

We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. We struck a

stream and darted into it. We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred

yards, and then came across an oak with a great bough 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; now we began to hear those sounds more

plainly; so the mob had struck our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. And then for another

while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now

When we were snugly lodged in the tree and cur tained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was

doubtful. I believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it worth while to

try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to

connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satis factory concealment among the foliage, and then we had

Presently we heard it coming and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream.

Louder louder next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and

"I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to 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've flanked them. Dark

is coming on, presently. If we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from

We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning. We stopped

"Yes," said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on their way home. We will climb back to our roost

He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise approached steadily, but not with a rush.

"They reason that we were advantaged by no par lous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. A voice

"An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground.

I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you

know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best

swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him

to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand be fore; he doesn't do the

thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often

it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable

preparation against a nearsighted, crosseyed, puddingheaded clown who would aim himself at the wrong

tree and hit the right one? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right

Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way

up. The king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head arrived in reach of

it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of

anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prison ers. Another

man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge.

The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the bridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no

matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach.

The king's spirits rose, his joy was limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should

have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole countryside.

However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began

to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer. We

had no objections. A stone might pos sibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were

well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point. If they would but

waste half an hour in stone throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feeling very well satisfied.

But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted. Before the stones had been raging

through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell. A couple of

sniffs of it was enough of an explanation it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recog nized that.

When smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and

higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of

"Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other. Then will we

Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang

to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow and racket were

prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and con fusion and thickfalling blows. Suddenly some horse men tore

How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman: picturesque and costly

raiment, the aspect of command, a hard coun tenance, with complexion and features marred by dis

sipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentleman inspected us critically, then said

"They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and "

"Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be

"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 upon our own concerns. We are from a far country,

and unacquainted here. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection

these people would have killed us. As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or

The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "Lash me these 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 such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush. The

shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back.

Meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us. We were

lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were

friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time

after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. My lord went

immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning we

My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said:

"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl

Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a

moderate and comfortable gait, and in con versation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in

his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was near the

middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks

once more for my lord, and then ap proached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what

might be the object of interest. It was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they had been

dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poor husband was gone, and also many others; and

some few purchases had been added to the gang. The king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but

I was absorbed, and full of pity. I could not 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 con trast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty

I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering I was a man. Cost what it might, I would

Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip

SLAVES! The word had a new sound and how unspeakably awful! The king lifted his manacles and

brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen of the

rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so

loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that

libertymouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined

"If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear the Godgiven liberties of Britain are about ye for your

"Thou'rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects. They

take a MEANING, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.

All hands shook their heads and looked disap pointed; some turned away, no longer interested. The orator

"An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned them. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not

deny that. Ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The law is clear: it doth not

require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not."

"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only time to send to the Valley of Holiness "

"Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted. It would

I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to

There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us up and sold us at auction. This same in fernal law

had existed in our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds

of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the

circumstance making any particular im pression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came

into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became sud denly hellish.

Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and an active market we should have brought a good

price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time I

think of it. The King of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was

easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. But that is the way things always go; if you force a

sale on a dull market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you

However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account. Let him go, for the present;

The slavedealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his

procession. We took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me

unaccountably strange and odd that the King of Eng land and his chief minister, marching manacled and

fettered and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and 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 king than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a

cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But reveal his quality, and dear me it takes

your very breath away to look at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.

IT'S a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural. What would he brood about, should you say?

Why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest;

from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the

basest. No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he

had fetched! He couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when I first found it out,

that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right focus

on it, I saw I was mistaken; it WAS natural. For this reason: 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, are real, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of

his worth, and the king certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that high.

Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have

fetched twentyfive dollars, sure a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit; I

wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for me to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argu ment

and do the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that he ought to have

brought twentyfive dollars; whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had never seen a

king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth

the fourth of 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 it a palliation of that tiresome sevendollar sale. Wherever we

halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over

again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different re sult." Well, when he was first sold, it secretly

tickled me to see him go for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying I wished

he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible

purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this:

"Here's a twodollarandahalf chump with a thirty dollar style. Pity but style was marketable."

At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner was a practical person and he perceived that this

defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he went to work to take the style out

of his sacred majesty. I could have given the man some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn't volunteer

advice to a slavedriver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficiently

difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now

then, to undertake to 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 me trouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at

the end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club and fist had done their work well; the king's

body was a sight to see and to weep over; but his spirit? why, it wasn't even phased. Even that dull

clod of a slavedriver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he

dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you can't. This man found that from his first effort

down to his latest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him,

and did it. So he gave up at 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 was a 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 in the slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; from being the most

indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever

heard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question which I had asked years before and had gotten such

a sharp answer that I 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 profanity was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crashword almost in the middle

I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to get free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I

had wanted to, but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded the king from

them. But now ah, it was a new atmosphere! Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it

now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmed with it. It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a

great deal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure ones; but none that would be as

picturesque as this; none that could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give this one up. It might

Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken by a snowstorm while still a mile from

the village we were making for. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick.

You couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slavedriver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin

before him, but his lashings only made mat ters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from

likelihood of succor. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were. The storm

continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women

were dead, and others past moving and threat ened with death. Our master was nearly beside him self. He

stirred up the living, and made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well

Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and see

ing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after

her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch 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 black cat. This poor woman had been stoned

until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her.

Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he

saw his chance. He said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine that! They were willing.

