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 inside

my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough,

and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority

were of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still,

but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;

especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome

procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are

a kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again.

It would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not roll

or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the

different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want

to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse

than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder,

too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash around

he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other;

there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could

still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is

taking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armor

after this trip.

All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living

fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that

same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my

tired head: How do people stand this miserable armor? How have

they managed to stand it all these generations? How can they sleep

at night for dreading the tortures of next day?

When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy,

drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around,

famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of

the animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared

with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle Alisande

la Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept

like the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any

other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not

missing it. Measured by modern standards, they were merely modified

savages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to get

to breakfast--and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys

those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them;

and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting,

after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not,

Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch.

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping 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

proposed 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

because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended

them, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels.

By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths

of the free population 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 saving, or really respect-worthy,

and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and

leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king,

nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with

the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value

in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious

contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail

of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and

banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be

the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long

that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only

that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests

had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state

of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how

unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially

such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter

there and become respectfully quiet.

The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in

a formerly American ear. They were freemen, but they could not

leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his

permission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must have

their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery,

and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their

own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the

proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering

him in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him

gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their

own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let

him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation

to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain

around the trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting

parties galloped through their fields laying waste the result of

their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves,

and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops

they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would

the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came

the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first

the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner

took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad

upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty

to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble;

there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes

again, and yet other taxes--upon this free and independent pauper,

but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the

wasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church; if the baron would

sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's

work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's

daughter--but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is

unprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his

tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and

sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle

Church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him

at midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back,

and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property

and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors.

And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work

on their lord the bishop's road three days each--gratis; every

head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each,

gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it was

like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable

and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such

villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlement

of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for

each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of

that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and

shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell.

There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it

and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other

in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had

lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand

persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are

all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror,

so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe,

compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty,

and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with

death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the

coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so

diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could

hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror

--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has

been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast

and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their

king and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire.

There was something 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 transmissible

glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's

families--_including his own_.

They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had

never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them

that a nation could be so situated that every man _could_ have

a say in the government. I said I had seen one--and that it would

last until it had an Established Church. Again they were all

unhit--at first. But presently one man looked up and asked me

to state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it could

soak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he had

the idea, and he brought his fist down and said _he_ didn't believe

a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down

in the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation

its will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes.

I said to myself:

"This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would

make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove

myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its

system of government."

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to

its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real

thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing

to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are

extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out,

become 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 Connecticut, whose

Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in

the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority

and instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_

an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form of

government_ in such a manner as they may think expedient."

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the

commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his

peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is

a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this

decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and

it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see

the matter as he does.

And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the

country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each

thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four

to express dissatisfaction 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 dishonorable, such putrid black

treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation

where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all

the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves

a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed

to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was

a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side

of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up

an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the

Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without first

educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely

certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left,

even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had been

for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different

pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort.

So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat

munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human

sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him.

After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his

veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark--

Put him in the Man-factory--

and gave it to him, and said:

"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of

Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand."

"He is a priest, then," said the man, and some of the enthusiasm

went out of his face.

"How--a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church,

no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn't

I tell you that _you_ couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever

it might be, was your own free property?"

"Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore it liked me not,

and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there."

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

The man looked far from satisfied. He said:

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

"He is not a priest and yet can read--yes, and write, too, for that

matter. I taught him myself." The man's face cleared. "And it is

the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory--"

"I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why,

I will be your slave, your--"

"No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your family

and go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your small

property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right."

CHAPTER XIV

"DEFEND THEE, LORD"

I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant

price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen

persons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, and

I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these

people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as

their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize

my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial

lift where the money would do so much more good than it would

in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not

stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a

burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days,

it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got the

proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long

a sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able to

absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of

dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just

twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from

Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid

these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that

would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted

the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents,

nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of

gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through

the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this

new blood freshen up its life.

The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset

my liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flint

and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy

and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke

shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke

for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground

with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching

dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other

professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people

to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that

this was only a bit of enchantment 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 remained behind would

be struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness.

There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough

to remain behind to see what would happen.

I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone,

became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks

that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before

they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive,

for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the new

thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her

conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was

a gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learned

something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come

along, now.

