of light footsteps at the end of the hall. Someone was stealing down the
mossy steps. Someone was approaching. He seized the bars with tightening
fingers. His breath came fast. Yes, yes, it was——
The princess!
He could hardly see her in the darkness of the hall. He could scarcely
recognize the blue of her gown and the glint of her golden hair. But he
heard the jingle of many keys in her hand and the creak of the lock, as
she tried each key ... and failed!
“Oh, this one will open it,” she whispered, each time. “Oh, this one
must!”
Then, at last, she came to the last key in her hand. She thrust it into
the hole: it fitted perfectly. She turned it—snap! The lock flew open.
Peterkin hunched his back and pushed against the bars. He was in the
hall now—and free!
Neither he nor the little princess said a word for a long moment. Then
she took his hand and placed into it a little vial of purple liquid.
[Illustration]
“Guard this well,” she warned him. “It is the Water of Bounceability.
Whenever you wish to leap over great heights, you have only to sip a
little of it and then to bounce high up and away. And, alas, you have
many heights to leap ere you are back in my royal father’s favor. He is
so angry at you for having brought his arch-enemy into the city that he
has ordered your death at midnight. The hangman is already plaiting his
rope and the carpenters hammering at a high scaffold. So follow me
quickly to the city’s edge, where none will find you.”
Peterkin was close at her heels, all the dark way. Through pitchy
tunnels she led him, far under the cellars of the city; through narrow
cave-like passages, heavy with reeking gases, until at last they came up
into an open space, where the woods came down from the slopes of black
hills to meet the streets and houses. It was the furthermost edge of the
city.
“I must leave you here,” sighed the princess. “I must return and take
the spanking which awaits me. But as for you, brave Peterkin, you have
your choice: either you may escape safely into exile and never return to
see me again—or else you may perform four mighty deeds. Aye, deeds so
great that even the King, my father, cannot do them. But if you succeed
in them, you may return here, so high in the King’s favor that he will
grant your dearest wish. Tell me, stranger, which will you choose?” Ah,
little princess—I wonder if she blushed when she said it!
But Peterkin never wavered. “Need you ask, my Princess Clem?” he
whispered.
“Then you must know,” she continued, “that there is a misery in each of
the Four Kingdoms o’er which my father rules. Misery, sorrow and tears.
Go, now, to each of these Four Kingdoms and make its people happy. Give
joy instead of sorrow and smiles instead of tears. More than this I
cannot tell you, but go! You shall see strange things and do brave
deeds, and I shall be sitting at my palace window, under the gilded
dome, awaiting your return”——
Then, all in a twinkling, the little princess had fled back into the
tunnel and was gone. Peterkin was alone.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
“The whole leap took but a moment”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XV
THE WATER OF BOUNCEABILITY
[Illustration]
PETERKIN turned his face at once towards the hazy line of hills which
loomed through the darkness. He must escape over their crests while
night was still here. He must take a sip—as the Princess Clem had taught
him—of that purple liquid from the little vial in his hand.
Carefully he uncorked the bottle—and sniffed. What a sweet, fragrant
odor! He touched his tongue to the rim. It was like melted candy—yet the
taste of it stung like fire. His limbs seemed to twitch and throb at the
touch.
He drew a long breath—and gulped down a gurgling mouthful of the Water
of Bounceability.
Immediately he knew that he might jump—_must_ jump—jump anywhere, up
into the sky, where the stars were, and over the distant hills. He made
a little run, a hop, and then—up he went sailing far across the
hilltops, down into the valley on the other side. The whole leap took
but a moment: no more time than it takes the fluff of a withered
dandelion to fly across a lawn.
Yet here he was thirty leagues or more from his starting place, in a
strange, new valley! He wondered what the name of it could be.... It was
such a wild and woody-looking place. He could not see very much, of
course, for the stars gave little light, and the moon was but a thin,
pale crescent. But he saw that all was tangled forests here and that
wild, thorny heather and tall weeds had spread across what should have
been clean meadows. An old road went across the heath, but it was
overgrown with ferns and brambles and ditched with great muddy pools as
if no one mended or repaired it—and no one traveled it. It was all a
vast desert of waste and decay, hid by the dark of the night.
Peterkin knew how useless it would be to try to make his way forward
before morning. So he lay down under the branches of the trees and
slept.