They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she

shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely

for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commer cial value by the

same fire which took away the inno cent life of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master we

had. I took HIS number. That snowstorm cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever,

We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession. And such a procession! All the riffraff of the

kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. In the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and

on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a

passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained

down upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, knead ing 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 after the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald

remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight. We

had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London society. Our

master secured a good place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb

up, and said comforting words to her, and made the undersheriff provide a stool for her. Then he stood there

by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out

over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and

then began to 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 said it in; and so

"Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. This cannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be

resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fel lows may be

few. A law sends this poor young thing to death and it is right. But another law had placed her where she

must commit her crime or starve with her child and before God that law is responsible for both her crime

"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 lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts. Her

young husband was as happy as she; for he was doing 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 was adding his mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a treacher

ous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and swept it away! That young husband was waylaid

and impressed, and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought him everywhere, she moved the

hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks dragged by, she

watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. Little by little all

her small possessions 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 a piece 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 the

owner 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 her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, by per mission, and said she did steal

the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne with hunger all

acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she

was so hungry! For a moment all were touched, and there was disposi tion to deal mercifully with her,

seeing that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her of her

support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that

whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days, and

mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property oh, my God, is there no property in ruined homes,

and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British law holds precious! and so he must require sentence.

"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his

face as gray as ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poor child, poor child, I did not

know it was death!' and fell as a tree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was

set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a man whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this

that is 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, my child; let me pray over thee not FOR thee, dear abused poor heart and

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 it with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby

crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play. Even the

hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and

forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and

made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope and the undersheriff held her short. Then

She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when they got it away again, she cried out:

"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother "

"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I be to it till I die."

You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what do you want with words to express that? Words

are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven,

LONDON to a slave was a sufficiently interest ing place. It was merely a great big village; and

mainly mud and thatch. The streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking and

drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor. The king had a palace there; he

saw the outside of it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor juvenile sixth century way. We saw

knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises,

and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to

speak with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule hunting for me, I imagined.

But the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a

square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies.

It was the sight of a newsboy and I couldn't get at him! Still, I had one com fort here was proof that

Clarence was still alive and banging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought was full of cheer.

I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from

housetop to housetop. Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little piece of it. It was just

what I needed, in order to carry out my project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with the

king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch

But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise I would wind up with at the palace. It was all

feasible, if I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could shape into a lockpick. I could then

undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose. But I never had

any luck; no such thing ever hap pened to fall in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman

who had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. I

was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time I was first enslaved

was exorbitant, and always provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it

twentytwo dollars. He wouldn't bate a cent. The king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique,

but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave. I considered

myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong

to this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which I expected would belong to me

eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long

cloth outside gar ment was fastened together in front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me

twice, be cause he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe; but this time I

suc ceeded; I captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the

I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance to be sad again. For when the purchase

was about to fail, as usual, the master sud denly spoke up and said what would be worded thus in

"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for no good. Give me twentytwo dollars for this one,

The king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. He began to choke and gag, and meantime the master

"Then I will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and disappeared, 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. And so shall I. Tonight we shall both be free."

"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks and cast off these chains tonight. When he

comes about ninethirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the

That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. That evening we waited patiently for our

fellowslaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those

poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about as

usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their

regular snoring. As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have enough of it left for our

needs; so I made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn't seem to touch a

padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him

But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. I took a good breath of relief, and

reached for the king's irons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walking

staff in the other. I snuggled close among the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was

naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and pre pared to spring for my man the moment he should bend

But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed ab sently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking

about something else; then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could

imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him.

Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in

those days, and it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. I darted for it, threw myself

upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a

crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact,

couldn't have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. Then a tremen dous row broke

out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sym pathy in that.

Lanterns began to swing in all direc tions; it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd

fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant. I was in custody. So was my adversary. We

were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster, here was a fine

scheme gone to sudden de struction! I tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover

that it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general

Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman's tin

SLEEP? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its

mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and songsinging rapscallions. But the thing that made sleep all the

more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole

size of what might have happened yonder in the slavequarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage

It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made a full and frank explanation to the court. I said

I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the Tabard inn in the

village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being taken deadly

sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best

physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all my might; the night was dark, I ran against

this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although I told him my

errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great earl my master's mortal peril

The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going to explain how I rushed upon him and

"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach him how to

Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's

fault that this highhanded thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave. Took it

just in time, too; he was starting to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was arrested. 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

knocked out of me and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast.

No grass grew under my feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty everybody gone! That is, everybody

except one body the slavemaster's. It lay there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of a

terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were

I picked out a man humble enough in life to conde scend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his ac

"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended."

"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and

escaped in some strange way by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks

were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair,

and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in other and

"Would they be a week, think you and the matter so simple? They were not the half of a quarter of an

"Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time."

"WHICH ones? Indeed, they considered not par ticulars like to that. They condemned them in a body. Wit

ye not the law? which men say the Romans left behind them here when they went that if one slave

"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure

"Before the day is spent yes. They seek him everywhere. They stand at the gates of the town, with certain

of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out but he will be first

I took the address of that prison for future reference and then sauntered off. At the first secondhand clothing

shop I came to, up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be going on a

cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This con cealed my

worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my former self. Then I struck out for that wire,

found it and followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's shop which meant that business

wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked the

door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise;

"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle your instrument. Lively, now! Call

"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get away from the instrument and I will do it myself."

He did so. We waited five nervestraining minutes ten minutes how long it did seem! and then

came a click that was as familiar to 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

He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen but it didn't win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time

in sociabilities with Clarence, but squared away for business, straightoff thus:

"The king is here and in danger. We were cap tured and brought here 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 telegram for the palace here which

"They don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had any experience yet, the line to Lon don is

Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was crowding the facts. I couldn't think up anything for the

"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; and send them on the jump. Let them enter by

the southwest gate, and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm."