We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity

came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing

a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently,

hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted

a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:

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

And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood.

I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen

armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle

among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipe

was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in

thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore

to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging

anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head

of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of

those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about

--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair

play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush,

they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down,

plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was

a handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laid

my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron

wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of

white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen

the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight than

the other one.

But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and

this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came;

I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was going

to be eloquent--but I stopped her, and told her my magic had

miscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch,

and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my

enchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on,

because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles

presently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could not

deceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a mistake; that

when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men

would not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus,

I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those

people would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said:

"Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot will

give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail

them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer

and destroy them; and so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovale

and Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that

will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la,

as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill,

but yet desire more?"

"Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave?

Nobody's hindering. Good land, I'm willing to let bygones be

bygones, I'm sure."

"Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dream

not of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them."

"Come--really, is that 'sooth'--as you people say? If they want to,

why don't they?"

"It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed,

ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come."

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

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

And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid.

I would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. I presently

saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was

a relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings

--I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't have

been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business

well; in fact, admirably. She said that when she told those people

I was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore

with fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to

put up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appear

at Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and

harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command.

How much better she managed that thing than I should have done

it myself! She was a daisy.

CHAPTER XV

SANDY'S TALE

"And so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I, as we rode off.

"Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assets

of that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle

them off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"

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

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

"Where do they hang out?"

"Yes, where do they live?"

"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then she

said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her

tongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do they

hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the

phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded

withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby

I may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so!

already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--"

"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy."

"Cowboys?"

"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them.

A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called."

"Game--"

"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your

statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your fire

started. Tell me about the knights."

"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed and

rode into a great forest. And--"

"Great Scott!"

You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works

a-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting down

to those facts. And she generally began without a preface and

finished without a result. If you interrupted her she would either

go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words,

and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptions

only did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty

frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if

he let her monotony drip on him right along all day.

"Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back and

began over again:

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

"_Which_ two?"

"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks,

and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their masses

in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great

forest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of

twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and

the damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaine

ware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the

damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon

the shield--"

"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy,

I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see those

creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that.

The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and

I mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblest

hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness,

patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land."

"Hello-girl?"

"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl;

they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them when

they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling

sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years,

it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is,

no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've got

to confess--"

"Peradventure she--"

"Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explain

her so you would understand."

"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine and

Sir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that

despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you.

There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield,

and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all

ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to

the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evil

a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure

though he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth

in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again,

and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--"

"Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy.

Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers

--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. You

would have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in front

of your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bring

about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses

of the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just

a sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw

in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert

to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt."

"--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine.

Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus the

king's son of Ireland."

"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean

anything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jump

this gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in

the circus; he is born before his time."

"I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight as

any is on live."

"_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that

you are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter."

"--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were

gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, said

Sir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to

suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom,

and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that is

more your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to see

a knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine and

Sir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware

where Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward

them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled into

the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way.

Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, and

said on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran together

that the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smote

him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--"

"Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things,

it ruins so many horses."

"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward

Marhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight of

the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--"

"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to be

broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud

and support it."

. . . .

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

I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn't

say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with

the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case.

"--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieces

on the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse and

man he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--"

"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple;

the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions

suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharas

of fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about

them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all

alike: a couple of people come together with great random

--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, and

so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others,

but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together with

great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield

and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tail

and brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in,

and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down

_he_ goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck,

and then there's another elected, and another and another and still

another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to

figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who

whipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle,

sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog.

Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest

spectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance?

Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy

brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!"

It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb

Sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again,

the minute I took off the lid:

"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine with

his spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield,

and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all

the might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hard

in the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--"

"I knew it would."

--"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine and

his horse rushed down to the earth--"

"Just so--and brake his back."

--"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out

his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus 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

increased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then when

it was come noon--"

The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and

sounds of my boyhood days:

"N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strike

the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers for

the Shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar

don't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners,

_s-a-n-d-'ches, p--_op_-corn!"

--"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine's

strength feebled and waxed passing 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 marvelous man of might as ever

I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and

therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing

feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word

that I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and

either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love

other as brethren--"

But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking

about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength

--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome

iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang

each other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been born

at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take

a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and

puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because

he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is

a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should

never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you

start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is

going to come of it.

When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that

I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long

way off with her people.

