Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims;

but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful

ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both

were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men

and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys

and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children were

smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred

people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness

which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with

despair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feet

and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists;

and all except the children were also linked together in a file

six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar

all down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped three

hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends

of food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these

chains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upon

their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be

clothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and

made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet were

torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a

hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on

the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried

a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into

several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut the

shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and

straightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed his

desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as

we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence.

And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank

of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three

burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloud

of its own making.

All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seen

the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and

has written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was reminded

of this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, young

mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how

a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their

faces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was the

track of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, and

it hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it

was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought

not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of

life; and no doubt--

She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash

and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung me

as if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file and

jumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, and

said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this

was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now.

She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg,

and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave

no attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made the

men-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on

the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he

laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she

shrieking and struggling the while piteously. One of the men who

was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was

reviled and flogged.

All our pilgrims looked on and commented--on the expert way in

which the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelong

everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything

else in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slavery

could do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior

lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people,

and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.

I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that

would not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a name

for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights

roughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death of

slavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so

that when I became its executioner it should be by command of

the nation.

Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed

proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable

here where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; then

there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to

which should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl was delivered

from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings,

into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she

was whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered her

face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain

of his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it was

husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl

had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked

like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and

even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those

receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and

child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?--well, the look

of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew

I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there

it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it.

We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when

I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knight

came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him

for knight of mine--Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the

gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was

plug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor

of the time--up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he

hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous

a spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of my

surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it

grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's saddle was hung about with

leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight

he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made

him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana and

get his news.

"How is trade?" I asked.

"Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteen

whenas I got me from Camelot."

"Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have you

been foraging of late?"

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

"I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring

in the monkery, more than common?"

"By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed,

boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly

to the stable and do even as I bid.... Sir, it is parlous news

I bring, and--be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, good

folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith it

concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find,

and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for my

word, and my word and message being these, namely: That a hap

has happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but once

this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that

that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form by

commandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causes

thereunto contributing, wherein the matter--"

"The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This shout burst from

twenty pilgrim mouths at once.

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

"Has somebody been washing again?"

"Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to be

some other sin, but none wit what."

"How are they feeling about the calamity?"

"None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry.

The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth

and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased

nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings

be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment,

sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at last

they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; and

if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin,

and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that

water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish

it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his

hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture

hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon

a copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth

betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye--"

Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozana

these words which I had written on the inside of his hat: "Chemical

Department, Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two of

first size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the proper

complementary details--and two of my trained assistants." And I said:

"Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and

show the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these required

matters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch."

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

CHAPTER XXII

THE HOLY FOUNTAIN

The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted

differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now

when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main

thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as

horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done--turn back

and get at something profitable--no, anxious as they had before

been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty

times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be.

There is no accounting for human beings.

We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood

upon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness, and our eyes

swept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, its

large features. These were the three masses of buildings. They

were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions

in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert--and was. Such a scene

is always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks so

steeped in death. But there was a sound here which interrupted

the stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint

far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the

passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew

whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.

We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were

given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. The

bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote

upon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despair

possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his

ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled,

tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared,

noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.

The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to tears; but

he did the shedding himself. He said:

"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring not

the water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good work

of two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantments

that be holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her cause

be done by devil's magic."

"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's work

connected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil,

and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlin

working strictly on pious lines?"

"Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath

to make his promise good."

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

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

"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it be

professional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid each

other. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would

arrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract; no other

magician can touch it till he throws it up."

"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the

act is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will give

law to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what she

wills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. I will take it

from him; you shall begin upon the moment."

"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power is

supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poor

magicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magician

in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. He

is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be

etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it."

The abbot's face lighted.

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

"No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he were

persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious

enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret.

It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment of

mine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out its

secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block me

for a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?"

"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have it

thy way, my son. But my heart is heavy with this disappointment.

Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting,

even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus

the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign

of repose where inwardly is none."

Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waive

etiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never be

able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time;

which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his

reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but

Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd

around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in

that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was

sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial

moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire

from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively

myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot,

and that would take two or three days.

My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal;

insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first time

in ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced

with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to

go round they rose faster. By the time everybody was half-seas over,

the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so we

stayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters got

to be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that made

the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round

bellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed out

in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells.

At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it.

Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does

not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous

thing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places;

the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth

repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they

disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This language

is figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first,

in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end

they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.

I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchanting

away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not in

a pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract

was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and

cursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean.

Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" was

an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up

in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie

that had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could have

told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in a

dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose

walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would

have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative

of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when

nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are always

on deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put in

the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company;

look at the old masters.

The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn

with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which

delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--when

there was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enter

the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority

to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate.

But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations;

he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used

his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured

the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in

the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who

believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is

handicapped with a superstition like that.

I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the

wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that

allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. Then

I called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and

made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out,

the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the

wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure.

I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was

correct, because I had another one that had a showy point or two

about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, many

centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to

blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well

dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most

nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite

bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was

plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have

everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to

be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his

mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no

hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.

When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down

a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there

was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:

"How deep is the well?"

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

"How does the water usually stand in it?"

"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth,

brought down to us through our predecessors."

It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness

to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty

feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn

and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other

time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and

mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had

discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed

the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and

these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled

their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew

away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop

a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was

really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things

to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical

form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea

that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion

of being illegitimate. I said to the monk:

"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we

will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very

passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may

not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that should

be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind of

miracle knows enough to keep hotel."

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

"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do this

miracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do this

miracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle

to tax the occult powers to the last strain."

"None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for

it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took

a year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end

will we pray."

As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around

that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made

large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up

with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.

In two days the solicitude would be booming.

On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling the

hermits. I said:

"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there

a matinee?"

"A which, please you, sir?"

"Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?"

"Who?"

"The hermits, of course."

"Keep open?"

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

"Knock off?"

"Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off?

I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all?

In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--"

"Shut up shop, draw--"

"There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seem

to understand the simplest thing."

"I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow

that I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught of

none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of

learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of

that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to

the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that

great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol

of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the

pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief

do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the

darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery,

these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is

but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that

can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding

miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler

mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then

if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,

wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and

may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this

complexion of mood and mind and understood that that I would

I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might

_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage

turned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault,

and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good

my master and most dear lord."

I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got the

general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was not

fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the

untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she

couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best

drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't

fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meandered

pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse

together, and better friends than ever.

I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence

for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station

and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless

transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that

I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German

Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she

began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took

the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words

had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the

German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a

mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war,

she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary

German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see

of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his

verb in his mouth.

We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most

strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be,

to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous

with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression

of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride

to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister

him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day

long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims

and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;

it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,

eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when

he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there

were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of

age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with

forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing

pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost

in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which

these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.

By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was

a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; the

noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe

to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part

of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.

His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on

the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day

for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly

almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a

stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and

46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.

It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal

movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some

day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing

machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got

five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out

upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which

was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,

the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.

These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the

materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right

to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a

dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or

a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect

protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights

everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that

there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but

you could read on it at a mile distance:

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

Patent applied for."

There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with.

As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings,

and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down

the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch

to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with

a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets.

Yes, it was a daisy.

But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to

standing on one leg, and I found that there was something the matter

with the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking

Sir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his

friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint

got him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him.

When I saw him that first time--however, his personal condition

will not quite bear description here. You can read it in the

Lives of the Saints.*

[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from

Lecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history but

only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too

strong for reproduction in it.--_Editor_]

CHAPTER XXIII

RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN

Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin

was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering

gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for

of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.

Finally I said:

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

"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest

enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands

of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish."

He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must

have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind

was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and

billowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted

his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary

way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and

about exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks

and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of

acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all

in a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously for

results. Merlin said:

"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these

waters, this which I have but just essayed had done it. It has

failed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is

a truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the most

potent spirit known to the magicians of the East, and whose name

none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. The

mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret

of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. The

water will flow no more forever, good Father. I have done what

man could. Suffer me to go."

Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation.

He turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said:

"Ye have heard him. Is it true?"

"Part of it is."

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

"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spell

upon the well."

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

"Possibly."

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

"That is it."

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

"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true.

There are conditions under which an effort to break it may have

some chance--that is, some small, some trifling chance--of success."

"The conditions--"

"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the well

and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to

myself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobody

allowed to cross the ground but by my authority."

"Are these all?"

"Yes."

"And you have no fear to try?"

"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed.

One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?"

"These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandment

to that effect."

"Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye wit that he that

would break this spell must know that spirit's name?"

"Yes, I know his name."

"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye

must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha! Knew ye that?"

"Yes, I knew that, too."

"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye minded to utter

that name and die?"

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

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

"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thing

for _you_ to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin."

It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst

weather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the

danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure,

and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats.

But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine

his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead

of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain

and enjoy it.