"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm a friend of yours and a deadhead; and that he must be

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 ground was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably make

a sevenmile gait; they would have to change horses a couple of times; they would arrive about six, or a little

after; it would still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which I should tie around my right

arm, and I would take command. We would 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

Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought I would look up some of those people whom

I had formerly recognized, and make myself known. That would help us out of our scrape, with out the

knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it

wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in

shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should finally reach silk and velvet,

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 right into

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. Those people had stopped,

and were talking together and looking in at the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was

a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out there and look for the escaped slave, who was

believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder

at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he

needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when I

She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the

errand at once. I slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket and started

Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. A double one, in fact. There were plenty of

ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque one;

it is the crying defect of my character. And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being

human, 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 find a stout oaken door, securely locked, be tween him and

me; before he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping into a suc cession of

baffling disguises which would soon get me into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from

meddling lawdogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. But instead of

doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I came

with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was a

cul de sac however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up to profit and loss.

Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from a 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. Then I re proached him for

betraying me. He was more sur prised than hurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said:

"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang with us, when thou'rt the very CAUSE of

"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 by argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said:

"Ye have not ranked as a fool before. You might better keep your reputation, seeing the strain would not

"It will stand it, I reckon. Before tomorrow we shall be out of prison, and free to go where we will, besides."

The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said:

"Out of prison yes ye say true. And free likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace

"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed."

"That ye will all be hanged TODAY, at midafter noon! Oho! that shot hit home! Lean upon me."

The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as much as

three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which was more

important. More important, not merely to me, but to the nation the only nation on earth standing ready to

blossom into civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn't anything to say. I knew what the man

meant; that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place

NEARING four in the afternoon. The scene was just outside the walls of London. A cool, com fortable,

superb day, with a brilliant sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The multitude was

prodigious and farreaching; and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful

in that thought, look at it how you might. There we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery

of all those enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built a sort of grand stand for the

nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force, with their ladies. We recognized a good many of them.

The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king. The moment we were freed of our

bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself

Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of

his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It

wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. then, although the crowd begged him to go on, and

"Let him speak! The king! The king! his hum ble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the

But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat under this rain of contempt and insult un moved.

He certainly was great in his way. Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and wound it about my right

"Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and tomorrow you will hear that from Camelot which "

I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. But presently there was silence; for the sheriffs

of London, in their official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which indicated that business

was about to begin. In the hush which followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then

Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. There lay the smooth road below us, we upon

one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side a good clear road, and kept free by the police

how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the

possibilities. I followed its receding thread out into the distance not a horseman on it, or sign of one.

There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied.

In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It was dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and

when I turned back I missed the king! They were blindfolding him! I was paralyzed; I couldn't move, I was

choking, my tongue was petrified. They finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. I couldn't

shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the noose around his neck, then everything let go

in me and I made a spring to the rescue and as I made it I shot one more glance abroad by George!

The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord, how the plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from

I waved my right arm as Launcelot swept in he recognized my rag I tore away noose and bandage, and

"On your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! Who fails shall sup in hell tonight!"

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 that scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. And it was fine to see that astonished

multitude go down on their knees and beg their 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

I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all around, it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever

And presently up comes Clarence, his own self! and winks, and says, very modernly:

"Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I've had the boys practicing this long time, privately;

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 turned to the adver tising columns, knowing I should find something of personal interest to

Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat. All other topics sank into

insignificance and passed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not because a tournament was a great

matter, it was not because Sir Sagramor had found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was not

because the second (official) personage in the king dom was one of the duellists; no, all these features were

commonplace. Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was

creating. It was born of the fact that all the 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 not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but

of superhuman art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master en chanters of the age. It

was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of

comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child's play, contrasted with this mysterious and

awful battle of the gods. Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between Merlin and me, a

measuring of his magic powers against mine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights

together, imbuing Sir Sagramor's arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he

had procured for him from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his

antagonist while still visible to other men. Against Sir Sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand

knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchant ments could prevail. These facts were

sure; regard ing them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question: might there be

still other enchantments, UNKNOWN to Merlin, which could render Sir Sagramor's veil transparent to me,

and make his enchanted mail vulnerable to my weapons? This was the one thing to be decided in the lists.

So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one

they had in their minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die: THE LIFE OF

KNIGHTERRANTRY. I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I

was the champion of hard unsentimental commonsense and reason. I was enter ing the lists to either

Vast as the showgrounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the

morning of the 16th. The mammoth grandstand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and

packed with several acres of smallfry tributary kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our own

royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets

well, I never saw anything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippi sunset and the aurora

borealis. The huge camp of beflagged and gay colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff standing

sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight. You see,

every knight was there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling toward their order was not

much of a secret, and so here was their chance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramor, others would have the

Down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another for my servants. At the appointed hour the

king made a sign, and the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants

and stating the cause of quarrel. There was a pause, then a ringing bugleblast, which was the signal for us to

come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face.

Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramor, an im posing tower of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear

standing upright in its socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face and breast cased in steel,

his body clothed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground oh, a most noble picture. A great shout

And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout. There was a wondering and eloquent silence for a mo ment,

then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugleblast cut its career

short. I was in the simplest and comfortablest of gymnast costumes fleshcolored tights from neck to heel,

with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded. My horse was not above medium size, but he was

alert, slenderlimbed, muscled with watch springs, and just a greyhound to go. He was a beauty, glossy as

The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we

tripped lightly up to meet them. We halted; the tower saluted, I responded; then we wheeled and rode side by

side to the grandstand and faced our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. The queen exclaimed:

But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her

business. The bugles rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. Now

old Merlin stepped into view and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramor which turned him

into Hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, Sir Sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the

next moment here he 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's

position and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave

It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favor for me and furnished the language, too. When

that formidable lancepoint was within a yard and a half of my breast I twitched my horse aside without an

effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up,

and down we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me. This same thing was

repeated once more; and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramor lost his temper, and at

once changed his tactics and set him self the task of 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 whirled out of his path with ease

whenever I chose, and once I slapped him on the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase into my

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 always in front at the end of his maneuver. So he gave up that business and retired to his end of

the lists. His temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of

mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and grasped the coil in my right hand. This time you

should have seen him come! it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye. I was

sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment

he was under way, I started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky

spirals of the rope acleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained

animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and

Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. These people had never seen anything of that

cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From all around and every

I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the

whole knighterrantry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. The

moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my

station and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was sure to have use for it as soon as they could

elect a successor for Sir Sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there were so many hungry candidates.