"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones,

and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was

the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting

thereby. In this country, 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 expletive; by this means one would

recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named.

It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should

make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight since

it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.'

You see how much better that sounds."

--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers.

Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard

to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed

with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted

other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and

she was threescore winter of age or more--"

"The _damsel_ was?"

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

"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fit

kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and

fall out when you laugh."

"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of

gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--"

Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded

out of my hearing!

Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her age

who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom

I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back

over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many,

many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer

mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"

just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a

"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear.

She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it.

I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who our

captured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever get

to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts

were far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale,

caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague

way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels

up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east,

the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after

year and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was of

a piece with the general simplicity of the country.

The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when

Alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made

pretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some time

or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried.

We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge,

strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements were

charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was

drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the

largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the one

we were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it;

she said she had passed it without calling, when she went down

to Camelot.

CHAPTER XVI

MORGAN LE FAY

If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable

places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant

were _not_ persons to be believed--that is, measured by modern

standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own

time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very

simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest

was fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remained

that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing

the door-bell--I mean hailing the warders--it was the sensible

thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman

making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle.

As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet,

and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious

addition also--a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard.

However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer

and read this sign on his tabard:

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

That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes

in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the

first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense

of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had

started a number of these people out--the bravest knights I could

get--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device

or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous

enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the

steel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to look

ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating

suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness

among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people,

if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church.

I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom

--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that

any Established Church is an established crime, an established

slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in

any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my

own former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb

of time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been

born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act

and the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men's

liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established

Anachronism with.

My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their

tabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the

king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric

splendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain to

the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies

were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary's

next move was to get the family together and try it on himself;

he was to stop at no experiment, however 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 believed to be.

They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody

stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that

failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone.

Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road

they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and

get a bulletin-board and disseminate 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 anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and

he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap

factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house

he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies

present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would

swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory

was going.

This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he said

that this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister of

King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about

as big as the District of Columbia--you could stand in the middle

of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and "Kingdoms"

were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in

Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up

because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.

La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst

failure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake; yet he had

tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit;

but the hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for this

animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place

among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan,

this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. And

so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him.

Wherefore I said:

"Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have

brains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats,

but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster

into an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the

biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement

that will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhorn

victory. We will put on your bulletin-board, '_Patronized by the

elect_.' How does that strike you?"

"Verily, it is wonderly bethought!"

"Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little

one-line ad, it's a corker."

So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave

fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief

celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one

of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant,

who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a different

way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas

Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so

I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he

bade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it.

Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said

that La Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that

trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day,

and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the

conqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterward

in sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, suppose

the victor should decline to accept his spoil? She said that that

wouldn't answer--he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be

regular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too

burdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chance

that she would desert to him.

In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle

walls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant to

tell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knew

Mrs. le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant.

She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody

believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all

her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with cold

malice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimes

murder was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious as

I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she was beautiful;

black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age

had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness.

She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she could

have been mistaken for sister to her own son.

As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered

into her presence. King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old man

with a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains,

in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the tradition

that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on

account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandy

had been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, the

conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household,

that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began,

with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me

questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something,

talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been

misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along,

and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and

as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something

on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid

his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her

knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as

another person would have harpooned a rat!

Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in

one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the

old king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The look

he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens

in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom

and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly

along with her talk.

I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she

kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made

no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came

with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and

when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated

a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had

overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed

to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer

than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak.

Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman.

And what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those

servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the

lightning flashes out of a cloud. I could have got the habit

myself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he was

always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turn

toward him but he winced.

In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about

King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her

brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up

like storm; she called for her guards, and said:

"Hale me these varlets to the dungeons."

That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation.

Nothing occurred to me to say--or do. But not so with Sandy.

As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest

confidence, and said:

"God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It is

The Boss!"

Now what a happy idea that was!--and so simple; yet it would never

have occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots;

and this was one of the spots.

The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance

and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and

blandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up

with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said:

"La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers

like to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who

has vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments

I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered

here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you

into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast

the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot,

a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long

been childishly curious to see."