My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged,

for they had traveled double tides. They had pack-mules along,

and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead pipe,

Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire

sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--everything

necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got their

supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a

solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed

the required conditions. We took possession of the well and its

surroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from

the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical

instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in

ship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our

fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed.

Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there

was a deal to do yet, and I was determined to spring the miracle

before midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracle

worked for the Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is

worth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine hours

the water had risen to its customary level--that is to say, it was

within twenty-three feet of the top. We put in a little iron pump,

one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored

into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the

well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long

enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond

the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the

two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be

present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at

the proper time.

We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this

hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down

fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the

bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they

could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are;

and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We

grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder,

we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the

roof--blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and

purple on the last--and grounded a wire in each.

About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of

scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so

made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed

for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne.

When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want

to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the

properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters

comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose

and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of

these things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too much

style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes

money; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires to

the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground

to the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fence

a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common

multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open

at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could

charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed

my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was

around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and

make the fur fly. Then we went home to supper.

The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time;

and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had

been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was

become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question

about that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening and

announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever

heat. They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would

move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time

all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells

would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission

to the multitudes to close in and take their places.

I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the

abbot's solemn procession hove in sight--which it did not do till

it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black

night and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin, and took

a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.

One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban,

but they were there, just the same. The moment the bells stopped,

those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast

black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow,

and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon

a pavement of human heads to--well, miles.

We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thing

I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience

have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the

silence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled up

and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had

put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented.

When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my

hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted--that always

produces a dead hush--and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word

with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and

many women to faint:

"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"

Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched

off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of

people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense

--that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit

in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot

and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered

with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished

clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin

with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted

my hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony:

"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"

--and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic

of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue!

After sixty seconds I shouted:

"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenen-

tragoedie!"

--and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this

time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating

syllables of this word of words:

"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"

--and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going

at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouring

vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding

rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In

the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid

against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first

time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and

ready. So I said to the abbot:

"The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread name

and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and take

hold of something." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in

another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it.

If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water

gush from the chapel door!"

I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread

my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it

to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra

posturing and gesturing, and shouted:

"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain

to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still

remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence

to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread

name I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!"

Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of

dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a

hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels!

One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people

--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair

and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping

forth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the

chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me

in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.

And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really

no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel.

You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down

in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and

talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear

names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who

was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it was

pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before.

I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down

like a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had

never come to since. He never had heard that name before,--neither

had I--but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would have

been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own

mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did.

He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tell

him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that.

Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out

the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it.

But he didn't arrive.

When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back

reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind

of a superior being--and I was. I was aware of that. I took along

a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump,

and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the

people out there were going to sit up with the water all night,

consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted

of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle

itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration,

too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance.

It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it.

I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it.

CHAPTER XXIV

A RIVAL MAGICIAN

My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious

now. It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable

account. The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested

by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come

riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two

centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash.

It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still

remaining. So I sounded a Brother:

"Wouldn't you like a bath?"

He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it to

the well--but he said with feeling:

"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that

blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. Would God I might

wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden."

And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved

he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed,

if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I

went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother. He

blenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench,

for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and

I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench

was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of

the surface, too--blenched, and trembled. He said:

"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely

granted out of a grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would you

drive away the blessed water again?"

"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge

which teaches me that there was an error that other time when

it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain."

A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "My

knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune,

which was caused by quite another sort of sin."

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

"They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father.

Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever."

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

"I do promise it."

"Then will I have the first bath myself! Go--get ye to your work.

Tarry not, tarry not, but go."

I and my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the old

bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone

missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and

avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we

had it all done and the water in--a spacious pool of clear pure

water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too.

It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old abbot

kept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down black

and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and

worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful,

and the game was made! another triumph scored.

It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness,

and I was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, but

I struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it started

up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. Of course the rheumatism

hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This was

the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what

time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace.

When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But everybody was full

of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into

my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly

up toward health and strength again; so I gained fast.

Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn out

and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up.

My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree

and wander through the country a week or two on foot. This would

give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest

class of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other way

to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation

of the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman, there

would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out

from their private joys and troubles, and I should get no further

than the outside shell.

One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip,

and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity

of the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the face

of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage

which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den

of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had

lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions

and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and

difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought

I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed

with its reputation.

My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured.

Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavern

I heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:

"Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot?--Behold, thou mayst glad

thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that

it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in

impossible places--here standeth in the flesh his mightiness

The Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!"

Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling

together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction

of opposites and irreconcilables--the home of the bogus miracle

become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned

into a telephone office!

The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized one

of my young fellows. I said:

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

"But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you. We saw many

lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station,

for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town

of goodly size."

"Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's

a good stand, anyway. Do you know where you are?"

"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my

comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge,

I got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when I waked, and

report the place's name to Camelot for record."

"Well, this is the Valley of Holiness."

It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I had

supposed he would. He merely said:

"I will so report it."

"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late

wonders that have happened here! You didn't hear of them?"

"Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all.

We learn naught but that we get by the telephone from Camelot."

"Why _they_ know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything

about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?"

"Oh, _that_? Indeed yes. But the name of _this_ valley doth woundily

differ from the name of _that_ one; indeed to differ wider were not pos--"

"What was that name, then?"

"The Valley of Hellishness."

"_That_ explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the very

demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of

divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know

the name of the place now. Call up Camelot."

He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy's

voice again. It was like being home. After some affectionate

interchanges, and some account of my late illness, I said:

"What is new?"

"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this

hour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye

have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place

where the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds

--an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewise

smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those flames

from out our stock and sent them by your order."

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

"The king?--no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads

that holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way,

and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night."

"This will bring them here--when?"

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

"Anything else in the way of news?"

"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested

to him; one regiment is complete and officered."

"The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that myself. There is

only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer

a regular army."

"Yes--and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one

West Pointer in that regiment."

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

"It is truly as I have said."

"Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was the

method? Competitive examination?"

"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this--these

officers be all of noble family, and are born--what is it you

call it?--chuckleheads."

"There's something wrong, Clarence."

"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do

travel hence with the king--young nobles both--and if you but wait

where you are you will hear them questioned."

"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in,

anyway. Mount a man and send him to that school with a message;

let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before

sunset to-night and say--"

"There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to the school.

Prithee let me connect you with it."

It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning

communication with distant regions, I was breathing the breath

of life again after long suffocation. I realized, then, what a

creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these

years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as

to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it.

I gave my order to the superintendent of the Academy personally.

I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and

a box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doing

without these conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn't

going to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could get

at my pockets.

When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interest

going on. The abbot and his monks were assembled in the great

hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances

of a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of

the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian

medicine-man wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating,

and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor,--the

regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia--so he

said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as good

as gold, and passed current everywhere.

How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's

terms. His specialty was to tell you what any individual on the

face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done

at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the

future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of

the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing

of hands made eloquent answer--this reverend crowd _would_ like to

know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud

went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement:

"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put

money in the palm of a holy begging friar--one, two, three pieces,

and they be all of silver."

A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around:

"It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "What study, what labor, to have

acquired a so amazing power as this!"

Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing?

Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Then

he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King

of the Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with each

new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher.

They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time;

but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with

unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose

my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I should

be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it

right away, too. I said:

"If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certain

person is doing."

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

"It will be difficult--perhaps impossible."

"My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult it is, the more

certainly will I reveal it to you."

You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty

high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around,

and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it:

"If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want to

know--I will give you two hundred silver pennies."

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

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

"Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurred

to anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring about

somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician was

hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his

experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet

it. He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "Come,"

I said, "what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up,

right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is

doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three

yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with my

right hand--they will indorse you if you tell correctly." He was

still dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up and

tell; it is because you don't know. _You_ a magician! Good friends,

this tramp is a mere fraud and liar."

This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used

to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know

what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now;

superstitious bodings were in every mind. The magician began to

pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy,

nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated

that his mood was not destructive. He said:

"It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's

speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not,

that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with

the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born

in the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur the great

king is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but the

doings of a subject interest me not."

"Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody,' and so

I supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody; that is, everybody."

"It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if

he be royal."

"That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his

opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not

likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for

the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be

born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king--"

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

"Most gladly, yea, and gratefully."

Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the

incorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly,

and looked at me with a "There, now, what can you say to that?"

air, when the announcement came:

"The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these

two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep."

"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself;

"may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul."

"And so it might be, if he were sleeping," I said, "but the king

is not sleeping, the king rides."

Here was trouble again--a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which

of us to believe; I still had some reputation left. The magician's

scorn was stirred, and he said:

"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and

magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and

see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help."

"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantations

myself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on occasions

of moment."

When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up.

That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the

queen and the court, and got this information:

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

I said:

"That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements,

the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Now

perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king

and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?"

"They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride,

for they go a journey toward the sea."

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

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

"That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles.

Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done,

and they will be _here_, in this valley."

_That_ was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl

of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followed

the thing right up:

"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail:

if he does I will ride you on a rail instead."

Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the king

had passed through two towns that were on the line. I spotted

his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these

matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he

kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There

was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed

to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange

thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that other

magician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I asked

a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician

had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court

had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. Think

of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country.

These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in

history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive

value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer

who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word.

However, it was not good politics to let the king come without

any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up a

procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and

started them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was the

sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage

and humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed

him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to

offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad

his spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces.

The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various

buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a

rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician

--and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation

was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can

keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit

around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business

right along.

CHAPTER XXV

A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION

When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or

visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost

of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was

a fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examination

of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the

Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just

as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a

holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business

functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual;

he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was

himself Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane

judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,--according

to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights--I mean

his rearing--often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a

dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree,

the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always,

whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should

be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's

moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a

privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders

under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not

be offensive to any--even to the noble himself--unless the fact

itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact.

The repulsive feature of slavery is the _thing_, not its name. One

needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below

him to recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure

--the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these

are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling.

They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's

old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being.

The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely

the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies.

He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother

for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in

famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest.

One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an

orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow

who had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory held

by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of

the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that

she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out

of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory--the one heretofore

referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or

avoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was, that the

lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the

particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be

exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older

law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising

it. It was a very odd case, indeed.

It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the

ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money

that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the

Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a

candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible;

they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected.

The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise,

hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine

of L400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for

sheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after being

elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and

elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it up

until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the

stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen

in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees

slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given

their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good

and holy peoples that be in the earth.

The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just

as strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out of

this hole. But he got out. I append his decision:

"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a

child's affair for simpleness. An the young bride had conveyed

notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master

and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said

bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary

conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus

would she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her first

duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging

to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no

defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any

deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman's

case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that

she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the

last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in

the costs. Next!"

Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months

old. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three months

lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets

they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch

of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in

these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying

to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair,

they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless,

bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides were

not so poor as they.

Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to

the Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men write

many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but

the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal

laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor material

for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy;

and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short

work of that law which the king had just been administering if it

had been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase

which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come

to seem to have sense and meaning--the sense and meaning implied

when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or

the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government";

and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation

somewhere, some time or other which _wasn't_ capable of it--wasn't as

able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or

would be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all

ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation,

and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privileged

classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade

was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long

ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day

that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself.

Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best

governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still

behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the

same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way

down to the lowest.

King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond

my calculations. I had not supposed he would move in the matter

while I was away; and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining

the merits of officers; I had only remarked that it would be wise

to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination;

and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications

that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. That ought

to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken

with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must

get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination

as he could invent out of his own head.

I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much

more admirable was the one which I should display to the Examining

Board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his

curiosity. When the Board was assembled, I followed him in; and

behind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a bright

young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my

West Point professors.

When I saw the Board, I did not know whether to cry or to laugh.

The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Norroy

King-at-Arms! The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in

his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officials

who had to know how to read and write were priests.

My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head

of the Board opened on him with official solemnity:

"Name?"

"Mal-ease."

"Son of?"

"Webster."

"Webster--Webster. H'm--I--my memory faileth to recall the

name. Condition?"

"Weaver."

"Weaver!--God keep us!"

The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one

clerk fainted, and the others came near it. The chairman pulled

himself together, and said indignantly:

"It is sufficient. Get you hence."

But I appealed to the king. I begged that my candidate might be

examined. The king was willing, but the Board, who were all

well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of

examining the weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough to

examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king

turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard

prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. It was

beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow

in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining

and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy,

signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege

guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket

practice, revolver practice--and not a solitary word of it all

could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand--and it

was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the

blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like

nothing, too--all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and

constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time,

and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or

under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make

him wish he hadn't come--and when the boy made his military salute

and stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and all

those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified,

partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judged

that the cake was ours, and by a large majority.

Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had come

to West Point so ignorant that when I asked him, "If a general

officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle,

what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said:

"Get up and brush himself."

One of the young nobles was called up now. I thought I would

question him a little myself. I said:

"Can your lordship read?"

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

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

"Answer the question!"

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

"Can you write?"

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

"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments.

You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing

of the sort will be permitted. Can you write?"

"No."

"Do you know the multiplication table?"

"I wit not what ye refer to."

"How much is 9 times 6?"

"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency

requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred,

and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren

of the knowledge."

"If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel,

in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny,

and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same,

who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A from B, and

which party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money?

If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages

in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit

which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned

increment, that is to say, usufruct?"

"Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, who

moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have I never

heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and

congestion of the ducts of thought. Wherefore I beseech you let

the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless

names work out their several salvations from their piteous and

wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their

trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should

but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself

to see the desolation wrought."

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

"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them

whilst that I lay sick about the beginning of the year and thereby

failed to hear his proclamation."

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

"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and

sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of

honor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heard

of before; peradventure it is a new dignity."

"Yes, in this country."

Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official

position, of any kind under the sun! Why, he had all the earmarks

of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to

contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation.

It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that

sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But that

didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition,

it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After

nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and

they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and

found him empty, of course. He knew somewhat about the warfare

of the time--bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights in

the tournament ring, and such things--but otherwise he was empty

and useless. Then we took the other young noble in hand, and he

was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. I delivered

them into the hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortable

consciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined in

the previous order of precedence.

"Name, so please you?"

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

"Grandfather?"

"Also Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash."

"Great-grandfather?"

"The same name and title."

"Great-great-grandfather?"

"We had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it had

reached so far back."

"It mattereth not. It is a good four generations, and fulfilleth

the requirements of the rule."

"Fulfills what rule?" I asked.

"The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the

candidate is not eligible."

"A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can

prove four generations of noble descent?"

"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned

without that qualification."

"Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such a

qualification as that?"

"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth

go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself."

"As how?"

"For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding

saints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead

four generations."

"I see, I see--it is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the one

case a man lies dead-alive four generations--mummified in ignorance

and sloth--and that qualifies him to command live people, and take

their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case,

a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that

qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's

grace approve of this strange law?"

The king said:

"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange. All places of

honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be

of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their

property and would be so without this or any rule. The rule is

but to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood,

which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty

lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I were

to blame an I permitted this calamity. _You_ can permit it an you

are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but

that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not

comprehensible to any."

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

The chairman resumed as follows:

"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and

State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the

sacred dignity of the British nobility?"

"He built a brewery."

"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements

and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case

open for decision after due examination of his competitor."

The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations

of nobility himself. So there was a tie in military qualifications

that far.

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

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

"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble;

she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and

character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the

best lady in the land."

"That will do. Stand down." He called up the competing lordling

again, and asked: "What was the rank and condition of the

great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your

great house?"

"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence

by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born."

"Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect

intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in

contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more

worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine."

I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised

myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome!

I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the

face. I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end.

I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition.

I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities,

and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. It would also be a good

idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many

officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the

country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers

as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied

regiment, the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its

own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come

when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent.

This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the

nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. Then we

would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace

materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper--nobodies

selected on a basis of mere efficiency--and we would make this

regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from

restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering,

to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to go

off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good

time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in

safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the

old stand, same as usual. The king was charmed with the idea.

When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thought

I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. You

see, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race

and very fruitful. Whenever a child was born to any of these

--and it was pretty often--there was wild joy in the nation's mouth,

and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. The joy was questionable,

but the grief was honest. Because the event meant another call

for a Royal Grant. Long was the list of these royalties, and

they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury

and a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not believe this

latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects

for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. If I

could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for

one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have

made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect

with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He had

something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to

look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate

him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that

venerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that there

was not another respectable family in England that would humble

itself to hold out the hat--however, that is as far as I ever got;

he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too.

But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crack

regiment out of officers alone--not a single private. Half of it

should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to

Major-General, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and

they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest

of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood.

These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-General

up to Field Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and

fed by the state. Moreover--and this was the master stroke

--it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always

addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which

I would presently invent), and they and they only in all England

should be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood should

have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and

renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. Neatest

touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be

_born_ into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a

permanent situation, upon due notice from the parents.

All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existing

grants would be relinquished; that the newly born would always

join was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint and

bizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cease to be a living fact,

and take its place among the curiosities of the past.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FIRST NEWSPAPER

When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman

to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life

of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing

in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure

himself--nothing should stop him--he would drop everything and

go along--it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many

a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once;

but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed

for the king's-evil--to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't be

right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth

considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought

he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at

that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when

he said mournfully:

"Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is,

she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth."

Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful,

it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. I never

meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate

to see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that

much. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen

Sir Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for

the king I didn't happen to be around at the time.

There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business--very

tidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state; about

him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals.

Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel,

a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. All

abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors,

in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light.

It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being

gotten up for that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundred

sick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interest

of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before;

the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me

to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all

such crowds there were many people who only imagined something

was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound

but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and

yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of

coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been

a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you

consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age

and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead,

you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was

just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it

took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the

surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself

for the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation

into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my

adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into

five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk

of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each

gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the

nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not

approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough

in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you can

water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The old

gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown

origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen,

and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they

were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that

the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked

like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a

first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever

on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out

of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous

fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was

tried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving in expense was

a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched

a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would

have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled

through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop.

