 29 The smallpox hut. When we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon we saw no signs of life about it. The field nearby had been denuded of its crop some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had it been harvested and gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had a ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was around anywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful. It was like the stillness of death. The cabin was a one-story one whose thatch was black with age and ragged from lack of repair. The door stood a trifle of jar. We approached it stealthily on tiptoe and at half-breath, for that is the way one's feeling makes him do at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knocked again. No answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in. I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground and steered at me, as one does who is awakened from sleep. Presently she found her voice. Have mercy! she pleaded. All is taken. Nothing is left. I have not come to take anything, poor woman. You are not a priest? No. Nor come not from the Lord of the Manor? No. I am a stranger. Oh! then for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death such as be harmless, tarry not here but fly, this place is under his curse and his churches. Let me come in and help you. You are sick and in trouble. I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow eyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated she was. I tell you, the place is under the church's ban. Save yourself and go before some stragglers see thee here, and report it. Give yourself no trouble about me. I don't care anything for the church's curse. Let me help you. Now all good spirits, if there be any such, bless thee for that word. Would God I had a sip of water? But hold, hold, forget I said it, and fly, for there is that here, that even he that feareth not the church must fear, this disease whereof we die. Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give. But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing past the king on my way to the brook. It was ten yards away. When I got back and entered the king was within, and was opening the shutter that closed the window-hole to let in air and light. The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman's lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came open, and a strong light flooded her face. Small pox. I sprang to the king and said in his ear, Out of the door on the instant sire, the woman is dying of that disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago. He did not budge. Of a truth I shall remain, and likewise help. I whispered again, King it must not be, you must go. You mean well, and you speak not unwisely, but it was shame that a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should withhold his hand where be such as need succour. Peace I will not go. It is you who must go. The church's ban is not upon me, but it forbideth you to be here, and she will deal with you with a heavy hand, and word come to her of your trespass. It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his life, but it was no use to argue with him. If he considered his nightly honour at stake here that was the end of argument. He would stay, and nothing could prevent it. I was aware of that. And so I dropped the subject. The woman spoke. Fair sir, of your kindness will you climb the ladder there and bring me news of what you find. Be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart has passed breaking, being already broke. Abide, said the king, and give the woman to eat. I will go. And he put down the knapsack. I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not noticed us thus far or spoken. Is this your husband? the king asked. Yes. Is he asleep? God be thanked for that one charity, yes, these three hours. Where shall I pay to the full my gratitude, for my heart is bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now? I said, we will be careful. We will not wake him. Ah, no, that he will not, for he is dead. Dead? Yes. What triumph it is to know it. None can harm him. None insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy. Or, if not there, he bides in hell, and is content, for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together. We were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together. This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were boy and girl again, and wandering in the happy fields. And so in that innocent clad converse wandered he far and farther, still lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was no parting for in his fancy I went with him. He knew not but I went with him, my hand in his, my young soft hand, not this withered claw. Ah, yes to go, and know it not, to separate and know it not. How could one go peace fuller than that? It was his reward for a cruel life patiently born. There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light, upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious. She was dying of smallpox. Here was heroism, and its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit. This was challenging death in the open field unarmed with all the odds against the challenger. No reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud, and yet the king's bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where night meets night in equal fight, and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now, sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition, I would see to that. And it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon like the rest. It would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child, and be comforted. He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes. But that was all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak. But the lips only moved, and no sound came. I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, and the woman forbade me, and said, No! She does not suffer, it is better so. It might bring her back to life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her that cruel hurt. For look ye, what is left to live for? Her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her, even though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live. Here, overhead, I had no need. Ye had gone back, else, and not left the poor thing forsaken. She lieth at peace, interrupt the king in a subdued voice. I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness. Ah, my Anas, thou shalt join thy sister soon. Thou art on thy way, and these be merciful friends that will not hinder. And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking her face and hair and kissing her, and calling her by endearing names. But there was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king's eyes and trickle down his face. The woman noticed them too, and said, Ah, I know that sign. Thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone hungry to bed many's the time that the little ones might have your crust. You know what poverty is, and the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the church, and the king—the king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still. He was learning his part, and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was full of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story. You know it well yourselves, having suffered it, for truly none of our condition in Britain escaped it. It is the old, we retail. We fought, and struggled, and succeeded, meaning by success that we lived and did not die. More than that is not to be claimed. No troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them. Then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us. Years ago the Lord of the Manor planted certain fruit-trees on our farm, in the best part of it, too, aggrievous, wrong, and shame. But it was his right interrupted the king. None denyeth that, indeed, and the law mean anything. What is the Lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. Our farm was ours by lease, therefore it was likewise his to do with, as he would. Some little time ago three of those trees were found hewn down. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. Well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie, and rot till they confess. They have not to confess being innocent. Wherefore there will they remain until they die? Ye know that right well, I wean. Think how this left us, a man, a woman, and two children, to gather a crop that was planted by so much greater force, yes, and protected night and day from pigeons, and prowling animals that be sacred, and must not be hurt by any of our sort. When my Lord's crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours. When his bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that I and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but for only two of them. So for the lacking one were we daily fined. All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect, and so both the priest and his lordship fined us, because their shares of it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate up our crop, and they took it all. They took it all, and made us harvest it for them without pay or food. And we are starving. Then the worst came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy. Oh, a thousand of them! Against the church and the church's ways! It was ten days ago. I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest, I said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening hand of God. He carried my trespass to his bedders. I was stubborn, wherefore