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

CHAPTER XVII

A ROYAL BANQUET

Madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that

I was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, and

she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill

somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However, to my

relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. I will

say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous,

rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and

enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the

regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the

Church. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his

enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat;

more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching

his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give

thanks, without even waiting to rob the body. There was to be

nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Benvenuto Cellini,

that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. All the nobles of

Britain, with their families, attended divine service morning and

night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them

had family worship five or six times a day besides. The credit

of this belonged entirely to the Church. Although I was no friend

to that Catholic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often,

in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What would this country

be without the Church?"

After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was

lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine and

lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the

hosts. At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the

king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching down the hall

from this, was the general table, on the floor. At this, above

the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their

families, of both sexes,--the resident Court, in effect--sixty-one

persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with

their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen

persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing

behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It was

a very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps,

and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be

the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later

centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought

to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other

the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner.

After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said

a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion of

waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew,

fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words

anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops

opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to

the muffled burr of subterranean machinery.

The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the

destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast

--the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing

at the start--nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt;

and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all

the other dishes.

With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began--and the talk.

Gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody

got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous--both sexes,

--and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrific

to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, the

assemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress.

Ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have made

Queen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth of England

hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed

--howled, you may say. In pretty much all of these dreadful stories,

ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the

chaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon

invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as

any that was sung that night.

By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and,

as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, some

hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table.

Of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whose

wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough.

Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the

young daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner whence

she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed,

in the lost and lamented days of the Ancient Regime.

Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all

conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming

blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door at

the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady,

leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it

toward the queen and cried out:

"The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity,

who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate this

old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in

all this world but him!"

Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an

awful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, with

the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command:

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

The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame; it was a

cruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy gave me a look;

I knew she had another inspiration. I said:

"Do what you choose."

She was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. She indicated

me, and said:

"Madame, _he_ saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or he

will dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instable

fabric of a dream!"

Confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! What if

the queen--

But my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off;

for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance but

gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. When she reached

it she was sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage rose,

whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob;

overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling,

shouldering, crowding--anything to get out before I should change

my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of

space. Well, well, well, they _were_ a superstitious lot. It is

all a body can do to conceive of it.

The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid

to hang the composer without first consulting me. I was very sorry

for her--indeed, any one would have been, for she was really

suffering; so I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and

had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I therefore

considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the

musicians ordered into our presence to play that Sweet Bye and

Bye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and

gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation

of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gains

little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all

occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his

subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little

concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy.

Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably

happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got

a little the start of her. I mean it set her music going--her silver

bell of a tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would not

become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that I was a tired

man and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I had

the chance. Now I must stick it out; there was no other way. So

she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly

hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if

from deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek

--with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl.

The queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted

her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound bored

its way up through the stillness again.

"What is it?" I said.

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

"Endureth what?"

"The rack. Come--ye shall see a blithe sight. An he yield not

his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder."

What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene,

when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that

man's pain. Conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches,

we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank

and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night

--a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter

or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this

sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymous

informer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. I said:

"Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your Highness.

It were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser."

"I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence.

But an I would, I could not, for that the accuser came masked by

night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again,

and so the forester knoweth him not."

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

"Marry, _no_ man _saw_ the killing, but this Unknown saw this hardy

wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right

loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester."

"So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too? Isn't it just possible

that he did the killing himself? His loyal zeal--in a mask--looks

just a shade suspicious. But what is your highness's idea for

racking the prisoner? Where is the profit?"

"He will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. For his

crime his life is forfeited by the law--and of a surety will I see

that he payeth it!--but it were peril to my own soul to let him

die unconfessed and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling me

into hell for _his_ accommodation."

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

"As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to death and he

confess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naught

to confess--ye will grant that that is sooth? Then shall I not be

damned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess

--wherefore, I shall be safe."

It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to

argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified

training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And

her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land

would not have been able to see that her position was defective.

As we entered the rack-cell I caught a picture that will not go

from me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or

thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his

wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either

end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and

set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over

him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty;

smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner

crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish,

a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little

child asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold the

executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry

from both the prisoner and the woman; but I shouted, and the

executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke.