BZZ! Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged: he passed like a flash, with my horsehair coils settling

I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. When I had snaked five men out, things

began to look serious to the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a result, they de cided

that it was time to waive etiquette and send their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that

little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after him Sir 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

A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur, King of Britain; yonder was Guenever; yes,

and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, renowned knights

from many lands; and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the

most illustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was yonder

couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was I laying for

him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hellogirl of West Hartford, and I wished she could

see me now. In that moment, down came the Invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind the courtly world

rose to its feet and bent forward the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink I

was towing Sir Launcelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs

Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddlehorn, and sat there drunk with glory, "The

victory is perfect no other will venture against me knighterrantry is dead." Now imagine my

astonish ment and everybody else's, too to hear the peculiar buglecall which announces that another

competitor is about to enter the lists! There was a mystery here; I couldn't account for this thing. Next, I

noticed Mer lin gliding away from me; and then I noticed that my lasso was gone! The old sleightofhand

The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagramor riding again, with his dust brushed off and is veil

nicely rearranged. I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's hoofs. He

"Thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" and he touched the hilt of his great sword . "An ye

are not able to see it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous lance, but a sword

His visor was up; there was death in his smile. I should never be able to dodge his sword, that was plain.

Somebody was going to die this time. If he got the drop on me, I could name the corpse. We rode forward

"He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. There exists none other but that one. It

belongeth to the king of 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 bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea."

"Then is he weaponless," said the king. "Sir Sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow."

"And I will lend!" said Sir Launcelot, limping up. "He is as brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live,

"Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons; it was his privilege to choose them and bring them.

"Knight!" said the king. "Thou'rt overwrought with passion; it disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked

Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest smile 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 proclama tion, and we turned apart and rode to our stations. There

we stood, a hundred yards apart, 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 could not take heart to give the signal. But at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle

followed, Sir Sagramor's long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come. I

sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got so excited that they shouted to me:

I never budged so much as an inch till that thunder ng apparition had got within fifteen paces of me; then I

snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the

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 life was actually gone out of the man and no

reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a hole through the breast of his

chainmail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there pro duces

but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and swaddlings under the armor. The body was

dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefied with aston ishment

naturally. I was requested to come and ex plain the miracle. But I remained in my tracks, like a statue, and

"If it is a command, I will come, but my lord the king knows that I am where the laws of combat require me

"If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, I do not wait for them to challenge me, I

"It is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well be seems you. Whom will you name first?"

"I name none, I challenge all! Here I stand, and dare the chivalry of England to come against me not by

"You have heard the challenge. Take it, or I pro claim you recreant knights and vanquished, every one!"

It was a "bluff" you know. At such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a

hundred times what it is worth; fortynine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call," and you rake in the chips.

But just this once well, things looked squally! In just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling into

their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon

me. I snatched both revol vers from the holsters and began to measure distances and calculate chances.

Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang bang, and I 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 feel so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected the wavering in

the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instant lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't

lose it. I raised both revolvers and pointed them the halted host stood their ground just about one good

The day was mine. Knighterrantry was a doomed institution. The march of civilization was begun. How did

And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Some how, every time the magic of folderol tried conclu

WHEN I broke the back of knighterrantry that time, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very

next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops

to an astonished world. That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspec tion 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 so I must just simply paralyze them nothing short of that would answer. 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

I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also

I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and

I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could do what I promised. There wasn't any way to

misunderstand the language of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain

case of "put up, or shut up." They were wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave me no

Consider the three years sped. Now look around on England. A happy and prosperous country, and strangely

altered. Schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Even authorship was

taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humor ist was first in the field, with a volume of grayheaded jokes which I

had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer I

wouldn't have said anything; but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hanged the author.

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized. The telegraph,

the telephone, the phonograph, the type writer, the sewingmachine, and all the thousand will ing and

handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the

Thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine; I was getting ready to

We were building several lines of railway, and our line from Camelot to London was already finished and in

operation. I was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and

distinguished honor. My idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep them

out of mischief. The plan worked very well, the competition for the places was hot. The conductor of the 4.33

express was a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of earl. They were good

men, every one, but they had two defects which I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they wouldn't lay aside

There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful employment. They were going from end

to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their

experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed

in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battleaxe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a

sewingmachine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbedwire 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 secretly longedfor point. You see, I had two

schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church

and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins not as an Established Church, but a goasyouplease one; and

the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur's death unlimited

suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike at any rate to all men, wise or unwise,

and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twentyone.

Arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age that is to say, forty and I believed

that in that time I could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event

which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world a rounded and complete governmental

revolution without bloodshed. The re sult to be a republic. Well, I may as well confess, though I do feel

ashamed when I think of it: I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first presi dent myself. Yes,

Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic, with out

privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate.

He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of

it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He

was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal

family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same

disposition to get up shin dies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never

know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other

royal house, and "Tom VII., or Tom XI., or Tom XIV. by the grace of God King," would sound as well as it

would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And as a rule," said he, in his neat modern

English, "the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this

would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason that a nation always models its morals

after its monarch's. The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats

would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be

noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of

any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would

certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle

system, and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill the vacancies with

catlings from our own royal house; we should become a fac tory; we should supply the thrones of the world;

within forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats. The reign of

universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever...... Meeeyowowowow fzt! wow!"

Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him, until he exploded that

cathowl and startled me almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He didn't know what it

was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional

monarchy, but he was too featherheaded to know it, or care anything about it, either. I was going to give

him a scolding, but Sandy came flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a

minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said,

In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and

everywhere, all over the palace. I took in the situa tion almost at a glance membranous croup! I bent

That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for preparations of sulphur, I rousted out the

croupkettle myself; for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child is 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 laugh through the teardews on its eye lashes when

Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great hall now on his way to the stock board; he

was president of the stockboard, and occu pied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought of Sir Galahad; for

the stockboard consisted of the Knights of the Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business

purposes now. Seats at it were worth well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it.

Sir Launcelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to

squeeze the shorts today; but what of that? He was the same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he

was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him; bulls and bears might fight

it out their own way for all him, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello Central for all he was

worth. And that was what he did. He shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick

in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croupkettle. By this time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over

Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch

of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the steamspout under the

canopy. Everything was shipshape 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 couple of churchwardens with willowbark and

sumachtobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under the canopy, and she

was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be a

more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in his noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the

end of a yard of snowy churchwarden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make

a wife and children happy. But, of course Guenever however, it's no use to cry over what's done and can't

Well, he stood watchandwatch with me, right straight through, for three days and nights, till the child was

out of danger; then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden

head, then laid her softly in Sandy's lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between the ranks

of admiring menatarms and menials, and so disappeared. And no instinct warned me that I should never

The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax her back to health and strength again. And

she must have seaair. So we took a manof war, and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons, and went

cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it

would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little king of that region offered us his

hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have

been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of

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. She would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which I had been

starting. It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for

the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time

preserve the 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 vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of

criticism, I chose my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't a sceptered

sovereign. As for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't throw 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't do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one

team from the other, but that was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chainmail ulsters, and

the other wore plate armor made of my new Bessemer steel. Their prac tice in the field was the most

fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ballproof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the

result; when a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards

sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like

an ironclad coming into port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue

that. These people were no easier to please than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his last;

they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no

umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose

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 spring weather now, and

HOWEVER, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; our child began to lose ground again,

and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allow anybody to

help in this service, so we two stood watchandwatch, day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she

had, how simple, and genuine, and good she was! She was a flawless wife and mother; and yet I had married

her for no other par ticular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some

knight should win her from me in the field. She had hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the

hangingbout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way

and as of right. I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partner ship would compromise her,

sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument short and we had a wedding.

Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw. Within the twelvemonth I be came

her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People talk about beautiful

friendships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the

friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no

place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.

In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling

and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many a time Sandy heard that

imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon

our child, 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 played her quaint and

"The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide

alway in our ears. Now thou'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 the world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and

"Yes, I know, sweetheart how dear and good it is of you, too! But I want to hear these lips of yours, which

I didn't laugh I am always thankful for that but the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks

afterward I could hear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake. The first time she

heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had given

order for it: that henceforth and forever the tele phone must always be invoked with that reverent for

mality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. This was not true. But

Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were uncon scious

of any world outside of that sickroom. Then our reward came: the center of the universe turned 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've

watched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the

Why, we were back in this world in one instant! Then we looked the same startled thought into each other's

In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. They had been steeped in troubled bodings all this

time their faces showed it. I called an escort and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea.

Where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with

its whitewinged flocks? Vanished, every one! Not a sail, from verge to verge, not a smokebank just a

I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandy this ghastly news. We could imagine no

explanation that would begin to explain. Had there been an invasion? an earthquake? a pestilence? Had the

nation been swept out of existence? But guessing was profitless. I must go at once. I borrowed the king's

The parting ah, yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and

jabbered out its vocabulary! the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy. The

darling mispronunciations of childhood! dear me, there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves

when it wastes away and dissolves into correct ness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.

I approached England the next morning, with the wide highway of salt water all to myself. There were ships

in the harbor, at Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them. It was

Sunday; yet at Canterbury the streets were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no

stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness of death was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last,

in the 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 there close 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 in

black, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew! Now I understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken

I asked no questions; I didn't need to ask any. The Church had struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a

disguise, and go warily. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the

town I put them on, and from that time I traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrass ment of company.

A miserable journey. A desolate silence everywhere. Even in London itself. Traffic had ceased; men did not

talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each man by himself, with his

head down, and woe and terror at his heart. The Tower showed recent warscars. Verily, much had been

Of course, I meant to take the train for Camelot. Train! Why, the station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved

on. The journey to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen. The Monday and the Tuesday

differed in no way from the Sunday. I arrived far in the night. From being the best electric lighted town in

the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever saw, it was be come simply a blot a

blot upon darkness that is to 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 if maybe it was symbolical a sort of sign that the Church was going

to KEEP the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that. I found no life stirring

in the somber streets. I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not

a spark visible about it. The drawbridge was down, the great gate stood wide, I entered without challenge, my

own heels making the only sound I heard and it was sepulchral enough, in those huge vacant courts.

I FOUND Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; and in place of the electric light, he had

reinstituted the ancient raglamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight. He sprang up

He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all. Which frightened 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 have come so early; but it would have come,

anyway. It would have come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the queen's."

"I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that

"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 stockboard. When you left, three miles of the London, Canterbury and Dover

were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stockmarket. It was wildcat, and

everybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a giveaway. What does 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,

"Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't de liver. Oh, he had them and he just settled his grip and

squeezed them. They were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to 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 restedup that side by shift ing the laugh to the other side. That was when they compromised with the

"He skinned them alive, and they deserved it anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. Well, among the

flayed were Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act second, scene first,

an apartment in Carlisle castle, where the court had gone for a few days' hunting. Persons present, the whole

tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agravaine propose to call the guileless Arthur's attention to

Guenever and Sir Launcelot. Sir Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will have nothing to do with it. A

dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agravaine spring their

devastating tale upon him. TABLEAU. A trap is laid for Launcelot, by the king's command, and Sir

Launcelot walks into it. He made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses to wit,

Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he killed every one of them but Mordred; but of

course that couldn't straighten matters between Launce lot and the king, and didn't."