presently upon my head and upon all heads that were dear to me fell the curse of Rome. At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses. We covered them with such rags as we could find, and started away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must be these people's grave, for they could not have Christian burial, or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and smitten outcasts. We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel. My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seen coming from that house. I plucked at the king's robe, and we drew back and took shelter behind a corner of the cabin. Now we are safe, I said, but it was a close call, so to speak. If the night had been lighter, he might have seen us, no doubt. He seemed to be so near. May have, it is, but a beast, and not a man at all. True, but man or beast it would be wise to stay here a minute, and let it get by and out of the way. Hark! It cometh hither! True again. The step was coming toward us, straight toward the hut. It must be a beast then, and we might as well have saved our trepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm. There was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the knock was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice. Mother? Father? Open! We have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts, and we may not tarry but must fly. And—but they answer not. Mother? Father? I drew the king toward the other end of the hut, and whispered, Come! Now we can get to the road. The king hesitated, was going to demure, but just then we heard the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the presence of their dead. Come, my liege, in a moment they will strike a light, and then we'll follow that which it would break your heart to hear. He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the road I ran, and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut. I couldn't bear it. I wanted to drive it out of my mind, so I struck into the first subject that lay under that one in my mind. I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear, but if you have not had it also— he broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was troubling him. These young men have got free, they say, but how? It is not likely that their Lord hath set them free. Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped. That is my trouble. I have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm it—you having the same fear. I should not call it by that name, though. I do suspect that they escaped, but if they did I am not sorry, certainly. I am not sorry, I think, but—what is it? What is there for one to be troubled about? If they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their Lord, for it is not seemly that one of his qualities should suffer a so insolent and high-handed outrage from persons of their base degree. There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He was born so, educated so. His veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these men without proof and starve their kindred was no harm, for they were merely peasants, and the subject to the will and pleasure of their Lord, no matter what fearful form it might take. But for these men to break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to be countenance by any conscientious person who knew his duty to his sacred cast. I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the subject, and even then an outside matter did it for me. This was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill, a red glow, a good way off. "'That's a fire,' said I. "'Fire's interested me considerably, because I was getting a good deal of insurance business started, and was also training some horses and building some steam-fire engines with an eye to be a paid fire department by and by. The priests opposed both my fire and life insurance on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to hinder the decrees of God. And if you pointed out that they did not hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard consequences of them, if you took out policies and had luck, they retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and was just as bad. So they managed to damage those industries more or less, but I got even on my accident business. As a rule a knight is a lummox, and sometimes even a labric, and hence open to pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition monger, but even he could see the practical side of a thing once in a while, and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the result without finding one of my accident tickets in every helmet. We stood there a while, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. Sometimes it swelled up, and for a moment seemed less remote. But when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness, darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the lead. I ran against something, a soft heavy something which gave slightly to the impulse of my weight. At the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree. That is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a gruesome sight. Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out. The rain poured down in a deluge. No matter, we must try to cut this man down on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noon-day and midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected. If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord, so let him be. If others hanged him, be like they had the right. Let him hang. But—but me know buts, but even leave him as he is, and for yet another reason. When the lightning cometh again there, look abroad. Two others hanging within fifty yards of us. It is not whether meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you. Come! It is unprofitable to tarry here. There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur no longer it was a roar, a roar of men's voices. A man came flying by now dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another, and another. Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire. It was a large manor house, and little or nothing was left of it. And everywhere men were flying, and other men raging after them in pursuit. I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light until matters should improve. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood. From this hiding place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then the fire being out and the storms spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again. We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away. And although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us. Then we asked hospitably at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had. A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep on a straw shake down on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers, and had lost our way, and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the Manor House of Ablazor. Yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. The king broke in, sell us the house, and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the spotted death. It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle iron face. I had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made us entirely welcome, and had no fears, and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king's proposition, for of course it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a knight's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable. We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter-fair, quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity. And also in variety it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of horse-feed. The woman told us about the affair the evening before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor house burnt into flames. The countryside swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved with one exception, the master. He did not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeoman sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning-house seeking that valuable personage. But after a while he was found, what was left of him—which was his corpse—it was in a cop's three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places. Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with particular harshness by the Baron, and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough. My Lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out what the general result had been. While we were still talking he came back from his quest. His report was revolting enough. Eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeoman and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire. And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults? Thirteen. Then every one of them was lost? Yes. All. But the people arrived in time to save the family. How is it they could save none of the prisoners? The man looked puzzled and said, Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Mary, some would have escaped. Then you mean that nobody did unlock them? None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth the reason that the bolts were fast, wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape but be taken. None were taken. Nay, the last three did escape, said the King, and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track. For these murdered the Baron and fired the house. I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news, and an impatience to go out and spread it. Then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself and narrowly watched the effects produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere, that our hosts continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real. The King did not notice the change, and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have a take that direction. The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence. Still, neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it. This was depressing to a man with a dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away when the poor whites of our south who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave lords around them, and who owed their base conditions simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history, and that was that secretly the poor white did detest the slave lord and did feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favouring circumstances, was something. In fact, it was enough, for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside. Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the southern poor white of the far future. The king presently showed impatience and said, and ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye the criminals will abide in their father's house? They are fleeing. They are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track. The woman paled slightly but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. I said, Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you and explain which direction I think they would try to take. If they were merely resistors of the gavel, or some kindred absurdity, I would try to protect them from capture. But when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter. The last remark was for the king to quiet him. On the road the man pulled his resolution together and began the march with a steady gate, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said, What relation were these men to you? Cousins? He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling. Ah, my God! How know ye that? I didn't know it. It was a chance guess. Poor lads, they are lost, and good lads they were, too. Were you actually going yonder to tell on them? He didn't quite know how to take that, but he said hesitantly, Yes. Then I think you are a damn scoundrel. It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel. Say the good words again, brother, for surely you mean that you would not betray me and I failed of my duty. Duty? There's no duty in the matter except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. They've done a righteous deed. He looked pleased, pleased and touched with apprehension at the same time. He looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming and then said in a cautious voice, From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words and seem not to be afraid? They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own cast, I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them. I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first. Well then let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating it. I think the devil's work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way all his kind should have the same luck. Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place. Even though you be a spy and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them I would go to the gallows happy as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, and ye may report it, if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my neighbours, for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause. The others helped for none other reason. All rejoiced to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the words, the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. Lead on, and ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready. There it was, ye see. A man is a man at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks that a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed, even the Russians, plenty of manhood in them, even in the Germans, if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up, and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while. CHAPTER XXXI Marko We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now and talked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of Abelislauer and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again. And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom, the behavior, born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste, of chance passers by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal burner was deeply reverent. To the gentleman he was abject. With the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy. And when a slave passed by with accountants respectfully lowered this chap's nose was in the air, he couldn't even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce. Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored help. But they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we plunged into the wood, they scurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed. They had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope and he was kicking and struggling in the process of choking to death. We rescued him and fetched him around. It was some more human nature, the admiring little folk imitating their elders. They were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for. It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity, or lack of prosperity, by the mere size of the prevailing wages. If the wages be high, the nation is prosperous. If low, it isn't. Which is an error. It isn't what some you get. It's how much you can buy with it. That's the important thing. And it's that that tells whether your wages are high, in fact, or only high in name. I could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. In the north a carpenter got three dollars a day gold valuation. In the south he got fifty payable and confederate shin-plasters worth a dollar a bushel. In the north a suit of overalls cost three dollars, a day's wages. In the south it cost seventy-five, which was two days' wages. Other things were in proportion. Consequently wages were twice as high in the north as they were in the south, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had. Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet, and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation. Lots of millerays, lots of mills, lots of scents, a good many nickels, and some silver. All this among the artisans and commonalty generally. Yes, and even some gold. But that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmiths. I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty dollar gold piece. They furnished it, that is, after they had chewed the piece and rung it on the counter and tried acid on it and asked me where I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions, and when they got aground I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily, told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife was a free will Baptist, and her grandfather was a prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on and so on and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied and also a shade put out, but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two-thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden. He could do it, maybe, but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket, which was probably this goldsmith's thought, too, for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration. Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already glibly in use. That is to say, people had dropped the names of the former monies and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or mills or mill-rays now. It was very gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure. I got to know several master-mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley. He was a live man and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging business. In fact he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend. He had taken me there, ostensibly, to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I fraternized at once. I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under me in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to come out to Marco's, Sunday, and dine with us. Marco was appalled and held his breath, but when the grandee accepted he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished at the condescension. Marco's joy was exuberant, but only for a moment. Then he grew thoughtful. Then, sad. And when he heard me tell, Dowley, I should have Dickon, the boss Mason, and Smug, the boss Wheelwright out there, too. The cold dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him. It was the expense. He saw ruin before him. He judged that his financial days were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others, I said, You must allow me to have these friends come, and you must also allow me to pay the costs. His face cleared, and he said with spirit. But not all of it, not all of it. You cannot well bear a burden like to this alone. I stopped him and said, Now, let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. I am only a farm-bale, if it is true, but I am not poor, nevertheless. I have been very fortunate this year. You would be astonished to know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth, when I say I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this, and never care that for the expense. And I snapped my fingers. I could see myself rise afoot at a time in Marco's estimation, and when I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style and altitude. So you see, you must let me have my way. You can't contribute a cent to this orgy. That's settled. It's grand and good of you. No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in the most generous way. Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before you came back from the village. For although he wouldn't be likely to say such a thing to you, because Jones isn't a talker and is diffident in society, he has a good heart and a grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated. Yes, you and your wife have been very hospitable toward us. Ah, brother, it is nothing such hospitality. But it is something the best a man has freely given, is always something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right along beside it, for even a prince can but do his best. And so we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry about the expense. I'm one of the worst spend-thrifts that ever was born. Why do you know sometimes in a single week I spend—but never mind about that. You'd never believe it anyway. And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now and then running across pathetic reminders of it in the persons of shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco and his wife was, of course, Toe-Lynan and Lindsay Woolsey, respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hands-breath of the original garments was surviving and present. Now, I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it, with delicacy, until at last it struck me that, as I had already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the King, it would be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial sort. So I said, And, Marco, there's another thing which you must permit, out of kindness for Jones, because you wouldn't want to offend him. He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little things, and give them to you and Dane Phyllis, and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from him. You know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing, and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for you both. Oh! it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be. What are the vastness of the sum? Hang the vastness of the sum. Try to keep quiet for a moment and see how it would seem. A body can't get in a word edgewise, you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco. It isn't good form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it. Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff, and don't forget to remember to not let on to Jones, that you know he had anything to do with it. You can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is. He's a farmer, pretty fairly well-to-do farmer, and I'm his bailiff. But the imagination of that man. Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd think he was one of the swells of the earth, and you might listen to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer, especially if he talked agriculture. He thinks he's a she-all of a farmer, thinks he's old grayback from way back, but between you and me, privately, he don't know as much about farming as he does about running a kingdom. Still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your underjaw and listen. The same as if you had never heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones. It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character, but it also prepared him for accidents. And in my experience, when you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take too many precautions. This was the best store we had come across yet. It had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils and dry-goods, all the way down to fish and pinch-back jewelry. I concluded I would bunch my whole invoice right here and not go pricing around any more. So I got rid of Marco by sending him off to invite the mason and the wheel-right, which left the field free to me. For I never care to do thing in a quiet way. It's got to be theatrical, or I don't take any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he could read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could. He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read and write. He ran it through and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little concern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday. He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude. It was the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in a couple of Miller guns for the Marco's gratis, that everybody was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever device, I said, and please fill them up to the middle-mark, too, and add that to the bill. He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them with me. I couldn't venture to tell him that the Miller gun was a little invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at government price, which was the nearest trifle, and the shopkeeper got that, not the government. We furnished them for nothing. The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. He had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul, with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again. Well, when that cargo arrived towards sunset Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marco's from fainting. They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to the dinner materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family—for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's. Also, a sizable deal dinner table, also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes. Also, crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructed the Marco's to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children. They were up and down all night to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure, not to say delirium, was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual, like the dead. The Marco's could not thank him for their clothes, that were being forbidden. But they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were, which all went for nothing. He didn't notice any change. It turned out to be one of those rich, rare fall days, which is just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree, and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at first. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer, but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the things stand at that and not elaborate it any. Because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around on to his own history for a text, and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. Self-made man, you know, they know how to talk. They do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true, and they are among the very best to find it out, too. He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him, how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived, how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition, how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade, or mystery, as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune, and you saw that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tolinens, and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. I remember me of that day, the Wheelwright sang out with enthusiasm, and I likewise cried the mason, I would not believe they were thine own in faith I could not, nor other shouted Dowley with sparkling eyes. I was like to lose my character, the neighbor's wending I had may have been stealing. It was a great day, a great day. One forgetteth not days like that. Yes, and his master was a fine man and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread. In fact, lived like a Lord, so to speak, and in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. And now consider what has come to pass, said he impressively. Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table. He made a pause here to let that fact sink home, then added, and eight times salt-meat. It is very true, said the Wheelwright, with baited breath. I know it of mine own knowledge, said the mason, in the same reverent fashion. On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year, out of the master smith with solemnity. I leave it to your own conscience, his friends, if this is not also true. By my head, yes, cried the mason. I contestified, and I do, said the Wheelwright. And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is. He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added, Speak as ye are moved, speak as ye would speak, and I were not here. Ye have five stools and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three, said the Wheelwright, with deep respect. And six wooden goblets and six platters of wood, and two of pewter to eat and drink from with all, said the mason impressively. And I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here all way, but answer at the last day, for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth. Now ye know what manner of man I am, Brother Jones, said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect, and but sparing of outgo to strangers, till their rating and quality be assured. But trouble yourself not, as concerning that. Well ye shall find me a man that, regardless not these matters, but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal, that carryeth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it here is my hand, and I say with my own mouth we are equals, equals. And