I could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to

see it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak

to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object I spoke

in a low voice and said I did not want to make a scene before

her servants, but I must have my way; for I was King Arthur's

representative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she had

to yield. I asked her to indorse me to these people, and then

leave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill;

and even went further than I was meaning to require. I only wanted

the backing of her own authority; but she said:

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

It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it

by the squirming of these rats. The queen's guards fell into line,

and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and woke

the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their

retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack and

placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and

wine given him to drink. The woman crept near and looked on,

eagerly, lovingly, but timorously,--like one who fears a repulse;

indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped

back, the picture of fright, when I turned unconsciously toward

her. It was pitiful to see.

"Lord," I said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. Do anything

you're a mind to; don't mind me."

Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it

a kindness that it understands. The baby was out of her way and

she had her cheek against the man's in a minute and her hands

fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. The man

revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he

could do. I judged I might clear the den, now, and I did; cleared

it of all but the family and myself. Then I said:

"Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; I know

the other side."

The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But the woman looked

pleased--as it seemed to me--pleased with my suggestion. I went on--

"You know of me?"

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

"If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should

not be afraid to speak."

The woman broke in, eagerly:

"Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! Thou canst an thou wilt.

Ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me--for _me_! And how can I bear it?

I would I might see him die--a sweet, swift death; oh, my Hugo,

I cannot bear this one!"

And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still

imploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I could not quite

get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said:

"Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve whom I love,

to win a gentle death? I wend thou knewest me better."

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

"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider how

these his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will not speak!--whereas,

the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death--"

"What _are_ you maundering about? He's going out from here a free

man and whole--he's not going to die."

The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me

in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out:

"He is saved!--for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's

servant--Arthur, the king whose word is gold!"

"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Why

didn't you before?"

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

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

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

"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all.

You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain

enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing

to confess--"

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

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

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

"You _did_! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him

to do that for?"

"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this

cruel pain."

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

quick death."

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

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

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

"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted

man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could

torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they

could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man;

and _you_--true wife and the woman that you are--you would have

bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow

starvation and death--well, it humbles a body to think what your

sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both

for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going

to turn groping and grubbing automata into _men_."

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS

Well, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home.

I had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was

a good, painstaking and paingiving official,--for surely it was

not to his discredit that he performed his functions well--but to

pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that

young woman. The priests told me about this, and were generously

hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort

was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed

that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many,

even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground

among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and

devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings.

Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted

about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my

way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did

not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people

reconciled to an Established 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, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and

does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered

condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only

an opinion--my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't

worth any more than the pope's--or any less, for that matter.

Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook

the just complaint of the priests. The man must be punished

somehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him

leader of the band--the new one that was to be started. He begged

hard, and said he couldn't play--a plausible excuse, but too thin;

there wasn't a musician in the country that could.

The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found

she was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But

I told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom

she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property,

there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the king's

name I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields,

and he had killed it in sudden 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 extenuating 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

remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page

modified that crime.

"Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth!

Man, I am going to _pay_ for him!"

Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training--training is

everything; training is all there is _to_ a person. We speak of

nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we

call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.

We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are

transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us,

and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be

covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the

rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession

of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam

or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously

and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me,

all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this

pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly

live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one

microscopic atom in me that is truly _me_: the rest may land in

Sheol and welcome for all I care.

No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough,

but her training made her an ass--that is, from a many-centuries-later

point of view. To kill the page was no crime--it was her right;

and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense.

She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and

unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject

when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one.

Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved 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 something handsome about it, but I

couldn't--my mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy,

that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young

creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanities

laced with his golden blood. How could she _pay_ for him! _Whom_

could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman, trained

as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not

able to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was

to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak--and the pity

of it was, that it was true:

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

Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived.

Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. A master

might kill his slave for nothing--for mere spite, malice, or

to pass the time--just as we have seen that the crowned head could

do it with _his_ slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could

kill a free commoner, and pay for him--cash or garden-truck.

A noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was

concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. _Any_body

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 murdered somebody who belonged up among

the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much

as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens'

dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters

with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack

jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the

best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable,

as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his

chapter about the dismemberment of Louis XV's poor awkward enemy.

I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted

to leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind that

my conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget.

If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience.

It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person;

and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot

be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have

less good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and

I am only one man; others, with less experience, may think

differently. They have a right to their view. I only stand

to this: I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I know

it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started

with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because we

prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so.

If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if I had

an anvil in me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you

come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience

and an anvil--I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand

times. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you

couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can

work off a conscience--at least so it will stay worked off; not

that I know of, anyway.