"Oh, dear, only one thing could result I see that. War, and the knights of the realm divided into a king's

"Yes that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire.

Launcelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of 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,

"My peerless shortstop! I've seen him catch a daisycutter in his teeth. Come, I can't stand this!"

" Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope, Sir Perimones, and whom do you think?"

"Well, it was an accident. They were simply on lookers; they were unarmed, 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 an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the

battle; it's for sale on every newsstand. There the figures nearest the queen are Sir Launcelot with his

sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his latest breath. You can catch the agony in the queen's face through the

"Indeed, it is. We must take good care of it; its historical value is incalculable. Go on."

"Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Launcelot retreated to his town and castle of Joyous

Gard, and gathered there 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 corpses and

castiron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur and 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 him thence, and make swift prepara tion, and look to be

soon attacked. So Launcelot sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, and Gawaine soon followed

with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go with him. Arthur left the kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands until

"Yes. Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent. He was going to marry

Guenever, as a first move; but she fled and shut her self up in the Tower of London. Mordred attacked; the

Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the Interdict. The king returned; Mordred fought him at

Dover, at Canterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peace and a composi tion. Terms,

Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during Arthur's life, and the whole kingdom after ward."

"Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Ga waine Gawaine's head is at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight

there Gawaine appeared to Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to re frain from

conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had

given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound

the trumpet and fall on! for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar order 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

the adder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash! They

butchered away all day. Then the king however, we have started something fresh since you left our

"Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the Interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war

lasted. I had war correspondents with both armies. I will finish that battle by reading you what one of the

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 brainpan,

and therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and

"That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence; you are a firstrate newspaper man. Well is the

I was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him.

"What changes! and in such a short while. It is inconceivable. What next, I wonder?"

"The Church is master now. The Interdict in cluded you with Mordred; it is not to be removed while you

remain alive. The clans are gathering. The Church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon

"When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy. Did you

"Well, then, you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily until the Interdict. Since then, they merely

put on a bold outside at heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it when the armies come, the

"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 as you are, the Church was smarter. It was the Church that sent you cruising through her

"It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship was the Church's picked servant, and so was every man

"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 return to you, with supplies, you

" going to leave Cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, for the health of your family? Did you send

"Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commander sailed again I managed to ship a spy with

him. I have never heard of vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hear from you in. Then I resolved

"Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disap peared! Also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway

and telegraph and telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut down, the Church laid a ban

upon the electric light! I had to be up and doing and straight off. Your life was safe nobody in these

kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back

I had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming. I felt safe myself

nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various works I selected

all the men boys I mean whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called

them together secretly and gave them their instructions. There are fiftytwo of them; none younger than

"Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. It is in their blood and

bones. We imagined we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the Interdict woke them up like a

thunderclap! It revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. With boys it was different. Such

as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the Church's terrors,

and it was among these that I found my fiftytwo. As a next move, I paid a private visit to that old cave of

"Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant 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

"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 any attempt to enter well, we said just let anybody try it! Then I went out into the hills

and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite

deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc., and about midnight I and my boys

turned out and connected that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and I suspects where the other end of it

goes to. We laid it under ground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We sha'n't have

"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 how ever,

"Oh, I remember the time the Church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it

"I start twelve immensely strong wires naked, not insulated from a big dynamo in the cave dynamo

"The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make

twelve independent fences, ten feet apart that is to say, twelve circles within circles and their ends

"The fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the

"Yes. The wires have no groundconnection out side of the cave. They go out from the positive brush of the

dynamo; there is a groundconnection through the negative brush; the other ends of the wire return to the

"It's too expensive uses up force for nothing. You don't want any groundconnection except the one

through the negative brush. The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened

independently, and WITHOUT any groundconnection. Now, then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry

charge hurls itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending no money, for there is only

one groundconnection till those horses come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a con

nection with the negative brush THROUGH THE GROUND, and drop dead. 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; but it isn't costing you a

"Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not only cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other

"No, especially if we have a telltale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire. Well, go on. The gatlings?"

"Yes that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle, on a spacious platform six feet high, I've grouped a

"That's it. They command every approach, and when the Church's knights arrive, there's going to be music.

"I've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. They won't drop any rocks down on us."

"That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was ever planted. It's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around

the outer fence distance between it and the fence one hundred yards kind of neutral ground that space

is. There isn't a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid them on the

surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over them. It's an innocent looking garden, but you let a

"Test? Yes, I know; but they're all right; I laid a few in the public road beyond our lines and they've been

"Yes. They came to command us to make submis sion . You see they didn't really come to test the

"That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs, for the protection of future committees, and we

"Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is wanting. I know what to do now."

"Yes, indeed! The DEfensive isn't in my line, and the OFfensive is. That is, when I hold a fair hand

twothirds as good a hand as the enemy. Oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game."

"It will make them buzz, I tell you! England will be a hornets' nest before noon tomorrow, if the Church's

hand hasn't lost its cunning and we know it hasn't. Now you write and I'll dictate thus:

"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

"That is the idea. We STRIKE by the Proclama tion then it's their innings. Now have the thing set up

and printed and posted, right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a couple of bicycles handy at the

"I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is going to be tomorrow when this piece of paper gets

to work!...... It's a pleasant old palace, this is; I wonder if we shall ever again but never mind about that."