To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these

other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount

to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of

every individual of the population, counting every individual as

if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average

wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual

will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. In my

day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts,

and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it

made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid

by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed

among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the

annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely

the same--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that,

I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,

and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to

something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic's average wage was

3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national

government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day.

Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil

day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased

all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense

into the bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalent

of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution

I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--the wisdom

of my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom,

howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always

saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary

cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as

the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all

hands were happy and nobody hurt.

Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate;

if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed

along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shall

lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then the king

stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the

patient graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it around

his neck himself--and was dismissed. Would you think that that

would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the

patient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel

where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd

geese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built the

chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the

occurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick

person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame

and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away

whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live.

Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them;

but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the

cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable.

I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches,

arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches

and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there

which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying

a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients

in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and

those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't

cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable

superstition that supports his throne--the subject's belief in

the divine appointment of his sovereign--has passed away. In my

youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil,

but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have

cured it forty-nine times in fifty.

Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the

good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing

forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored.

I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state.

For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his

repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out:

"they shall lay their hands on the sick"--when outside there rang

clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled

thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "Camelot _Weekly

Hosannah and Literary Volcano!_--latest irruption--only two cents

--all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greater

than kings had arrived--the newsboy. But I was the only person

in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and

what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.

I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the

Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change;

is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper

again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon

the first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a clammy

atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they

sent a quivery little cold wave through me:

HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEY

OF HOLINESS!

----

THE WATER-WORKS CORKED!

----

BRER MERLIN WORKS HIS ARTS, BUT GETS

LEFT?

----

But the Boss scores on his first Innings!

----

The Miraculous Well Uncorked amid

awful outbursts of

INFERNAL FIRE AND SMOKE

ATHUNDER!

----

THE BUZZARD-ROOST ASTONISHED!

----

UNPARALLELED REJOIBINGS!

--and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have

enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its

note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this

was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated

to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising.

Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through

the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change

without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by

pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and

airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an

abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:

LOCAL SMOKE AND CINDERS.

Sir Launcelot met up with old King

Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last

weok over on the moor south of Sir

Balmoral le Merveilleuse's hog dasture.

The widow has been notified.

Expedition No. 3 will start adout the

first of mext month on a search f8r Sir

Sagramour le Desirous. It is in com-

and of the renowned Knight of the Red

Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde,

who is compete9t. intelligent, courte-

ous, and in every way a brick, and fur-

tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara-

cen, who is no huckleberry hinself.

This is no pic-nic, these boys mean

busine&s.

The readers of the Hosannah will re-

gret to learn that the hadndsome and

popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who dur-

ing his four weeks' stay at the Bull and

Halibut, this city, has won every heart

by his polished manners and elegant

cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for

home. Give us another call, Charley!

The bdsiness end of the funeral of

the late Sir Dalliance the duke's son of

Cornwall, killed in an encounter with

the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last

Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of

Enchantment was in the hands of the

ever affable and efficient Mumble,

prince of un3ertakers, then whom there

exists none by whom it were a more

satisfying pleasure to have the last sad

offices performed. Give him a trial.

The cordial thanks of the Hosannah

office are due, from editor down to

devil, to the ever courteous and thought-

ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace's

Third Assistant V t for several sau-

ceTs of ice crEam a quality calculated

to make the ey of the recipients hu-

mid with grt ude; and it done it.

When this administration wants to

chalk up a desirable name for early

promotion, the Hosannah would like a

chance to sudgest.

The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of

South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the

popular host of the Cattlemen's Board-

ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city.

Young Barker the bellows-mender is

hoMe again, and looks much improved

by his vacation round-up among the out-

lying smithies. See his ad.

Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew

that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The

"Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified

respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those

disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved.

Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court

circular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness

about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts

to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage--in fact,

the only sensible way--is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under

variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle

of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it

gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything;

this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good

appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made

out of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple,

it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is,

it was not the best way:

COURT CIRCULAR.

On Monday, the king rode in the park.

" Tuesday, " " "

" Wendesday " " "

" Thursday " " "

" Friday, " " "

" Saturday " " "

" Sunday, " " "

However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it.

Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and

there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything,

and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better

than was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the grammar

was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not

much mind these things. They are common defects of my own, and

one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand

perpendicular himself.

I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole

paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had

to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager

questions: What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a

handkerchief?--saddle blanket?--part of a shirt? What is it made of?

How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles.

Will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? Is it

writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They

suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how

to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of

the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a

whole. I put my information in the simplest form I could:

"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time.

It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain

what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not written

by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is.

A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this,

in every minute detail--they can't be told apart." Then they all

broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration:

"A thousand! Verily a mighty work--a year's work for many men."

"No--merely a day's work for a man and a boy."

They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.

"Ah-h--a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment."

I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as

could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of

the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and

was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through:

"Ah-h-h!" "How true!" "Amazing, amazing!" "These be the very

haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" And might they

take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine

it?--they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, handling

it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing

come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture,

caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and

scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These

grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes

--how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was not

all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent

tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother

feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby,

and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend

their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest

of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it

were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is

no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet,

that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half

so divine a contentment.

During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to

group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye

was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction,

drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once,

if I might never taste it more.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO

About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his

hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear.

The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but

hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the

lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves

were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverted

a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it.

I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only

about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and

succeeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got his

lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth,

which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no

longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest

and most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barbered

alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or

shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose,

our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of

its strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheap

to a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest

material there was for male attire--manufactured material, you

understand.

We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made

eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled

country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with

provisions--provisions for the king to taper down on, till he

could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage.

I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then

gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. Then I said

I would find some water for him, and strolled away. Part of my

project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little

myself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence;

even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when

the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then I had

a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert

and was as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want to break

him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sit

together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would

not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when

there was no necessity for it.

I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been

resting about twenty minutes, when I heard voices. That is all

right, I thought--peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be

stirring this early. But the next moment these comers jingled into

sight around a turn of the road--smartly clad people of quality,

with luggage-mules and servants in their train! I was off like

a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. For a while it

did seem that these people would pass the king before I could

get to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I canted

my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew.

I arrived. And in plenty good enough time, too.

"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony--jump! Jump to

your feet--some quality are coming!"

"Is that a marvel? Let them come."

"But my liege! You must not be seen sitting. Rise!--and stand in

humble posture while they pass. You are a peasant, you know."

"True--I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war

with Gaul"--he was up by this time, but a farm could have got up

quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate--"and

right-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream

the which--"

"A humbler attitude, my lord the king--and quick! Duck your head!

--more!--still more!--droop it!"

He did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. He looked

as humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is the most you could

say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that

it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous

flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in

time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley

of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned

the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment,

but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. I said:

"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being

without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. If we

are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the

peasant but act the peasant."

"It is wisdom; none can gainsay it. Let us go on, Sir Boss.

I will take note and learn, and do the best I may."

He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen better.

If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child

going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day

long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and just

saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with

each new experiment, you've seen the king and me.

If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like,

I should have said, No, if anybody wants to make his living

exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; I can

do better with a menagerie, and last longer. And yet, during

the first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or other

dwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his early

novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these

places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he

could, but what of that? He didn't improve a bit that I could see.

He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh

astonishers, in new and unexpected places. Toward evening on

the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk

from inside his robe!

"Great guns, my liege, where did you get that?"

"From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve."

"What in the world possessed you to buy it?"

"We have escaped divers dangers by wit--thy wit--but I have

bethought me that it were but prudence if I bore a weapon, too.

Thine might fail thee in some pinch."

"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What

would a lord say--yes, or any other person of whatever condition

--if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?"

It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then.

I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as

persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing

itself. We walked along, silent and thinking. Finally the king said:

"When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath

a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?"

It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite know

how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, I ended

by saying the natural thing:

"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughts are?"

The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me.

"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magic

thou art. But prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet."

I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground.

After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said:

"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are two

kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are but

a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that

are whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift,

do you think?"

"Oh, the last, most surely!"

"True. Does Merlin possess it?"

"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and future

kingship that were twenty years away."

"Has he ever gone beyond that?"

"He would not claim more, I think."

"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit

of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years."

"These are few, I ween."

"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four

hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed

even seven hundred and twenty."

"Gramercy, it is marvelous!"

"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing."

"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch

of time as--"

"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle

does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this

world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!"

My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open,

and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! That

settled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his

facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. It

never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement.

"Now, then," I continued, "I _could_ work both kinds of prophecy

--the long and the short--if I chose to take the trouble to keep

in practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because

the other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort

--stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course,

I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not

often--hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there was

great talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about my

having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival,

two or three days beforehand."

"Indeed, yes, I mind it now."

"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and

piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had

been five hundred years away instead of two or three days."