There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was

a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it bothered

me all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king,

but what would be the use?--he was but an extinct volcano; he had

been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while,

he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly

enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. He was

nothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there.

And she was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to warm

a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very

opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. However,

I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting

the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all.

So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness.

I said I had been having a general jail-delivery at Camelot and

among neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like

to examine her collection, her bric-a-brac--that is to say, her

prisoners. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she finally

consented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about

ended my discomfort. She called her guards and torches, and

we went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castle's

foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living

rock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of them was

a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer

a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice,

through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing

it might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless

dull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed,

with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave

no further sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middle

age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine

years, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner,

and had been sent here on her bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite,

a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said

lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du

seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt

half a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had

interfered at that point, believing 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

astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered

against both bride and groom. The said lord being cramped for

dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals,

and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed,

they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never

seen each other since. Here they were, kenneled like toads in the

same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet

of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not.

All the first years, their only question had been--asked with

beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time,

perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?"

But they had never got an answer; and at last that question was

not asked any more--or any other.

I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirty-four

years old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block of

stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees,

his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was

muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly

over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the

torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again

and took no further notice of us. There were some pathetically

suggestive dumb witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles were

cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which

he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but this

apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chains

cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner.

I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take him to her,

and see--to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him,

once--roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work,

the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice

like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and

beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams--as he

thought--and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant

blood leaping; the sight of her--

But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and

looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a

sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence,

and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and

wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know

nothing about.

I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not

like it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter,

but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However,

I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I would fix him

so that he could.

I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes,

and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killed

another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord

had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the

best of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that

I left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public

well in one of his wretched villages. The queen was bound to hang

him for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was no

crime to kill an assassin. But I said I was willing to let her

hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with

that, as it was better than nothing.

Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven

men and women were shut up there! Indeed, some were there for

no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite;

and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest

prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He said

he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good

as another, barring clothes. He said he believed that if you were

to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he

couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel

clerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced

to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose and

sent him to the Factory.

Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the

face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been

pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin

ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of

these poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's

hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out

through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the

valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache

and longing, through that crack. He could see the lights shine

there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and

come out--his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though

he could not make out at that distance. 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 mourners, 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 condition 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 funerals herself,

to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of

the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral _short_,

so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing.

But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him

with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him.

And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than

deliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she

had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people

are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five

whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer

known! One woman and four men--all bent, and wrinkled, and

mind-extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten

these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them,

nothing definite and nothing that they repeated 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 oppression was what He loved to see

in parties of a subordinate 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 incarceration only,

and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of

tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of

the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer

this privation has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queen

knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were

heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former

firm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with their

persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no

value, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:

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

The question was a puzzler. She didn't know _why_ she hadn't, the

thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting

the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If,

without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with her

training, those inherited prisoners were merely property--nothing

more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property, it does not

occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it.

When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world

and the glare of the afternoon sun--previously blindfolding them,

in charity for eyes so long untortured by light--they were a

spectacle to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic

frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy

by the Grace of God and the Established Church. I muttered absently:

"I _wish_ I could photograph them!"

You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they

don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they

are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't

shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and

was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She

hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden

comprehension, and she said she would do it for me.

I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography?

But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she

was moving on the procession with an axe!

Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have

seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them

all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode

was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph

a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try

to do it with an axe.

CHAPTER XIX

KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE

Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early.

It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious

barrels-ful of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned,

woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two

days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable

old buzzard-roost! I mean, for me: of course the place was all

right and agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used to

high life all her days.

Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while,

and I was expecting to get the consequences. I was right; but she

had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily

supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were

worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so

I thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while,

if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she started it up:

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty

winter of age southward--"

"Are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch on

the trail of the cowboys, Sandy?"

"Even so, fair my lord."

"Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it.

Begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and

I will load my pipe and give good attention."

"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty

winter of age southward. And so they came into a deep forest,

and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way,

and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the duke

of South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And on the morn

the duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad him make him ready. And

so Sir Marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sung

afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in

the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. So there

was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sons

by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they

encountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spears

upon him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched none of

them. Then came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake

their spears, and so did the other two. And all this while

Sir Marhaus touched them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke,

and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth.