he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a God, who is doing the handsome and gracious thing, and is quite well aware of it. The King took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady let's go of a fish, all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness. The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still, when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pour, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual Simon pure tablecloth, and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard, you could see it. But Marco was in paradise, you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine new stools. Phew! That was a sensation! It was visible in the eyes of every guest. Then she brought two more, as calmly as she could. Sensation again with odd murmurs. Again she brought two, walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, and the mason muttered, There is that about earthly pumps which doth ever move to reverence. As the dame turned away Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot, so he said with what was meant for a languid composure, but was a poor imitation of it, these suffice leave the rest. So there were more yet. It was a fine effect. I couldn't have played the hand better myself. From this out the madame piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped ooze and ha-ha-ha's, and mute up liftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery, new and plenty of it, new wooden goblets and other table furniture, and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white, wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before, and while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come to collect. That's all right, I said indifferently. What is the amount? Give us the items. Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul, and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marcos. Two pounds salt, two hundred. Eight dozen pints beer in the wood, eight hundred. Three bushels wheat, two thousand seven hundred. Three pounds fish, one hundred. Three hens, four hundred. One goose, four hundred. Three dozen eggs, one hundred and fifty. One roast of beef, four hundred and fifty. One roast of mutton, four hundred. One ham, eight hundred. One sucking pig, five hundred. Two crockery dinnersets, six thousand. Two men's suits and underwear, two thousand eight hundred. One stuff and one Lindsay Woolsey gown and underwear, one thousand six hundred. Eight wooden goblets, eight hundred. Various table furniture, ten thousand. One deal table, three thousand. Eight stools, four thousand. Two miller guns loaded, three thousand. He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence, not a limb stirred, not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. Is that all? I asked in a voice of most perfect calmness. All fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head height sundries. If it would like you, I will separate. It is of no consequence, I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference. Give me the grand total, please. The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself and said, Thirty nine thousand one hundred and fifty millerays. The wheel-right fell off his stool. The others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of, God be with us in the day of disaster! The clerk hastened to say, My father charges me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only pray a few— I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze. But with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on the table. You should have seen them stare. The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security until he could go to town, and I interrupted. What! and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole! Keep the change! There was an amazed murmur to this effect. Fairly, this being is made of money! He throweth away even as if it were dirt! The blacksmith was a crushed man. The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife, Good folk, here is a little trifle for you, handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash, and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day, Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall too! Ah, well, it was immense. Yes, it was a daisy. I don't know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith, well, he was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man was feeling for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round, all for a family of three, the entire cost for the year not above sixty-nine point two point six, sixty-nine cents two mills and six mill-rays, and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out, and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk up and collapsed. He had the aspect of a bladder balloon that's been stepped on by a cow. CHAPTER XXXIII. However I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy to do in a country of ranks and casts. You see, in a country where they have ranks and casts a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man. He can't ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it. He knuckles down. You can't insult him after that. No, I don't mean quite that. Of course, you can insult him. I only mean it's difficult, and so unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had the Smith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich. I could have had his adoration if I'd had some little gim-crack title of nobility, and not only his, but any commoners in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupted in all three. This was to remain so as long as England should exist in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges, and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave un-honored the creators of this world, after God Gutenberg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stevenson, Bell. The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Markle cleared the table, placed the beer-keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort, business and wages, of course. At a first glance things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom, whose lord was King Bagdemagus, as compared with the state of things in my own region. They had the protection system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free trade by easy stages, and were now about halfway. Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the ear, and began to put questions, which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look. In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swine-hood? Twenty-five mill-rays a day, that is to say a quarter of a cent. The smith's face beamed with joy. He said, With us they are allowed the double of it. And what may a mechanic yet? Carpenter, Dauber, Mason, Painter, Blacksmith, Wheelwright, and the like. On the average, fifty mill-rays, half a cent a day. Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred. With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day. I count the tailor, but not the others. They are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more. Yes, up to a hundred and ten, or even fifteen, mill-rays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself within the week. Ho-ho! For protection! Does she all with free trade? And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn't scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth, drive him all in, drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground. Here's the way I started in on him. I asked, What do you pay a pound for salt? A hundred mill-rays? We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton, when you buy it? That was a neat hit. It made the colour come. It varied somewhat, but not much. One may say seventy-five mill-rays the pound. We pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs? Fifty mill-rays the dozen. We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer? It costeth us eight and one-half mill-rays the pint. We get it for four. Twenty-five bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat? At the rate of nine hundred mill-rays the bushel. We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tolin and suit? Thirteen cents. We pay six. What do you pay for a stuffed gown for the wife of the labourer or the mechanic? We pay eight cents, four mills. Well, observe the difference. You pay eight cents and four mills. We pay only four cents. I prepared now to sock it to him. I said, Look here, dear friend, What's become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago? And I looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all. What's become of those noble high wages of yours? I seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me. But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all. He didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was in a trap. I could have shot him for sheer vexation, with cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out. Mary, I seem not to understand. It is proved that our wages be double thine. How then may it be that Thou's knocked there from the stuffing? And, Miss Call, not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it has been granted me to hear it? Well, I was stunned. Partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part and partly because his fellow so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind, if you might call it mind. My position was simple enough, plain enough. How could it ever be simplified more? However I must try. Why, look here, Brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact. Hear him! They are the double! You have confested yourself. Yes, yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to do with it. The amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it. The thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? That's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five, there! You're confessing it again! You're confessing it again! Confounded! I've never denied it, I tell you. What I say is this, with us half a dollar buys more than a dollar buys with you, and therefore it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common sense that our wages are higher than yours. He looked dazed and said despairingly, verily I cannot make it out. You've just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath you take it back. Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head? Now look here, let me illustrate. We pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown. You pay eight point four point zero, which is four mills more than double. What do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm? Two mills a day? Very good. We allow but half as much. We pay her only a tenth of a cent a day, and again you're confi- Wait! Now you see, the thing is very simple. This time you'll understand it. For instance, it takes your woman forty-two days to earn her gown at two mills a day, seven weeks' worth. But ours earns hers in forty days, two days short of seven weeks. Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks' wages are gone. Ours has a gown, and two days' wages left to buy something else with. There! Now you understand it. He looked—well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say—so did the others. I waited to let the thing work. Dali spoke at last, and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said with a trifle of hesitancy, but—but— You cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one! Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up, so I chanced another flyer. Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles—one pound of salt, one dozen eggs, one dozen pints of beer, one bushel of wheat, one toe linen suit, five pounds of beef, five pounds of mutton. The lot will cost him thirty-two cents. It takes him thirty-two working days to earn the money—five weeks and two days. Let him come to us and work thirty-two days at half the wages. He can buy all those things for a shade under fourteen and a half cents. They will cost him a shade under twenty-nine days' work, and he will have about a half a week's wages over. Carry it through the year, he would save nearly a week's wages every two months. Your man, nothing. Thus saving five or six weeks' wages in a year. Your man, not a cent. Now I reckon you understand that high wages and low wages are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will buy the most. It was a crusher. But alas, it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those people valued was high wages. Didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. They stood for protection and swore by it, which was reasonable enough because interested parties had galled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but thirty percent, while the cost of living had gone up one hundred, and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced forty percent, while the cost of living had gone steadily down. But it didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat, undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances. The first statesman of the age, the capableest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here, apparently defeated in argument, by an ignorant country blacksmith. And I could see that those others were sorry for me, which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place. Feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt. Wouldn't you have struck below the belt to get even? Yes, you would. It is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it. I'm only saying that I was mad, and anybody would have done it. Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out a love-tap. No, that isn't my way. As long as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering halfway business of it. No, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him at all. And by and by, all in a flash he's flat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That is the way I went for Brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time. And the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting-place and guessed where I was going to fetch up. Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it. Yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion, and movement too. There are written laws, they perish, but there are also unwritten laws. They are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages. It says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder. We strike an average and say that's the wages of today. We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago. That's as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation. And so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward. We face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know for hundreds and hundreds of years. What, good man, what? Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed three cents a day and mechanics six. I wouldn't, I might die now and live then, interrupted smug, the wheelwright, with a fine, avaricious glow in his eye. And that isn't all. They'll get their board besides, such as it is, it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later, pay attention now, a mechanics wages will be, mind you, this is law, not guesswork, a mechanics wages will then be twenty cents a day. There was a general gasp of odd astonishment. Dick and the Mason murmured with raised eyes and hands, more than three weeks pay for one day's work. Riches! Of a truth, yes, riches! muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement. Wages will keep on rising little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there'll be at least one country where the mechanics average wage will be two hundred cents a day. It knocked them absolutely dumb. Not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner said prayerfully, Might I but live to see it? It is the income of an earl, said smug. An earl, say ye, said Dolly. He could say more than that and speak no lie. There's no earl in the realm of Bagnamagus that hath an income like to that. Income of an earl! It's the income of an angel! Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. In that remote day that man will earn with one week's work that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of fifty weeks to earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen too. Brother Dolly, who is it that determines every spring what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, labourer, and servant shall be for that year? Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council, but most of all the magistrate. You may say in general terms it is the magistrate that fixes the wages. Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their wages for them, does he? Hmm, that were an idea. The master that's to pay him the money is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, you will notice. Yes, but I thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too, and even his wife and children, poor creatures. The masters are these, nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. These few who do no work determine what pay the vast hive shall have who do work. You see? They're a combine, a trade union, according to new phrase, who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred years hence, so says the unwritten law, the combine will be the other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions. Yes indeed, the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century, and then all of a sudden the wage earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing, and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. He will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle. Do you believe that he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes indeed, and he will be strong and able, and brave times, brave times of a truth, near the prosperous Smith. No, and there's another detail. In that day a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time if he wants to. What? It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not. Will there be no law or sense in that day? Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master, and he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him, and they can't put him in the pillory for it. Perdition catch such an age, shouted Dowley, in strong indignation, an age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors, and respect for authority. The pillory— Oh, wait, brother. Say no good word for that institution. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. A most strange idea? Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime? No. Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small offence and then kill him? There was no answer. I had scored my first point. For the first time the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it. Good effect. You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offence that didn't amount to anything in the world? The mob try to have some fun with him, don't they? Yes. They begin by clotting him, and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clot and get hit with another. Yes. Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they? Yes. Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob, and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against him, and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community for his pride or his prosperity or one thing or another. Stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they? There is no doubt of it. As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? Jaws broken, teeth smashed out, or legs mutilated, gangrene presently cut off, or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes. It is true, God knows it. And if he is unpopular he can depend on dying right there in the stocks, can't he? He surely can. One may not deny it. I take it none of you are unpopular, by reason of pride or insolence or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village. You wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks? Gowley winced visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging. Well, to change the subject, for I think I've established my point that the stocks ought to be abolished, I think some of our laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it, and yet keep still and don't report me, you will get the stocks if anybody informs on you. Ah, but that would serve you but right, said Gowley, for you must inform, so say for law. The others coincided. Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's one thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says that if any master shall venture even under utmost press of business to pay anything over that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it, and whoever knows he did it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair, Gowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mill—oh, I tell you, it was a smasher. You ought to have seen them to go to pieces. The whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent Gowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen, till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags. A fine effect! In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so little time to work it up in, but I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see, they had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory, and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at the mercy of me is stranger if I chose to go and report. Well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover from the shock. They couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful. Why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands and take a drink all round and laugh it off and there an end. But no. You see, I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people. A people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. Appealed to me to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. CHAPTER XXXIV Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must get up a diversion. Anything to employ me while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his miller-gun, turned to stone. Just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain its mystery. MYSTERY. A simple little thing like that. And yet it was mysterious enough for that race and that age. I never saw such an awkward people with machinery. You see, they were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barrel tube of toughened glass with a neat little trick of a spring to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot wouldn't hurt anybody. It would only drop into your hand. In the gun were two sizes—we, mustard seed shot, and another sort that were several times larger. They were money. The mustard seed shot represented mill rays. The larger ones, mills. So the gun was a purse. And very handy, too. You could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy. And you could carry it in your mouth, or in your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes. One size so large it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. Using shot for money was a good thing for the government. The metal cost nothing. And the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I was the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot-tower. Paying the shot soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew it would still be passing men's lips away down in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. The king joined us about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now. I was so uneasy, for our lives were in danger. And so it worried me to detect a complacent something in the king's eye, which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance of some kind or other. Conn found it why must he go and choose such a time as this. I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently artful and transparent and rubberly way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me. I wanted to whisper in his ear, Man, we are in awful danger. Every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's confidence. Don't waste any of this golden time. But of course I couldn't do it. Whisper to him, it would look as if we were conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fiefing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word. But presently, when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form a line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued, and I caught the boom with the king's batteries as if out of remote distance. Were not the best way, me thinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree. The audience showed signs of life and sought each other's eyes in a surprised and troubled way, while as others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity to the case, instancing that plums and other like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state. The audience exhibited distinct distress, yes, and also fear. Yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage. The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and one of them muttered, These be errors, every one! God hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer. I was in miserable apprehension. I sat upon thorns. And further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which, defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits and fulsome appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and billious quality of morals, they rose and went for him. With a fierce shout, The one would betray us, the other is mad. Kill them! Kill them! They flung themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! He might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in his line. He had been fasting long. He was hungry for a fight. He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. Saint George for prison! And he downed the wheel right. The mason was big, but I laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up and came again, went down again, came again, and kept on repeating this with native British pluck until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion and so blind that they couldn't tell us from each other, and yet they kept right on hammering away with what might was left in them, hammering each other, for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled and struggled and gouged and pounded and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe from intrusion. Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around, he was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous. I pulled the king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco there. No Phyllis there. They had gone to the road for help, sure. I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later. We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into the shelter of the wood, I glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head. They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody. The wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths, we would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then came another sound. Dogs. Yes, that was quite another matter. It magnified our contract. We must find running water. We tore along at a good gate, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. We struck a stream, and darted into it. We waited, swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great bow sticking out of the water. We climbed up on this bow, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree. Now we began to hear those sounds more plainly, so the mob had struck our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast, and then for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing up and down the shores, trying to pick up the trail again. When we were snugly lodged in the tree, and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it worth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came nearer failing to connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. Presently we heard it coming, and coming on the jump, too, yes, and down both sides of the stream. Louder, louder! Next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone. I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them, said I. But I don't mind the disappointment. Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We've flanked them. Dark is coming on presently. If we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough. We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen. Yes, said I. They're baffled. They've given it up, and they're on their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by. So we climbed back. The king listened a moment, and said, They still search. I wit the sign. We did best to abide. He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise approached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said, They reasoned that we were advantaged by no parless start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water. Yes, sir, that is about it, I'm afraid, though I was hoping better things. The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt from the other bank, and said, And they were so minded, they could get to yawn tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. He will do well to send a man up it. Marry that we will do. I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing, and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world. No. The person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before. He doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him. He does the thing he ought not to do, and often it catches the expert out, and ends him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a nearsighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. Matters were serious now. We remained still and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himself up and stood. He made a leg ready, and when the comers' head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were, treed, and prisoners. Another man started up, the bridging bow was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the bridge. For while the enemy came thick and fast, but no matter the headman of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirit rose, his joy was limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect, we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold a tree against the whole countryside. However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves, wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer. We had no objections, a stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely. We were well protected by bows and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour in stones throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feeling very well satisfied. We could smile, almost laugh. But we didn't. Which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the bows fifteen minutes we began to notice a smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation. It was smoke. Our game was up at last. We recognized that. When smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree they broke out in a storm of joy-clammers. I got enough breath to say, Proceed, my liege, after you, as manners. The king gasped, Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste. Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struck the ground an instant after him. We sprang to our appointed places and began to give and take with all our might. The pow-wow and racket were prodigious. It was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd and a voice shouted, Hold! Or you are dead men! How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman. Picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance with complexion and features marred by dissipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants, What are you doing to these people? They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and ye know not whence. Do ye pretend ye know them not? Most honoured, sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangers and unknown to any in this region, and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever— Peace! You know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye, and whence are ye? Explain. We are but peaceful strangers, sir, I said, and travelling upon our own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquainted here. We have proposed no harm, and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us. As you have divine, sir, we are not mad. Neither are we violent or bloodthirsty. The gentleman turned to his retinue, and said calmly, Lash me these animals to their kennels. The mob vanished in an instant, and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road, instead of taking to the bush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants, Bring the lead horses, and mount these people. Yes, my lord! We were placed toward the rear among the servants. We travelled pretty fast, and finally drew rain some time after dark at a roadside in, some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. My lord went immediately to his room after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning we breakfast and made ready to start. My lord's chief attendants sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said, Ye have said ye should continue upon this road which is our direction likewise, wherefore my lord, the Earl-Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye, a twenty-mile, to a fair town that hight Cambenet, o whence ye shall be out of peril. We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer. We jogged along, six in the part. He had a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord, Grip, was a very great personage in his own region which lay a day's journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square to see what might be the object of interest. It was the remnant of that old, peregrinating band of slaves. So they had been dragging their chains about all this weary time. That poor husband was gone, and also many others, and some few purchases had been added to the gang. The king was not interested and wanted to move along, but I was absorbed and full of pity. I could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. There they sat, grounded upon the ground. Silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away in fulsome laudation of our glorious British liberties. I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian. I was remembering I was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and click. The king and I were handcuffed together. Our companions, those servants, had done it. My lord Grip stood looking on. The king burst out in fury and said, What meaneth this ill-mannered jest? My lord merely said to his head, miscreant Cooley, Put up the slaves and sell them! Slaves! The word had a new sound and how unspeakably awful. The king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force, but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen of the rascal's servants sprang forward and in a moment we were helpless with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. The orator said, If indeed ye are freemen, ye have not to fear. The God-given liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter. Applause. Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs. What proofs? Proof that ye are freemen. Ah! I remembered. I came to myself. I said nothing. But the king stormed out. Thou art insane, man! It were better and more in reason that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are not freemen. You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws by words, not by effects. They take a meaning and get to be very vivid when you come to apply them to yourself. All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed. Some turned away no longer interested. The orator said, and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment, and ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned them. Ye are strangers to us. Ye will not deny that. Ye be freemen. We do not deny that. But also ye may be slaves. The law is clear. It does not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves. It requires you to prove ye are not. I said, Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astalat, or give us only time to send to the Valley of Holiness. Peace, good man! These are extraordinary requests, and ye may not hope to have them granted. It would cost much time and would unwarrantly inconvenience your master. Master! Idiot! stormed the king. I have no master! I myself am the— Silence, for God's sake! I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in trouble enough already. It could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics. There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us up and sold us at auction. This same infernal law had existed in our own south in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen, who could not prove that they were freemen, had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular impression upon me. But the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience—a thing which had been merely improper before—became suddenly hellish. Well, that's the way we are made. Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price, but this place was utterly stagnant, and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed every time I think of it. The king of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine, whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars, and I, as easily, worth fifteen. But that is the way things always go. If you force a sale in a dollar market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it, if the earl had had wit enough to. However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account. Let him go for the present. I took his number, so to speak. The slave-dealer bought us both and hitched us on to the long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. We took up our line of march and passed out of Campanette at noon, and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the king of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered and yoked in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king, but reveal his quality, and, dear me, it takes your very breath away to look at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.