[Illustration]
But early the next day, before the sun was up, Peterkin had started on
his way. A difficult journey it was, too, along the deserted road. There
were puddles to wade and vines to skip and rocky barriers to climb.
There were ruts where the leaves of the past autumn had buried
themselves in a soggy mass or where the summer dust had sifted into
foolish heaps. There were trunks of fallen trees across the road, and
lizards, frogs and hedge-hogs crawled or hopped or ran beside them. All
was desolate and wild. It was a valley of mysterious decay.
Then, at last, where the road slanted down to meet another long stretch
of brown heathered fields, Peterkin spied a house. A huge, tall house,
too, which must have been a splendid mansion once upon a time. But now
it was shabby and needed paint. The bricks of its walls were losing
their mortar; the slates of the roof were falling to the ground; none of
the windows had curtains and few of them glass. There was moss upon the
steps and in the eaves. The chimney pots were crumbled, and the lawn was
high with choking weeds.
Peterkin wondered, Could anyone live here?
As if in answer to his question, a little boy came around the corner of
the house. He came slowly, though he never stopped or hesitated a moment
when he was within sight of Peterkin. He stumbled unsteadily through the
weeds, with his hands held out before him. His face was handsome,
truly—but his hair was in a fearful tousle over his eyes and his clothes
were all in rags.
“No wonder you can’t see a thing,” laughed Peterkin. “Take your hair out
of your eyes!”
The little boy stopped short at the sound of a voice. He nodded his head
sadly.
“What are eyes?” he asked. “I know I have two of them—but what use are
they? Won’t you tell me, stranger?”
“Why, silly!” roared Peterkin. “Eyes are to see with!”
The little boy smiled more sadly than before. “No,” he sighed. “If you
can see with your eyes, you are not of this valley. For I am blind. And
so are my father and my mother, and all our neighbors, too. And so is
everybody in this valley. All of us are blind!”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XVI
THE VALE OF THE BLIND
[Illustration]
THE little boy led Peterkin into the house to meet his father and
mother. But they, like the boy, were in rags and tatters—and blind!
“You can _see_?” asked the father in wonder, when Peterkin had explained
whence he came. “What does it mean to _see_? Isn’t all the world a thing
of blackness? Is there anything more to it than the dark nothing of the
blind?”
“Oh, yes, indeed!” cried Peterkin, his own eyes filling with tears of
pity. “There’s the sunshine and the trees, and all the bright flowers of
the garden. There are birds of bright plumage, and moonbeams on the
surface of the water, and the smiles on people’s faces. Oh, the world is
so full of things to see.... I could not tell you all of them.”
The mother nodded. “Yes, that is just the way my father’s father used to
speak,” she said slowly. “It was in his youth that this became the Vale
of the Blind. Before that, it was known in all the Four Kingdoms as the
Vale of Bright Eyes. But now——” Her voice sank away and she sighed.
“Tell me the story,” begged Peterkin. “Tell me how this great misfortune
came upon your grandfathers.”
It was the father who answered him. “Our valley,” he began, “was the
happiest-hearted of all hereabouts fifty years ago. These things you
speak of—these colors and sunshine which we do not know—were here in
smiling plenty. The fields were neat and trim with golden grain. The
pastures were like new-swept velvet, clean and green. The roads were
smooth and bright. The houses were all handsome, with pretty lawns and
gardens. Men wore fine clothes and took pride in themselves and in one
another.
“But one day, there came into our Valley of Bright Eyes a haggard
stranger. He was the saddest being that e’er trudged down over the
boundary hills, my grandfather used to tell me. He wept, the whole day
long, because he had no teeth. Think of it! he could not be happy for
want of a set of teeth!
“Now, all their happiness had made my grandparents and their neighbors a
kind, soft-hearted lot. No sooner did they see this man—who said he was
a farmer—than they took pity on him. They fed him with porridge and
honey—for they knew he could not eat what must be chewed—and they gave
him a bed of fragrant blossoms to lie on when the night came.
“But he would not sleep, at once. He got up every little while to ask
them: ‘And are you sure this Valley of Bright Eyes is one of the Four
Kingdoms, hey? Are you sure that the King of the Four Kingdoms is its
ruler, hey?’