And so he served his sons. And then Sir Marhaus alight down, and

bad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. And then some

of his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhaus. Then

Sir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will do

the uttermost to you all. When the duke saw he might not escape

the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them

to Sir Marhaus. And they kneeled all down and put the pommels

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 Whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in

the king's grace.*

[*Footnote: The story is borrowed, language and all, from the

Morte d'Arthur.--M.T.]

"Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now ye shall wit

that that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few days

past you also did overcome and send to Arthur's court!"

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

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

"Well, well, well,--now who would ever have thought it? One

whole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it was an elegant haul.

Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious

hard work, too, but I begin to see that there _is_ money in it,

after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it

as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business

can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl

in the knight-errantry line--now what is it when you blow away

the nonsense 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 corners the market on _you_, and down goes your

bucket-shop; ain't that so, Sandy?"

"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple

language in such sort that the words do seem to come endlong

and overthwart--"

"There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around

it that way, Sandy, it's _so_, just as I say. I _know_ it's so. And,

moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry

is _worse_ than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and

so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in a

knight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his

checks, what have you got for assets? Just a rubbish-pile of

battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can you

call _those_ assets? Give me pork, every time. Am I right?"

"Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters

whereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps and

fortunings whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us,

meseemeth--"

"No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far as

it goes, but you don't know business; that's where the trouble

is. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong

to be always trying. However, that aside, it was a good haul,

anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's

court. And speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this

is for women and men that never get old. Now there's Morgan le Fay,

as fresh and young as a Vassar pullet, to all appearances, and

here is this old duke of the South Marches still slashing away with

sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family

as he has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawaine killed seven

of his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhaus and me to

take into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winter

of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom--How old

are you, Sandy?"

It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her. The mill

had shut down for repairs, or something.

CHAPTER XX

THE OGRE'S CASTLE

Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a

horse carrying triple--man, woman, and armor; then we stopped

for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook.

Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he

made dolorous moan, and by the words of it I perceived that he

was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of his

coming, for that I saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters

all of shining gold was writ:

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

I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for

knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly great

fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace

of sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was

never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext

or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact

of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked,

and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he

didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down

over horse-tail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not see

any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him,

for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was so

fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand

leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint

device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush,

with motto: "Try Noyoudont." This was a tooth-wash that I was

introducing.

He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not

alight. He said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this

he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarder

referred to was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of

considerable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusions

in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul than Sir Gaheris

himself--although not successfully. He was of a light and laughing

disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was

for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polish

sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing

serious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do was

to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change,

and have them established in predilections toward neatness against

the time when the stove should appear upon the stage.

Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. He

said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down

from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any

comfort, until he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this

account. It appeared, by what I could piece together of the

unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon

Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would

make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and

glades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare

customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With characteristic

zeal Sir Madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after

three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. And

behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the

dungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all of

twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be

equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth.

"Blank-blank-blank him," said Sir Madok, "an I do not stove-polish

him an I may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that

hight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide

on live, an I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a

great oath this day."

And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and

gat him thence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon one

of those very patriarchs ourselves, 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 stagnant. 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 generation 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 account that

I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which

seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter

brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against

these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty

and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but

a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the

depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire

being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation,

dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in

this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say

that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower

deep for him.

I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort

of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out

a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing

up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing

to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did

achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion:

it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must

_begin_ in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches

anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a

Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.

Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement

and feverish expectancy. She said we were approaching the ogre's

castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object

of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden

resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing

for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's

excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort

of thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reason

with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which

the intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse,

motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head

bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered

a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And they

kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse

over the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side on

my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her

finger, and said in a panting whisper:

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

What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said:

"Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattled

fence around it."

She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out of

her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and

silent. Then:

"It was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion,

as if to herself. "And how strange is this marvel, and how awful

--that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base

and shameful 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 banners in the blue air

from its towers. And God shield us, how it pricks the heart to

see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their

sweet faces! We have tarried along, and are to blame."

I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to _me_, not to her. It would

be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn't

be done; I must just humor it. So I said:

"This is a common case--the enchanting of a thing to one eye and

leaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of it

before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it.

But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these

ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be

necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible

if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment.

And hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the

true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs,

and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by

reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas

which you can't follow--which, of course, amounts to the same

thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under

the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it.

These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to

everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way

from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is a

lady, that is enough for me, I know how to treat her."

"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I know

that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to great

deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will

and to do, as any that is on live."