IN Merlin's Cave Clarence and I and fiftytwo fresh, bright, welleducated, cleanminded young British

boys. At dawn I sent an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop operations and re move all

life to a safe distance, as everything was going to be blown up by secret mines, "AND NO TELLING AT

WHAT MOMENT THEREFORE, VACATE AT ONCE." These people knew me, and had confidence in

my word. They would clear out without waiting to part their hair, and I could take my own time about dating

the explosion. You couldn't hire one of them to go back during the century, if the explosion was still

We had a week of waiting. It was not dull for me, because I was writing all the time. During the first three

days, I finished turning my old diary into this narrative form; it only required a chapter or so to bring it down

to date. The rest of the week I took up in writing letters to my wife. It was always my habit to write to Sandy

every day, whenever we were separate, and now I kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though I couldn't

do 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 HelloCentral were here in the cave,

instead of only your photographs, what good times we could have!" And then, you know, I could imagine the

baby goo gooing something out in reply, with its fists in its mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap

on its back, and she alaughing and admiring and worship ing, and now and then tickling under the baby's

chin to set it cackling, and then maybe throwing 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

I had spies out every night, of course, to get news. Every report made things look more and more im

pressive. The hosts were gathering, gathering; down all the roads and paths of England the knights were

riding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these original Crusaders, this being the Church's war. All the

nobilities, big and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. This was all as was expected. We should thin

out this sort of folk to such a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step to the front with

Ah, what a donkey I was! Toward the end of the week I began to get this large and disenchanting fact through

my head: that the mass of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic for about one day, and

there an end! The Church, the nobles, and the gentry then turned one grand, all disapproving frown upon

them and shriveled them into sheep! From that moment the sheep had begun to gather to the fold that is to

say, the camps and offer their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteous cause." Why, even

the very men who had lately been slaves were in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it,

sentimentally slabber ing over it, just like all the other commoners. Im agine such human muck as this;

Yes, it was now "Death to the Republic!" every where not a dissenting voice. All England was marching

I watched my fiftytwo boys narrowly; watched their faces, their walk, their unconscious attitudes: for all

these are a language a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times of emergency, when we

have secrets which we want to keep. I knew that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again in

their minds and hearts, ALL ENGLAND IS MARCHING AGAINST US! and ever more strenuously

imploring atten tion with each repetition, ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until even

in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hear the vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, ALL

knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great that it would compel utterance; therefore, I must be

I was right. The time came. They HAD to speak. Poor lads, it was pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn,

so troubled. At first their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but he presently got both. This is what

"We have tried to forget what we are English boys! We have tried to put reason before sentiment, duty

before love; our minds approve, but our hearts reproach us. While apparently it was only the nobility, only

the gentry, only the twentyfive or thirty thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one

mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one of these fiftytwo lads who stand here

before you, said, 'They have chosen it is their affair.' But think! the matter is altered ALL ENG

LAND 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 for a thing when it happens. If I hadn't fore seen

this thing and been fixed, that boy would have had me! I couldn't have said a word. But I was fixed. I

"My boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the worthy thought, you have done the worthy

thing. You are English boys, you will remain English boys, and you will keep that name unsmirched. Give

yourselves no further concern, let your minds be at peace. Consider this: while all England is march ing

against us, who is in the van? Who, by the com monest rules of war, will march in the front? Answer me."

"True. They are 30,000 strong. Acres deep they will march. Now, observe: none but THEY will ever strike

the sandbelt! Then there will be an episode! Immediately after, the civilian multitude in the rear will retire,

to meet business engagements elsewhere. None but nobles and gentry are knights, and NONE BUT THESE

will remain to dance to our music after that epi sode. It is absolutely true that we shall have to fight nobody

but these thirty thousand knights. Now speak, and it shall be as you decide. Shall we avoid the battle, retire

That joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanished away, and they went gaily to their posts. Ah,

I was ready for the enemy now. Let the approach ing big day come along it would find us on deck.

The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry on watch in the corral came into the cave and reported a

moving black mass under the horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be military music. Break fast

This over, I made the boys a little speech, and then sent out a detail to man the battery, with Clarence in

The sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over the 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 imposing be came its aspect; yes, all England was there, appar ently.

Soon we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun struck the sea of armor and set it all

At last we could make out details. All the front ranks, no telling how many acres deep, were horse men

plumed knights in armor. Suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst into a gallop, and

then well, it was wonderful to see! Down swept that vast horseshoe wave it approached the sandbelt

my breath stood still; nearer, nearer the strip of green turf beyond the yellow belt grew narrow

narrower still became a mere ribbon in front of the horses then disappeared under their hoofs. Great

Scott! Why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky with a thundercrash, and be came a whirling

tempest of rags and fragments; and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was left of the

Time for the second step in the plan of campaign! I touched a button, and shook the bones of England loose

In that explosion all our noble civilizationfactories went up in the air and disappeared from the earth. It was

a pity, but it was necessary. We could not afford to let the enemy turn our own weapons against us.

Now ensued one of the dullest quarterhours 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't see over the wall of smoke,

and we couldn't see through it. But at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another

quarterhour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabled to satisfy itself. No living creature was in

sight! We now perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. The dynamite had dug a ditch more

than a hundred feet wide, all around us, and cast up an embankment some twentyfive feet high on both

borders 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 homogeneous protoplasm, with

No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried

off the field under cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the others there always is,

after an episode like that. But there would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry of

England; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent annihilating wars. So I felt quite safe in believing

that the utmost force that could for the future be brought against us would be but small; that is, of knights. I

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

I read it well, and the applause I got was very grati fying 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 can be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign is the 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 to numbers engaged. We are done with the nation; henceforth we deal

only with the knights. English knights can be killed, but they cannot be conquered. We know what is before

us. While one of these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not ended. We will kill them

I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by the dynamite explosion merely a look

Next, I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook

that was there, and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging it 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, and were

It was nightfall now, and I withdrew my pickets. The one who had had the northern outlook reported a camp

in sight, but visible with the glass only. He also reported that a few knights had been feeling their way toward

us, and had driven some cattle across our lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near. That

was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, you see; they wanted to know if we were going to play

that red terror on them again. They would grow bolder in the night, perhaps. I be lieved I knew what project

they would attempt, because it was plainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their places and as

The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind.for thinking of it and worrying over it. So, at

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. Fiftyfour 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.

I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flag of truce. He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was

"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what these 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;

I humored the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard of the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper,

and read it through. For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up a scorn ful lip and said

"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the baseborn knave who sent him; other answer

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 granted my mistimed

Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from the gatling platform to the cave, and made sure that they

were all right; I tested and retested those which commanded the fences these were signals whereby I could

break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the

brookconnection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in two hour

watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it three revolver shots

in quick succession. Sentryduty was discarded for the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered that

quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned down to a glimmer.

As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from all the fences, and then groped my way out to the

embankment bordering our side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of it and lay there on the slant

of the muck to watch. But it was too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The stillness was

deathlike. True, there were the usual nightsounds of the country the whir of night birds, the buzzing of

insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of faroff kine but these didn't seem to break the

stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but I kept my ears strained to catch the least

suspicious sound, for I 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 you may call in distinct glimpses of sound�dulled metallic sound. I pricked

up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the sort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound

thickened, and approached from toward the north. Presently, I heard it at my own level the ridgetop

of the opposite embankment, a hundred feet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear

along that ridge human heads? I couldn't tell; it mightn't be anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes

when your imagination is out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heard that metallic noise

descending into the great ditch. It augmented fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this

fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes, these people were arranging a little surprise

I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough. I went to the platform and signaled to turn the

current on to the two inner fences. Then I went into the cave, and found everything satisfactory there

nobody awake but the workingwatch. I woke Clarence 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 expect the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embank ment and

"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make preliminary observations. Why not take the

We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside fences. Even the dim light of the cave

had disordered our eyesight somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and soon it was ad

justed for present circumstances. We had had to feel our way before, but we could make out to see the fence

posts now. We started a whispered conversa tion, but suddenly Clarence broke off and said:

"There beyond you a little piece dark some thing a dull shape of some kind against the second

"No, I think not. If you notice, it looks a lit why, it IS a man! leaning on the fence."

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 a doornail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a

statue no motion about him, ex cept that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind. We rose up

and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him or not features

We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were. We made out

another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for us

to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. Now he

arrived at the first knight and started slightly when he discovered him. He stood a moment no doubt

wondering why the other one didn't move on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good Sir

Mar " then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down

dead. Killed by a dead man, you see killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something awful about it.

These early birds came scattering along after each other, about one 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 and found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark when the

knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible to us; but we knew what had hap pened, 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 piteous regularity by the clash made by the falling of an ironclad; and this sort of

thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy there in the dark and lonesomeness.

We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected to walk upright, for convenience's sake;

we argued that if discerned, we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case we should be

out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem to have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip.

Everywhere dead men were lying out side the second fence not plainly visible, but still visible; and we

counted fifteen of those pathetic statues dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire.

One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current was so tremendous that it killed before the

victim could cry out. Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment we guessed what

it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whispered Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in

silence in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood by the inner fence and watched the

silent lightning do its awful work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of detail; but he

could note that a black mass was piling itself up beyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men!

Our camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead a bulwark, a breast work, of corpses, you may say.

One terrible thing about this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, no war cries;

being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank

was near enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get a shout ready, of course they struck

I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately through the fourth and fifth, so quickly

were the gaps filled up. I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed that that whole army was

in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to find out. So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame on

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 work ing 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

utilize their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, in another instant they would have recovered

their faculties, then they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires would have gone down

before it; but that lost instant lost them their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time was

still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and struck the whole host dead in their tracks! THERE

was a groan you could HEAR! It voiced the deathpang of eleven thousand men. It swelled out on the night

A glance showed that the rest of the enemy per haps ten thousand strong were between us and the

encircling ditch, and pressing forward to the assault. Consequently we had them ALL! and had them past

help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired the three appointed revolver shots which meant:

There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and

The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a

moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like

chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embank ment; the

Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign

was ended, we fiftyfour were masters of England. Twentyfive 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

I, CLARENCE, must write it for him. He proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded

the wounded. I was strenuous 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 to trust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned

from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed

over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first wounded mall who

appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoke

to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight was Sir Meliag raunce, as I found out by

We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could. In

this service we had the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised as a woman, and

appeared to be a simple old peasant good wife. In this disguise, with brownstained face and smooth

shaven, he had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had

gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Boss had

been getting along very well, and had amused himself with finishing up his record.

We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We were in a trap, you see a trap of our own

making. If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no

longer be invincible. We had conquered; in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all

recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy

yes, but The Boss could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that were made sick by the

poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others. Tomorrow

TOMORROW. It is here. And with it the end. About midnight I awoke, and saw that hag making curious

passes in the air about The Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody but the

dynamowatch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. The woman ceased from her mysterious fool ery,

"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 reeled about like a drunken man, and presently

fetched up against one of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing. I suppose

The Boss has never stirred sleeps like a stone. If he does not wake today we shall understand what kind

of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where

none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for the rest of us well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever

escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our

THE dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rain had almost ceased, the world was gray and

sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger's room, and listened at

his door, which was slightly ajar. I could hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still

heard 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 de lirium. I slipped in softly and bent

over him. His mutterings and ejaculations went on. I spoke merely a word, to call his attention. His glassy

eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, grati tude, gladness, welcome:

"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last how I have longed for you! Sit by 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 happy again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague,

you are but a 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 little while, I shall not require it long...... Was that the child?......

HelloCentral!...... she doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her

hands, her face, her hair, and tell her goodbye...... Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost myself a moment, and I

thought you were gone...... Have I been sick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams!

such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as real as reality delirium, of course, but SO

real! Why, I thought the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get home, I thought there

was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a hand ful of my

cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England! But even that was not the strangest. I seemed

to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even THAT was as real as the rest! Yes, I

seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a

stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and

you! between me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear to 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 noth ing, let it come, but not with

those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams I cannot endure THAT again...... Sandy?......"

He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away

toward death. Presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end

was at hand with the first suggestion of the deathrattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to

"A bugle?...... It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the battlements! turn out the "