“Every time they told him ‘Yes’ he would chuckle and mumble strange
words through his toothless gums. In the middle of the night, he arose
and looked out across the moonlit fields, where the grain was rich, and
down the gleaming road, where the handsome houses stood in sleeping
order. He laughed aloud, this time, the story goes. Then he strode out
into the road and ran and ran—faster than ever a man had run before.
[Illustration]
“‘I seek a set of teeth!’ he screamed as he ran. Up flew the windows,
all the good folk roused from bed, rushing to see who could possibly be
making such a racket. All along his way the people stared at him. They
saw him take a torch from out of his pocket. They watched him set it
aflame. They saw him touch it, hot and sputtering, to the tops of the
fields of grain, to the hedges and trees.... _He_ _was setting fire to
their valley!_ They rushed down, seized him, and stamped out the fearful
blaze in just the nick of time.
“As for the toothless villain, he screamed with merry laughter when they
caught him.
“‘Hee, hee, my Bright Eyes!’ he cried. ‘You have been spying on me all
this while, eh? Your eyes are too bright. You have been watching my
revenge upon my enemy, the King! Too bright, too bright! From now you
shall be blind—fast blind—you and your wives and your sons and daughters
and your neighbors. From the Vale of Bright Eyes you shall now become
the Vale of the Blind. And yours shall henceforth be a valley of ruin
and decay. Blind, blind—and never again shall you see the gold of the
day or the silver of the moon until I come to give you back your
eyes—your bright eyes—hee, hee, hee!’
“And thus he fled from us. For the dark of the blind had come over the
valley many years ago ... and there is nothing left for us but tears.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XVII
PETERKIN PROMISES
[Illustration]
“AND so our valley has gone to rack and ruin,” concluded the blind man.
Peterkin was silent for some minutes after he had finished. Then he
shook his head wisely, sadly.
“Can you wait four days until I rescue you?” he asked.
“Four days?” The man, his wife and little son all burst into a bitter
laughter. “We have waited for half a century already. We can wait a
century, if only in the end we gain our eyes again, and win revenge upon
our toothless enemy. Four days, ho, ho!”
“You shall have both your eyes and your revenge,” promised the stranger.
“It was only three days ago that I sped through the air in the cup of a
sea-shell, in company with this toothless farmer. Oh, if I had only
known, then!”
“What? In his company? Are you a friend of his?” The blind family rushed
in about him, as if to capture him and flay him.
“No, no,” smiled Peterkin. “Not a friend at all. He tried to throw me
hundreds of feet down to the ground. But he disappeared—and I do not
know where he is. But I shall search the whole world over till I find
him. And then—woe to him!”
So saying, he put his hand on the blind man’s shoulder and bade them all
good-by. They gave him a few wild herbs to put into his blouse for
luncheon—it was all they had for food. And then he went on his way,
singing all sorts of promises to them as he went on down the hill.
As he walked along the shabby road, he came to other houses, broken down
and unpainted, all tangled in high weeds and matted vines. Each house
was poorer than the last; each one more deserted than the other. And
from each of them trooped little groups of blind folk, groping in
darkness, to question him and to complain to him of their hard fate. All
along his way he met the sight of their tears and heard the sound of
their weeping. But wherever he went, Peterkin gave the same promise of
happiness within four days and left a smile of hope behind him.
[Illustration]
At length he came to the last house of the valley. It was high on the
slope of one of the boundary mountains, almost at the edge of the
gleaming white glacier of the summit. It was fast in the shadow of a
huge, bluish ice cave, and long icicles dripped from its eaves and
glittered like jewels in the sunshine.
“And are you, too, blind?” he asked of the man who lived in this high
house.
“Yes,” replied the old man, sorrowfully. “I am no better than all the
others in this valley, no matter how high I live above them. I, like
them, am awaiting the rescuer who shall return my sight and bring
revenge upon our toothless enemy.”
“That is just what you shall have,” promised Peterkin, “if only you tell
me what is in the next valley, on the other side of the white mountains;
and how I may reach there the best.”
“Alas,” sighed the old fellow, “those are two riddles which I cannot
answer. I only know that in that valley beyond the ridge of the
boundary, there is just as much sorrow as there is here. There is
something wrong there—though I have never known what it is—and the great
barrier of glacier ice has hedged us from each other. So come and rest
here for to-day, and to-morrow, bright and early, you may come upon some
scheme to cross into that unknown valley over the mountains.”
So Peterkin took shelter there, in the green shadows of the ice cave,
and slept a troubled sleep until the morning.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
“A young peasant girl came toward him”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XVIII
THE VALLEY OF SILENCE
[Illustration]
AS soon as dawn was over the glacier the next day, Peterkin was on his
feet and sipping a good gulp from his flask of the Water of
Bounceability. You see, he dreamed about this magic gift of the
princess’s as he lay a-sleeping ... and really, what an easy thing it
was to cross the boundary mountains, now!
Just one little swallow—and then a hop, skip and jump! Up, up and over!
Over the tree-tops, over the glacier itself ... then down into the
valley on the other side.
As he floated to the earth there, a strange hush seemed to fall on him.
It was the quiet sense of absolute stillness. He walked forward a little
way, then stopped in bewilderment. Not a sound—not a whisper of
anything. He could not hear even the crunch of his feet upon the
greensward. He called out, but somehow his voice sank away into nothing.
The trees rustled silently; a great, frothing brook went tumbling down
through a bit of woods without a murmur. All was quiet.
A young peasant girl came toward him, leading a horse across the
fields—but Peterkin could hear neither the patter of her feet nor the
hoof-beats of the horse.
“What ho!” cried he, “I must have gone suddenly deaf! I can’t even hear
myself speaking. Here, girl, tell me what’s wrong with my ears?”
The peasant maid halted her horse; she looked at Peterkin with startled
wonder. Her gaze settled on his moving mouth—and her eyes grew larger
and larger with surprise. Suddenly she snatched a little twig from the
branch of a nearby tree, stripped it and commenced to trace queer
letters with it in the dust of the road.
“Phew!” thought Peterkin. “She must be deaf herself. It’s a good thing I
went to school and learned to read and write!” Then he looked down at
what the little girl had traced upon the road—and this is what he read:
[Illustration]
“What are you eating?”
Peterkin laughed a noiseless laugh. Then he snatched the twig from her
and wrote in reply:
“Nothing.”
“Then what makes you move your mouth so queer?” she asked in writing.
“I’m talking,” he scribbled back.
“What does talking mean? That’s a word we know nothing about in this
valley.”
“Then how do you understand one another? And why don’t you make words
with your mouth?” he traced.
“We write to each other—like this. There would be no use in talking like
you do. We are all deaf.”
“All of you?”
“Yes, everybody in the valley.”
“Oh, then this is a valley of silence,” wrote Peterkin.
“Silence? What is silence?”
“Why, silence is when there is no noise.”
“What is noise?” she scrawled.
Poor Peterkin had to give it up after that. He tried to describe to her
what the wind was like when it roared in wintry weather—or how the birds
sing at evening in the woods—or how men can understand each other’s
smiles and scowls by simple noises which they make with their mouths.
But she only shrugged her shoulders and sighed. At any rate, Peterkin
thought it was a sigh—but he could not hear it.
So he marched along at her side in strange silence, making no noise and
hearing none, until they came into the center of a little village.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIX
EARS TOO SHARP
[Illustration]
THERE, in the silent village, they found a group of old men nodding on a
bench in the warm sunlight. Across the brook a big mill wheel was
turning; but it made no roar or clatter. A cart went by, but there was
no rumble to its wheels. Down the street a blacksmith was hammering at
his ruddy forge; but there was no clang or clatter to keep noisy company
to the flying sparks. All was silence—dreary, unbroken silence.
The old men stirred when Peterkin approached. They knew him for a
stranger. They rose and made a place for him beside them on the bench.
Then one of them took a piece of white chalk from his vest pocket,
turned to the brick wall behind him and began to write. The words he
wrote were so many that, before he was through, he had covered the wall
from top to bottom with this sad and mysterious tale:
“Once,” he wrote, “this was the Valley of the Rippling Brooks. All were
happy here, then. It was in my youth, I remember, when in our ears there
ran the murmur of a hundred gleaming, merry brooks that cross the woods
and fields and tumble from the hills in frothy white. The music of our
laughter was like the music of these brooks—never slowing, never
saddening. We were the happiest of all the Four Kingdoms.
“Then, one spring day, when the brooks were swollen and roaring with
gladness, there came into our midst, from I don’t know where, a strange
and toothless man. He was a farmer, like ourselves, he told us—and he
was forever muttering low words between his empty gums.”
“The toothless villain again!” thought Peterkin.
“We gave him shelter for the night,” continued the old man with his
writing. “But long before the moon was up, he had stolen off to the
fields where the brooks were white in the darkness—up the steeps to
where the waterfalls were splashing into quiet pools with a cheery
murmur. He reached over the low banks, listening greedily to the music
of the water. He knelt, bent his face close to the gurgling eddies—and
began to drink!
“We were all in bed by now and most of us asleep. It was so easy to fall
asleep in those good days, with the murmur of the softly playing
brooklets in our ears—not at all like to-day, when night is a black
stretch of silent terror.
[Illustration]
“Suddenly, in every household, someone sat up straight in bed. In every
household, someone had noticed that the sound of the water was growing
fainter and fainter. First one brook and then another seemed to die
down—as if it were suddenly drying up!
“We rushed out into the village square, across the fields, up the hills.
The moon came out and showed us, gleaming bare, the dry and empty beds
of many of our beloved brooks. Yes, nothing but dry, pebbled ruts, where
no stream trickled and no water sang. Where was the villain who had
worked this trick of tricks?
“We found him soon bending down at the edge of one of the last of our
brooks. He was drinking, drinking, drinking. He was sucking the pearly
water up, up into his puffed cheeks. He struggled to his feet as we
surrounded him; he brushed the drops from his sagging mouth and started
to run away. But he was bloated and heavy with all the water he had
gulped and he could not move. We seized him and flung him into the
water. He splashed and puffed and staggered clumsily, dripping, back
into our midst. Hate was in his wet face, and his red gums were like
round, snapping tongs.
“‘You men of the Rippling Brooks,’ he hissed, ‘your ears are far too
sharp! Your happiness is all in the ripple of water—and I am here to
take away that happiness. So if I cannot steal your brooks—why, then, I
shall steal your ears! From now on, I decree that you, your wives and
your children and all your neighbors shall be deaf. You shall live
henceforth in a valley of silence, where not even the whir of a wren on
wing shall come to your ears. Henceforth, all who dwell in this valley
shall be deaf—and all who enter it shall be deaf, too—until I come again
to set you free from the spell of utter silence.’
“Then the moon plunged behind a black cloud. This toothless demon
disappeared with a terrific burst of thunder.
“And that was the last sound that has been heard in this valley since he
cursed us with silence and sorrow.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XX
THE VALLEY OF DANCING LEGS
[Illustration]
PETERKIN’S next move, when he had sipped his Water of Bounceability and
came flying across into the next valley, was to clap his hands over his
ears. He had been deaf awhile ... and now that he could hear again, all
the thousand noises of the earth and air frightened and bewildered him.
He was wondering what was wrong with _this_ valley. There must be
_something_ wrong with it, of course. And he did not have to wait very
long before he discovered.
A group of fat and puffing people jigged into view. Hop, hop—what could
be the trouble with them? Why, they were dancing! Hop, hop—skippetty
hop, with never a stop—puffing, panting, groaning with weariness, they
danced a crazy path toward Peterkin.
“Hey, hey, stop!” cried he.
“We can’t stop,” grunted the chief of them. “If you want to talk to us,
you’ll have to dance along.”
Then, before he could help himself, Peterkin had a dancing man, locked
arms, on either side of him—and he was stamping, running, tripping,
jigging along with them.
“Oh, heigh, stop! Let go of me—stop, stop!” he commanded, out of breath
and red in the face.
“No, that’s just what we can’t do!” sighed the fat old chief. “We must
dance on and on and on. Our legs are shot with pain, our lungs are like
hot blasts, our feet are blistered and sore—but we cannot stop!”
Peterkin stumbled and fell flat. His two guides yanked him to his
feet—then on and on in a breathless dance.
“Once,” went on the hoarse and puffing chief, “we were the happiest of
all the Four Kingdoms. We were just plain, sensible, walk-along folk. We
loved to rest and doze in the heat of the noon. We loved to lie about
and let our fields grow of themselves with rich wheat and tasselled
corn. We were content to take our ease.