"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three

yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds--"

"The ogres, Are _they_ changed also? It is most wonderful. Now

am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of

their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily,

fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than I wend."

"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how _much_ of an ogre

is invisible; then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you be

afraid, I will make short work of these bunco-steerers. Stay

where you are."

I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful,

and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the

swine-herds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs

at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest

quotations. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the

manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along

next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the

swine-herds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But

now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be

a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and he

said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took

the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offered

him a child and said:

"Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet

rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?"

How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day,

under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by many

to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise.

I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned

Sandy to come--which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rush

of a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon those

hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them

to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them

reverently by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed

of the human race.

We had to drive those hogs home--ten miles; and no ladies were

ever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road,

no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed

away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest

places they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughly

accosted; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming

their rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called

my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying 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 blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also among

the missing were several mere baronesses--and I wanted them to

stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so

servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills

to that end.

Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great

guns!--well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anything

like it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like an

insurrection in a gasometer.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PILGRIMS

When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching

out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious,

how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out of

the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing

of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium

come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts

were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's

curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom

could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like

a crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!

of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. 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

enchantments; 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 Connecticut 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 support

it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that

occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom

afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized

that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too,

if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody

as a madman.

The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and

gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and

manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of

her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its

outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may.

I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my

lofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable

slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at

the second table. The family were not at home. I said:

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

"Family?"

"Yes."

"Which family, good my lord?"

"Why, this family; your own family."

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

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

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

"Well, then, whose house is this?"

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

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

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

"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The

effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march into

a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility

the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out

that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever venture

to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was

your home. What will the man say?"

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

"Thanks for what?"

Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:

"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words.

Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice

in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace

his house withal?"

"Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that this

is the first time he has had a treat like this."

"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech

and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor

of dogs."

To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so.

It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:

"The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together

and be moving."

"Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"

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

"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth!

Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these

journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created

life, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin

done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon

and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that

serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that

evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart

through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst

so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes

its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein

all such as native be to that rich estate and--"

"Great Scott!"

"My lord?"

"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't

you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less

time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. We

mustn't talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn't

let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this.

To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take the

aristocracy home?"

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

of the earth."

This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the

relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain to

deliver the goods, of course.

"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully

ended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--"

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

This was recalling the pardon.

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

"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor.

I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field

some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me.

I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap."

"Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself. "I may as well

make the best of it." So then I spoke up and said:

"All right; let us make a start."

While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that

whole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to take

a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly

lodged and promenaded; 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 observance; they would

scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the

evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible.

It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method,

the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in

a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and

tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family

had introduced successively for a hundred years.

The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims.

It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it

was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would govern

this country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life,

and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny.

This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it

had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions

the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume.

There were young men and old men, young women and old women,

lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, and

there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was

to remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet.

It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and

full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. What

they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused

no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English

society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of the

English wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century

were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled

the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was

made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward

the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling

spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;

and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.

Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted

me. She said:

"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of the

godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansed

from sin."

"Where is this watering place?"

"It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that

hight the Cuckoo Kingdom."

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

"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time there

lived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the world

more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious

books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and

ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed

much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it

fell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came they

to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities,

and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced."

"Proceed."

"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time,

the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear

water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the

fickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with their

abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct

a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more,

he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked.

Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which

He loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense.

These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as

white as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, in

miraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters ceased to flow, and

utterly vanished away."

"They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crime

is regarded in this country."

"Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect

life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers,

tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water

to flow again. Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive

candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in

the land did marvel."

"How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics,

and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero,

and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy."

"And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble

surrender and destroyed the bath. And behold, His anger was in that

moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even

unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure."

"Then I take it nobody has washed since."

"He that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, and

swiftly would he need it, too."

"The community has prospered since?"

"Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroad

into all lands. From every land came monks to join; they came

even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building

to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms

and took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yet

more; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of the

vale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery.

And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving

labors together, and together they built a fair great foundling

asylum midway of the valley between."

"You spoke of some hermits, Sandy."

"These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermit

thriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. Ye shall not

find no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit

of a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far

strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and

swamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be his

breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there."

I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humored

face, purposing to make myself agreeable 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 account of it. I excused myself and dropped

to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence

from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of

broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous

defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long

eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote.