 This is the Preface and Chapter 1 of a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. The un-gentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century—no, it is only pretended—that in as much as they existed in the English and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that remote time its place was competently filled by a worse one. The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right of kings is not settled in this book, it was found too difficult, that the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty character and extraordinary ability was manifest and indisputable. That none but the deity could select that head unerringly was also manifest and indisputable. That the deity ought to make that selection then was likewise manifest and indisputable. Consequently, that he does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour and Lady Castlemane and some other executive heads of that kind, these were found so difficult to work into the scheme that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book, which must be issued this fall, and then go into training and settle the question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway. Mark Twain, Hartford, July 21st, 1889. A word of explanation. It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things—his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company, for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tale of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time and into some remote era and old forgotten country, and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the spectres and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it. Exactly as I would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Granis, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of the table round, and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and musty and ancient he came to look as he went on. Presently he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather or any other common matter, You know about transmigration of souls, do you know about transposition of epics and bodies? I said I had not heard of it. He was so little interested, just as when people speak of the weather, that he did not notice whether I made him any answer or not. There was half a moment of silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried Cicceroni. Ancient Horberck, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur and the Round Table, said to have belonged to the knight, Sir Sagromor de Desirous, observed the round hole through the chain mail in the left breast, can't be accounted for, supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms, perhaps maliciously by Cromwell soldiers. My acquaintance smiled, not a modern smile, but one that must have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago, and muttered, apparently to himself, With ye well I saw it done! Then after a pause added, I did it myself! By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of this remark he was gone. All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped into old Sir Thomas Mallory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventurers, breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnight, being calm at length, I read another tale, for a nightcap, this which here follows to wit. Now Sir Lancelot slew two giants, and made a castle free. Anon with all came there upon him, two great giants, well armed, all saved the heads, with two horrible clubs in their hands. Sir Lancelot put his shield before him, and put the stroke away of the one giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder. When his fellow saw that he ran away as he were, would, demented, for fear of the horrible strokes, and Sir Lancelot after him, with all his might, and smote him on the shoulder and clave him to the middle. Then Sir Lancelot went into the hall, and there came for him three score ladies and damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said they, the most part of us have been here this seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all manner of silkworks for our meat, and we are all great gentle women born, and blessed be the time night that ever thou weret born. For thou hast done the most worship that ever did night in the world. That will we bear record, and we all pray you to tell us your name, that we may tell our friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair damsels, he said, my name is Sir Lancelot du Lake. And so he departed from them, and betaught them unto God. And then he mounted unto his horse, and rode into many strange and wild countries, and through many waters and valleys and evil was he lodged. And at the last by fortune him happened against a night to come to a fair courtelage. And therein he found an old gentlewoman that lodged him with a good will, and there he had good cheer for him and his horse. And when time was, his host brought him into a fair garret over the gate to his bed. There Sir Lancelot unarmed him, and set his harness by him, and went to bed, and on he fell on sleep. So soon after there came one on horseback and knocked at the gate in great haste. And when Sir Lancelot heard this he rose up and looked out at the window, and saw by the moonlight three nights come riding after that one man, and all three lashed on him at once with swords. And that one night turned on them nightly again and offended him. Truly said Sir Lancelot, yonder one night shall I help, for it were shame for me to see three nights on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his death. And therewith he took his harness and went out at a window by a sheet down to the four nights, and then Sir Lancelot said on high, Turn you nights unto me, and leave your fighting with that night. And then they all three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Lancelot, and there began great battle, for they alight all three, and strike many strokes at Sir Lancelot, and assailed him on every side. Then Sir Kay dressed him for to have opened Sir Lancelot. Neser said he, I will none of your help, therefore, as ye will have my help, let me alone with them. Sir Kay, for the pleasure of the night, suffered him for to do his will, and so stood aside. Then and on within six strokes Sir Lancelot had stricken them to the earth. And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As to that, said Sir Lancelot, I will not take your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant I will save your lives and else not. Fair Knight said they, that were we loath to do. For as for Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome him had ye not been, therefore to yield us unto him it were no reason. Well as to that, said Sir Lancelot, advise you well, for ye may choose whether ye will die or live, for any be yielding it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair Knight then they said, in saving our lives we will do as thou commandest. Then shall ye, said Sir Lancelot, on which Sunday next coming go unto the court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield you unto Queen Gwynevere, and put you all three in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morning Sir Lancelot arose early, and left Sir Kay sleeping. And Sir Lancelot took Sir Kay's armour and his shield and armed him, and so he went to the stable and took his horse, and took his leave of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Lancelot, and then he aspired that he had his armour and his horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will grieve some of the court of King Arthur, for on him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I, and that will be guile them. And because of his armour and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace. And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and thanked his host. As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger came in. I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome. I also comforted him with a hot scotch whiskey, gave him another one, then still another, hoping always for his story. After a fourth persuader he drifted into himself in an quite simple and natural way. The Stranger's History I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the state of Connecticut, anyway just over the river in the country. Although I am a Yankee of the Yankees, and practical, yes, and nearly barren of sentiment I suppose, or poetry in other words, my father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both along at first. Then I went over to the Great Arms factory and learned my real trade, learned all there was to it, learned to make everything – guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make anything a body wanted, anything in the world! It didn't make any difference what. And if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, I could invent one, and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I became head superintendent, had a couple of thousand men under me. Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight, that goes without saying. With a couple of thousand rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement, I had, anyway. At last I met my match, and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull, and made it overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all. At least for a while. When I came to, again, I was sitting under an oak tree on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself, nearly. Not entirely. For there was a fellow and a horse looking down at me, a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it, and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear, and his horse-head armor on two, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bed-quilt, nearly to the ground. There, sir, will ye just, said this fellow, will I which? Will ye try a passage of arms for land, or lady, or for—what are you giving me, I said? Get along back to your circus, or I'll report you. Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck, and his long spear pointed straight ahead? I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived. He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. There was argument on his side, and the bulk of the advantage, so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreement, whereby I was to go with him, and he was not to hurt me. I came down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse. We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks, which I could not remember to have seen before, which puzzled me and made me wonder, and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a circus, so I gave up the idea of a circus and concluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to an asylum, so I was up a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said he had never heard of the place, which I took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a faraway town sleeping in a valley by a winding river, and beyond it, on a hill, a vast grey fortress with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture. Ridgeport, said I, pointing. Camelot, said he. My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught himself nodding now, and smiled one of those pathetic obsolete smiles of his, and said, I find I can't go on, but come with me, I've got it all written out, and you can read it if you like. In his chamber he said, First I kept a journal, then, by and by, after years, I took the journal and turned it into a book. How long ago that was! He handed me his manuscript and pointed out the place where I should begin. Begin here, I've already told you what goes before. He was steeped in drowsiness by this time. As I went out at his door I heard him murmur sleepily, Give you g'den, fair sir! I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part of it, the great bulk of it, was parchment and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still, Latin words and sentences, fragments from old monkish legends evidently. I turned the place indicated by my stranger and began to read as follows. The Tale of the Lost Land Chapter 1, Camelot Camelot, Camelot, said I to myself, I don't seem to remember hearing of it before, name of the asylum likely. It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape as lovely as a dream and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell of flowers and the buzzing of insects and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass, wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. Presently a fair slip of a girl about ten years old with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as I ever saw, what there was of it. She walked indolently along with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face. The circus man paid no attention to her, didn't even seem to see her, and she, she was no more startled at his fantastic makeup than if she was used to his like every day of her life. She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows, but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change. Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear, and there she stood gazing in a sort of stupefied fascination till we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. That she should be startled at me instead of at the other man was too many for me, I couldn't make head or tail of it, and that she should seem to consider me a spectacle and totally overlook her own merits in that respect was another puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity too that was surprising in one so young. There was food for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream. As we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. At intervals we passed a wretched cabin with a thatched roof and abounded small fields and garden patches in an indifference state of cultivation. There were people too, brawny men with long, coarse, uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look like animals. They and the women as rule wore a coarse tolin and robe that came well below the knee and a rude sort of sandal and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girls were always naked, but nobody seemed to know it. All of these people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched out their families to gape at me, and nobody ever noticed that other fellow except to make him humble salutation and get no response for their pains. In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins. The streets were mere crooked alleys and unpaved, troops of dogs and nude children played in the sun and made life and noise. Hogs roamed and rooted contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. Presently there was a distant blare of military music. It came nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads. And through the muck and swine and naked brats and joyous dogs and shabby huts it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed. Followed through one winding alley and then another and climbing always climbing, till at last we gained the breezy height where the huge castle stood. There was an exchange of bugle-blasts, then a parley from the walls where men-at-arms in Halberk and Morion marched back and forth with Halbert at shoulder under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed upon them, and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning arches, and we, following, soon found ourselves in a great paved court with towers and turrets stretching up into the blue air on all four sides. And all about us the dismount was going on, and much greeting and ceremony and running to and fro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion. End of Preface and Chapter 1. CHAPTER II. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. CHAPTER II. King Arthur's Court. The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common-looking man on the shoulder and said in an insinuating confidential way, Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or are you just on a visit or something like that? He looked me over stupidly and said, Marry fair, sir, me seamoth! That will do, I said. I reckon you are a patient. I moved away cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come along and give me some light. I judged I had found one presently, so I drew him aside and said in his ear, If I could see the headkeeper a minute, only just a minute, Friend, do not let me! Let you what? Hinder me, then, if the word please thee better. Then he went on to say he was an undercook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time, for it would comfort his very liver to know where I got my clothes. As he started away he pointed and said Yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy, slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot. The rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles, and he had long yellow curls and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. By his look he was good-natured, by his gait he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity, said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. Go long, I said, you ain't more than a paragraph. It was pretty severe, but I was nettle'd. However it never fazed him. He didn't appear to know he was hurt. He began to talk and laugh in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends with me at once, asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited for an answer. Always chatter'd straight ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply until at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the year 513. It made the cold chills creep over me. I stopped and said, a little faintly, May be I didn't hear you just right. Say it again, and say it slow. What year was it? 513. 513. You don't look it. Come, my boy, I am a stranger and friendless. Be honest and honorable with me. Are you in your right mind? He said he was. Are these other people in their right minds? He said they were. And this isn't an asylum. I mean, it isn't a place where they cure crazy people. He said it wasn't. Well then I said, either I am a lunatic or something just as awful has happened. Now tell me honest and true, where am I? In King Arthur's court. I waited a minute to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said, And according to your notions, what year is it now? 528, 19th of June. I felt a mournful sinking at the heart and muttered, I shall never see my friends again, never, never again. They will not be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet. I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. Something in me seemed to believe him. My consciousness, as you may say. But my reason didn't. My reason's straight way began to clamour, and that was natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve. My reason would say they were lunatics and throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the twenty-first of June, A.D. 528. O.S. and began three minutes after twelve noon. I also knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what to me was the present year, i.e. 1879, so if I could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the truth or not. For being a practical, Connecticut man, I now shove this whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present moment and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time is my motto, and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. I made up my mind to two things. If it was still the nineteenth century, and I was among lunatics and couldn't get away, I would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why, and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth century all right, I didn't want any softer thing, I would boss the whole country inside of three months, for I judged I would have the start of the best educated man in the kingdom by a matter of thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man to waste time after my mind's made up, and there's work on hand, so I said to the page, Now, Clarence, my boy, if that might happen to be your name, I'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. What is the name of that apparition that brought me here? My master and thine? That is the good night and great Lord Sir Kay, the sentiental, foster brother to our liege the king. Very good. Go on, tell me everything. He made a long story of it, but the part that had immediate interest for me was this. He said I was Sir Kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of custom I would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me, unless I chanced to rot first. I saw that the last chance had the best show, but I didn't waste any bother about that. Time was too precious. The page said further that dinner was about ended in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in, and exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated at the table round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over-safe either. And when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the dungeon, but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends. Get word to my friends. I thanked him, or I couldn't do less, and about this time a lackey came to say I was wanted, so Clarence led me in, and took me off to one side, and sat down by me. Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle and interesting. It was an immense place, and rather naked, yes, and full of loud contrasts. It was very, very lofty, so lofty that the banners, depending from the arched beams and girders away up there, floated in a sort of twilight. There was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colours in the other. The floor was of big stone flags, laid in black and white squares, rather battered by age and use and needing repair. As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking, though on the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed as works of art—battlepieces they were, with horses shaped like those with children cut out of paper or created in gingerbread, with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by round holes, so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit punch. There was a fireplace big enough to camp in, and its projecting sides and hood of carved and pillared stonework had the look of a cathedral door. Along the wall stood men at arms in breastplate and morion, with halberts for their only weapon, rigid as statues. That is what they looked like. In the middle of this groin and vaulted public square was an oaken table which they called the table round. It was as large as a circus ring, and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various and splendid colours that it hurt one's eyes to look at them. They wore their plumed hats right along, except that whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle, just as he was beginning his remark. Suddenly they were drinking from entire oxhorns, but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef bones. There was about an average of two dogs to one man, and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time, but that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway. The men rose sometimes to observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out over their balusters with the same object, and all broke into delighted ejaculations from time to time. In the end the winning dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and proceeded to growl over it and gnaw it and grease the floor with it just as fifty others were already doing, and the rest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments. As a rule the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly, and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything, I mean in a dog-fightless interval, and plainly too they were a child like an innocent lot, telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's lie and believe it too. It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful, and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder. I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved in a frightful way, and their hair, their faces, their clothing were caked with black and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffering sharp physical pain, of course, and weariness and hunger and thirst, no doubt, and at least none had given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds. Yet you never heard them utter a moan or groan, or saw them show any sign of restlessness or any disposition to complain. The thought was forced upon me, the rascals, they have served other people so in their day. In their own turn now they were not expecting any better treatment than this, so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning, it is mere animal training. They are white Indians. Mainly the round table talk was monologues, narrative accounts of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. As a general thing, as far as I could make out, these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden fallings out. No, as a rule they were simply duels between strangers, duels between people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no cause of offence whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance and say simultaneously I can lick you, and go at it on the spot, but I had always imagined until now that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood, but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with, but you didn't seem to mind that after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry, perhaps rendered its existence impossible. There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face, and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. A most noble benignity and purity reposed in the countenance of him they called Sir Galahad, and likewise in the Kings also, and there was majesty and greatness in the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Lancelot of the lake. There was presently an incident which centered the general interest upon this Sir Lancelot, but a sign from a sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands toward the lady's gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower bed of feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of ascent, and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity or death, as she in her good pleasure might elect, and this, as he said, he was doing by command of Sir Kaye the Seneschal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished them by his single might and prowess in sturdy conflict in the field. Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over the house. The queen's gratified smile faded out at the name of Sir Kaye, and she looked disappointed, and the page whispered in my ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision, Sir Kaye for sooth! O call me pet names, dearest, call me a marine! In twice a thousand years shall the unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie. The eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir Kaye, but he was equal to the occasion. He got up and played his hand like a major, and took every trick. He said he would state the case exactly according to the facts. He would tell the simple straightforward tale without comment of his own, and then, said he, if ye find glory and honour due, ye will give it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bear shield, or strike with stored in the ranks of Christian battle, even him that sitteth there. And he pointed to Sir Lancelot. Ah, he fetched them. It was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told how Sir Lancelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundred and forty-two captive maidens free. Then went further, still seeking adventures, and found him, Sir Kaye, fighting a desperate fight against nine foreign knights. And straightway took the battle solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine. And that night Sir Lancelot rose quietly and dressed him in Sir Kaye's armour, and took Sir Kaye's horse, and got him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle, and thirty-four in another. And all these, and the former nine, he made to swear that about witsentide they would ride to Arthur's court, and yield them to Queen Gwynevere's hands as captives of Sir Kaye the Seneschal, spoil of his nightly prowess. And now here were these half-dozen, and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of their desperate wounds. While it was touching to see the Queen blush and smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at Sir Lancelot, that would have got him shot in Arkansas to a dead certainty. Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Lancelot, and as for me, I was perfectly amazed that one man all by himself should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions of practised fighters. I said as much to Clarence, but this mocking featherhead only said, and Sir Kaye had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him, he had seen the account doubled. I looked at the boy in sorrow, and as I looked I saw the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. I followed the direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded man, closed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient head, and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. The same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable in all the faces around, the look of dumb creatures who know that they must endure and make no moan. "'Mary, we shall have it again,' sighed the boy, that same old weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words, and that he will tell till he dith, every time he hath gotten his barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration miller working. Would God I had died or I saw this day?' "'Who is it?' "'Merlin, the mighty liar and magician. Perditions sing him for the weariness he worketh with this one tale, but that men fear him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings, and all the devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug his entrails out this many years ago to get at that tale and squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person, making believe he is too modest to glorify himself. The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go to sleep. The old man began his tale, and presently the lad was asleep in reality, so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on, a soft snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued accompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious music. The flies buzzed and bit, unmolested. The rats swarmed softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made themselves at home everywhere. And one of them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head, and held a bit of cheese in its hands, and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with naive and imputant irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and restful to the weary eye, and the jaded spirit. This was the old man's tale, he said. Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until in Hermit that was a good man and a great leech. So the Hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good selves, so the king was there three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode Arthur said, I have no sword, no force. Footnote from M.T., no matter. Said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours, and I may, so they rode till they came to a lake, that which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was wear of an arm closed in white Samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that, said Arthur? That is the lady of the lake, said Merlin, and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth and richly be seen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. Anon with all came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge, and row yourself to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask my gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And the arm and the hand went under the water, and so they came unto the land and rode forth, and then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion, what signifyeth yonder pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said Merlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pelinor, but he is out, he is not there. He hath a do with a knight of yours, that height egglemay, and they have fought together, and at the last egglemay fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him, even to Corleone, and we shall meet with him and on in the highway. That is well said, said Arthur. Now have I a sword, now will I wage battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir ye shall not so, said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have no worship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched of one knight living, and therefore it is my counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons after his days. Also ye shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wed. When I see him I will do as ye advise, said Arthur. Then Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. Whether likeeth you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me likeeth better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore-wounded. Therefore keep well the scabbard always with you. So they rode into Carlyon, and by the way they met with Sir Pellinor, but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinor saw not Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, said Arthur, that the knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw you not. For, and he had seen you, ye had not lightly departed. So they came unto Carlyon, whereof his knights were passing glad, and when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would jeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it was merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did. CHAPTER IV It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told, but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference. It was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt. Sir Dynadon, the humorist, was the first to awake, and he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing against everything that came in their way, and making altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and turmoil, at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till the tears flowed and some fell out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children. Sir Dynadon was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again to weariness how the immortal idea happened to occur to him, and, as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech. Of course, a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old, played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities, but then they always do. I had noticed that centuries later. However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh, I mean the boy. No, he scoffed. There wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said that most of Sir Dinedin's jokes were rotten, and the rest were petrified. I said, petrified was good, as I believed myself that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic periods, but that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. However, I made a note of the remark and calculated to educate the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet. Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history mill with me for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians who all wore the same ridiculous garb that I did, a garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands. However, he had nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spoke of me all the time in the blandest way, as this prodigious giant, and this horrible sky-towering monster, and this tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre. And everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which all to brassed, the most of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the twenty-first, and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before he named the date. I was in a dismal state by this time. Indeed, I was hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprang up as to how I had better be killed. The possibility of the killing being doubted by some because of the enchantment in my clothes, and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop shots. Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail to it. Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would have made a comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. However, I had read Tom Jones and Roderick Random and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to a hundred years ago, in fact clear into our own nineteenth century, in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman, discoverable in English history or in European history for that matter, may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves. We should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft Lady Rowena, which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However to the unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. Garther's people were not aware that they were indecent, and I had presence of mind enough not to mention it. They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were mightily relieved at last when old Merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why they were so dull. Why didn't it occur to them to strip me? In half a minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs, and dear, dear, just think of it, I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed me, and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guinevere was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It was the only compliment I got, if it was a compliment. Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes in another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end of rats for company. I was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long. When I next came to myself I seemed to have been asleep a very long time. My first thought was, well, what an astonishing dream I've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or drowned or burned or something. I'll nap again till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms factory and have it out with Hercules. But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly Clarence stood before me. I gasped with surprise. My breath almost got away from me. What! I said, are you here yet? Go along with the rest of the dream, scatter! But he only laughed in his light-hearted way, and fell to making fun of my sorry plight. All right, I said, resignedly, let the dream go on. I'm in no hurry. Prithee! What dream? What dream? Why, the dream I am in Arthur's court, a person who never existed, and that I am talking to you, who are nothing but a work of the imagination. Oh, lie indeed! And is it a dream that you are to be burned to-morrow? Answer me that! The shock that went through me was distressing. I now began to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream or no dream, for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided by any means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said, beseechingly, Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got for you are, my friend, aren't you? Don't fail me. Help me to devise some way of escaping from this place. Now do but hear thyself escape? Why, man, the corridors are in garden keep of men at arms. No doubt, no doubt, but how many Clarence? Not many, I hope. Full of score, one may not hope to escape. After a pause, hesitatingly, and there be other reasons and weightier. Other reasons? What are they? Well, they say, oh, but I dare not, indeed, dare not. Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why do you tremble so? Oh, ensueth there is need. I do want to tell you, but come, come, be brave, be a man, speak out, there's a good lad. He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear. Then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening, and finally crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear, and told me his fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things whose very mention might be freighted with death. Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and thereby is not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate enough to assay to cross its lines with you. Now, God pity me, I have told it. Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who means thee well, for in thou betray me I am lost." I laughed, the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time, and shouted, Merlin has wrought a spell! Merlin, forsooth! That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass! Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why, it does seem to me that, of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that—oh, damn Merlin! But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind with fright, oh, beware, these are awful words! Any moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say such things, oh, call them back before it is too late! Now, this strange exhibition gave me a good idea, and set me to thinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely afraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainly a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way to take advantage of such a state of things. I went on thinking and worked out a plan. Then I said, Get up! Pull yourself together! Look me in the eye! Do you know why I laughed? No, but for our blessed lady's sake, do it no more! Well, I'll tell you why I laughed, because I'm a magician myself! Thou? The boy recoiled a step and caught his breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden, but the aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that. It indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum. People stood ready to take him at his word without that. I resumed, I've known Merlin seven hundred years, and he seven hundred—don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name every time—Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin, the new alias every time he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago. I knew him in India five hundred years ago. He is always blethering around in my way, everywhere I go. He makes me tired. He don't amount to shucks as a magician, knows some of the old common tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. He is well enough for the provinces, one night stands, and that sort of thing, you know. But dear me, he oughtn't have set up for an expert. Anyway, not where there's a real artist. Now look here, Clarence, I am going to stand your friend right along, and in return, you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get word to the king that I am a magician myself, and the supreme grand hyamuckamuck and head of the tribe at that, and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out, and any harm comes to me. Will you get that to the king for me? The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, so demoralized. But he promised everything, and on my side he made me promise over and over again that I would remain his friend, and never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. Then he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the wall, like a sick person. Presently this thought occurred to me, how heedless I have been. When the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like me should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place. He will put this and that together, and we'll see, and I am a humbug. I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself a great many hard names meantime. But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason, that they never put this and that together, that all their talk showed that they didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then. But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on something else to worry about. It occurred to me that I had made another blunder. I had sent the boy off to alarm his bedders with a threat. I intending to invent a calamity at my leisure. Now the people who are the readiness and eagerness and willingness to swallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you perform them. Suppose I should be called on for a sample. Suppose I should be asked to name my calamity. Yes, I had made a blunder. I ought to have invented my calamity first. What shall I do? What can I say to gain a little time? I was in trouble again, in the deepest kind of trouble. There's a footstep. They're coming. I had only just a moment to think. Good! I've got it. I'm all right. You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time how Columbus or Cortez or one of those people played an eclipse as a saving trump once on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties. This came in, subdued, distressed, and said, I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straight way he had me to his presence. He was frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give order for an instant enlargement, and that you be closed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted once so great, but then came Merlin and spoiled all, for he persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not where of you speak, and said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. They disputed long, but in the end Merlin scoffing said, Wherefore hath he not named his brave calamity? Verily it is because he cannot. This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's mouth, and he could offer not to turn the argument, and so reluctant and full loath to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayeth you to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name the calamity. If so, be you have determined the nature of it and the time of its coming. O pretty delay not! To delay at such a time were to double and treble the perils that already compass thee about. O be thou wise, name the calamity! I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressiveness together, and then said, How long have I been shut up in this whole? He were shut up when yesterday was well spent. It is nine o' the morning now. No! Then I have slept well, sure enough, nine in the morning now, and yet it is the very complexion of midnight to a shade. This is the twentieth, then? The twentieth, yes. And I am to be burned alive to-morrow. The boy shuddered. At what hour? At high noon. Now, then, I will tell you what to say. I paused and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence. Then in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life. Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight. I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again. The fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die to the last man. I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse. I handed him over to the soldiers, and went back. 6 The Eclipse In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale. But when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of man, being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself deeper and deeper meaning all the time, a something which was realization crept inch by inch through my veins, and turned me cold. But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point, there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides, and straight way my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes all vanished. I was as happy a man as there was in the world. I was even impatient for tomorrow to come. I so wanted to gather in that great triumph, and be the center of all the nation's wonder and reverence. Besides in a business way, it would be the making of me. I knew that. Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background of my mind. That was the half-conviction that when the nature of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious people, it would have such an effect that they would want to compromise. So by and by when I heard footsteps coming, that thought was recalled to me, and I said to myself, As sure as anything, it's a compromise. Well, if it is good all right, I will accept. But if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play my hand for all its worth. The door opened, and some men at arms appeared. The leader said, The stake is ready. Come! The stake. The strength went out of me, and I almost fell down. It is hard to get one's breath at such a time. Such lumps come into one's throat, and such gaspings. But as soon as I could speak, I said, But this is a mistake. The execution is tomorrow. Order changed, and set forward a day. Hasty! I was lost. There was no help for me. I was dazed, stupefied. I had no command over myself. I only wandered purposely about, like one out of his mind. So the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight and the upper world. As we stepped into the vast enclosed court of the castle I got a shock, for the first thing I saw was the stake standing in the center, and near it the piled faggots and a monk. On all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. The king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course. To note all this occupied but a second. The next second Clarence had slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. He said, Tis through me the change was wrought, and main hard have I worked to do it too. But when I revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how mighty was the terror it did in gender, then saw I also that this was the time to strike. Wherefore I diligently pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the sun could not reach its full until the morrow, and so if any would save the sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. Odds-boticans it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should have seen them seize it and swallow it in the frenzy of their fright, as it were salvation sent from heaven. And all the while was I laughing in my sleeve that one moment to see them so cheaply deceived, and glorifying God the next, that he was content to let the meanest of his creatures be his instrument to the saving of thy life. Ah, how happy has the matter sped! You will not need to do the sun a real hurt! Ah, forget not that! On your soul forget it not! Only make a little darkness, only the littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. It will be sufficient. They will see that I spoke falsely, being ignorant as they will fancy, and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness you shall see them go mad with fear, and they will set you free and make you great. Go to thy triumph now, but remember, ah, good friend, I implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessed sun no hurt, for my sake, thy true friend. I choked out some words, through my grief and misery, as much as to say I would spare the sun, for which the lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and loving gratitude that I had not the heart to tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me to my death. As the soldiers assisted me across the court, the stillness was so profound that if I had been blindfold, I should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. There was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity. They were as rigid as stone images, and as pale, and dreads sat upon every countenance. This hush continued while I was being chained to the stake. It still continued, while the faggots were carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body. Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch. The multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats without knowing it. The monk raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward the blue sky and began some words in Latin. In this attitude he droned on and on a little while, and then stopped. I waited two or three moments, then looked up. He was standing there petrified. With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, and sure as guns there was my eclipse beginning. The life went boiling through my veins. I was a new man. The rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk. My heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky motionless. I knew that this gaze would be turned upon me next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arms stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other. Apply the torch! I forbid it! The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin started from his place to apply the torch himself, I judged. I said, Stay where you are! If any man moves, even the king, before I give him leave, I will blast him with thunder! I will consume him with lightnings!" The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expecting they would. Merlin hesitated a moment or two, and I was on pins and needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I took a good breath, for I knew I was master of the situation now. The king said, Be merciful, fair sir, and say no further in this perilous matter lest disaster follow. It was reported to us that your powers could not attain unto their full strength until the morrow, but your Majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? It was a lie! That made an immense effect. It went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that I might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was eager to comply. He said, Name any terms, reverence, sir, even to the halfing of my kingdom, but banish this calamity, spare the son! My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but I couldn't stop an eclipse. The thing was out of the question, so I asked time to consider. The king said, How long? How long, good sir, be merciful, look, it grows darker moment by moment. Prithee, how long? Not long, half an hour, maybe an hour. There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn't shorten up any, or I couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. I was in a puzzled condition anyway, and wanted to think. Something was wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling. If this wasn't the one I was after, how was I to tell whether this was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? Dear me, if I could only prove it was the latter. Here was a glad new hope. If the boy was right about the date, and this was surely the twentieth, it wasn't the sixth century. I reached for the monk's sleeve in considerable excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was. Hang him, he said it was the twenty-first. It made me turn cold to hear him. I begged him not to make any mistake about it, but he was sure he knew it was the twenty-first. So that feather-headed boy had botched things again. The time of the day was right for the eclipse. I had seen that for myself in the beginning by the dial that was nearby. Yes, I was in King Arthur's court, and I might as well make the most out of it I could. The darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more and more distressed. I now said, I have reflected, sir king. For a lesson I will let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the world. But whether I blot out the sun for good or restore it shall rest with you. These are the terms. To it you shall remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship. But you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one percent of such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeed in creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I shan't ask anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory? There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst of it the king's voice rose, saying, Away with his bonds and set him free, and do him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he has become the king's right hand, his clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of the throne. Now sweep away this creeping night, and bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee. But I said, that a common man should be shamed before the world is nothing. But it were dishonored to the king, if any that saw his minister naked should not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might ask that my clothes be brought again. They are not meat, the king broke in. Fetch raiment of another sort, clothe him like a prince! My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of course I couldn't do it. Sending for the clothes gained some delay, but not enough, so I had to make another excuse. I said it would be but natural if the king should change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done under excitement. Therefore I would let the darkness grow a while, and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind the same, the darkness should be dismissed. Neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I had to stick to my point. It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery, which was quite natural. I said, the king by his silence still stands to the terms, then I lifted up my hands, stood just so a moment, and then I said, with the most awful solemnity, let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away. There was no response for a moment in that deep darkness and that graveyard hush, but when the silver rim of the sun pushed itself out a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout, and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me with blessings and gratitude, and Clarence was not the last of the wash, to be sure. End of chapter 6. Chapter 7 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 7. Merlin's Tower In as much as I was now the second personage in the kingdom, as far as political power and authority were concerned, much was made of me. My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes. I was aware of that. I was given the choice of suite of apartments in the castle after the kings. They were a glow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. I mean, little conveniences. It is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. The big, oaken chairs graced with rude carvings were well enough, but that was the stopping place. There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water, and not a cromo. I had been used to cromos for years, and I saw now that without my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesick to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness, and remember that in our house in East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't go into a room, but you would find an insurance cromo, or at least a three-color God bless our home over the door, and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a bed quilt, which was either woven or knitted. It had darned places in it, and nothing in it was the right color or the right shape, and as for proportions, even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formatively after all his practice on those nightmares they call his celebrated Hampton Court cartoons. Raphael was a bird. We had several of his cromos. One was his miraculous draft of fishes, where he puts in a miracle of his own, puts three men into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired to study ours art. It was so fresh and unconventional. There wasn't even a bell or a speaking tube in the castle. I had a great many servants and those that were on duty lulled in the anti-room, and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him. There was no gas, there were no candles, a bronze dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot of these hung along the walls and modified the dark just toned it down enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night your servants carried torches. There were no books, pens, paper, or ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. It is a little thing, glass is, until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was that there wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must do as he did, invent, contrive, create, reorganize things, set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well, that was in my line. One thing troubled me along at first the immense interest which people took in me. Apparently the whole nation wanted a look at me. It soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the British world almost to death, that while it lasted the whole country from one end to the other was in a pitiable state of panic, and the churches, hermitages, and monkries overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world was come. Then had followed the news that the producer of this awful event was a stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's Court, that he could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going to do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the man who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and its peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that everybody believed that, and not only believed it but never even dreamed of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not a person in all Britain that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of me. Of course I was all the talk, all other subjects were dropped, even the king became suddenly a person of minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-four hours the delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming. The village was crowded, and all the countryside. I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came to be a great burden as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center of homage. It turned Bear Merlin green with envy in spite, which was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one thing I couldn't understand. Nobody had asked for an autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. By George I had to explain to him what it was. Then he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen priests. Land, think of that. There was another thing that troubled me a little. Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man who could command the son riding in the heavens and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors and envied by them all. But to be able to also say they had seen him work a miracle themselves, why, people would come a distance to see them. The pressure got to be pretty strong. There was going to be an eclipse of the moon and I knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. Two years. I would have given a good deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market for it. It seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have any use for it like it is not. If it had been booked for only a month away, I could have sold it short. But as matters stood, I couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I gave up trying. Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself busy on the sly among those people. He was spreading a report that I was a humbug and that the reason I didn't accommodate the people with a miracle was because I couldn't. I saw that I must do something. I presently thought out a plan. By my authority as executive, I threw Merlin into prison, the same cell I had occupied myself. Then I gave public notice by Harold and trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the end of that time I would take a moment's leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven. In the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me let him beware. Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at this time and no more. If it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the murmurers into horses and make them useful. Quiet ensued. I took Clarence into my confidence to a certain degree and we went to work privately. I told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. That made his mouth safe enough. Clan-destinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightning rod and some wires. This old stone tower was very massive, and rather ruinous too, for it was Roman, and four hundred years old, yes, and handsome after a rude fashion, and closed with ivy from base to summit as with a shirt of scale mail. It stood on a lonely eminence in a good view from the castle, and about half a mile away. Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower, dug stones out on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges. When the thirteenth night was come, we put up our lightning rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. Everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people through the heralds to keep clear away a quarter of a mile away. Then added by command that at some time during the twenty-four hours I would consummate the miracle and would first give a brief notice by flags on the castle towers, if in the daytime, by torch baskets in the same places, if at night. Thunder showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I was not much afraid of a failure. Still, I shouldn't have cared for a delay of a day or two. I should have explained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait. Of course, we had a blazing sunny day, almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks, things always happen so. I kept secluded and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements. At last the winds sprang up and a cloud appeared in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken. Then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered the torch baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet, and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward Merlin's tower. Already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far. These people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great torch baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture. Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said, You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, and laterly you have been trying to injure my professional reputation. Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower. But it is only fair to give you a chance. Now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fire, step to the bat. It's your innings. I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not. He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof and burnt a pinch of powder in it which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke where at everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands. He worked himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a windmill. By this time the storm had about reached us, the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making the shadows swash about. The first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. Of course, my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, things were imminent, so I said, You have had time enough. I have given you every advantage and not interfered. It is plain your magic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now. I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash, and that old tower leapt into the sky in chunks along with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week. This was the report, but probably the facts would have modified it. It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporary population vanished. There were a good many thousand tracks in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. If I had advertised another miracle, I couldn't have raised an audience with a sheriff. Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop his wages. He even wanted to banish him, but I interfered. I said he would be useful to work the weather and attend to small matters like that, and I would give him a lift now and then, when his poor little parlor magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower left, but I had the government rebuild it for him, and advised him to take borders, but he was too high-toned for that. And as for being grateful, he never even said thank you. He was a rather hard lot, take him how you might, but then you couldn't fairly expect a man to be sweet that had been set back, so. END OF CHAPTER VII To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing, but to have the onlooking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episode solidified my power and made it impregnable. If any were perchance disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart now. There was not any one in the kingdom who would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters. I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances, for a time I used to wake up mornings and smile at my dream and listen for the colt's factory whistle, but that sort of thing played itself out gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize that I was actually living in the sixth century and, in Arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. After that I was just as much at home in that century as I could have been in any other, and as for preference I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up in the country, the grandest field that ever was, and all my own, not a competitor, not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities, whereas what would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should be a foreman of a factory that is about all, and could drag a sane down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself. What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from thinking about it and contemplating it just as one does who has struck oil. There was nothing back of me that could approach it unless it might be Joseph's case, and Joseph's only approached it and didn't equal it quite, for it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas I had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was popular by reason of it. I was no shadow of a king, I was the substance, the king himself was the shadow, my power was colossal, and it was not a mere name as such things have generally been, it was the genuine article. I stood here at the very spring and source of the second great period of the world's history, and could see the trickling stream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far centuries, and I could note the upspringing of adventures like myself in the shelter of its long array of thrones, de Montfort's, Gavinston's, Mortimer's, Villiers's, the war-making, campaign directing wantons of France, and Charles II's scepter-wielding drabs, but nowhere in the procession was my full-sized fellow visible, I was a unique, and glad to know that that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteen centuries and a half for sure. Yes, in power I was equal to the king, at the same time there was another power that was a trifle stronger than both of us put together, that was the church, I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't if I wanted to, but never mind about that now, it will show up in its proper place later on. It didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning, at least any of consequence. Well, it was a curious country and full of interest, and the people, they were the acquaintest and simplest and trustingest race, why they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and church and nobility, as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him. Why, dear me, any kind of royalty, how so ever modified, any kind of aristocracy, how so ever pruned is rightly an insult, but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies, a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity have left like their betters to their own exertions. The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their necks, and the rest were slaves, in fact, but without the same. They imagined themselves men and free men, and called themselves so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object and one only, to grovel before king and church and noble, to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, and be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt, and so poor spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honour. Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and a man who should have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration than so many animals, bugs, insects, whereas I had inherited the idea that human doors who can consent to masquerade in the peacock shams of inherited dignities and unearned titles are of no good but to be laughed at. The way I was looked upon was odd, but it was natural. You know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant in the menagerie. Well, that is the idea. They are full of admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength. They speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far and away beyond their own powers, and they speak with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able to drive a thousand men before him. But does that make him one of them? No. The raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. He couldn't comprehend it, couldn't take it in, couldn't in any remote way conceive of it. Well to the king, the nobles, and all the nation down to the very slaves and tramps, I was just that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. I was admired, also feared, but it was as an animal is admired and feared. The animal is not reverenced, neither was I. I was not even respected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title, so in the kings and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt. The people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it. Through the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of anything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship. There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic Church. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the church's supremacy in the world men were men and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence, and what of greatness and position a person got he got mainly by achievement, not by birth. But then the church came to the front with an axe to grind, and she was wise and subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat or a nation. She invented divine right of kings, and propped it all round brick by brick with the beatitudes, wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one. She preached to the commoner, humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice. She preached to the commoner, meekness under insult, preached still to the commoner always to the commoner, patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under oppression, and she introduced heritable ranks and aristocracies and taught all the Christian populations of the earth to bow down to them and worship them. Even down to my birth-century that poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the best of English commoners was still content to see his inferiors impudently continuing to hold a number of positions such as lordships and the throne to which the grotesque laws of his country did not allow him to aspire. In fact he was not merely contented with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't anything you can't stand if you are only born and bred to it. Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been in our American blood too. I know that. But when I left America it had disappeared, at least to all intents and purposes. The remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dutuses. When a disease has worked its way down to that level it may fairly be said to be out of the system. But to return to my anomalous position in King Arthur's kingdom, here I was a giant among pygmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles, by all rational measurement the one and only actual great man in that whole British world. And yet there and then, just as in the remote England of my birth time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descent from a king's layman, acquired at second hand from the slums of London, was a better man than I was. Such a personage was fawned upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence and his morals as base as his lineage. There were times when he could sit down in the king's presence but I couldn't. I could have got a title easily enough and that would have raised me a large step in everybody's eyes even in the kings, the giver of it. But I didn't ask for it and I declined it when it was offered. I couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions and it wouldn't have been fair anyway because as far back as I could go our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. I couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud and set up over any title except one that should come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source, and such and one I hoped to win, and in the course of years of honest and honourable endeavour I did win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This title fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith one day in a village, was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth with a laugh and an affirmative vote. In ten days it had swept the kingdom and was become as familiar as the king's name. I was never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at the council-board of the sovereign. This title, translated into modern speech, would be The Boss. Elected by the nation, that suited me, and it was a pretty high title. There were very few thus, and I was one of them. If you spoke of the Duke or the Earl or the Bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? But if you spoke of the King or the Queen or the Boss, it was different. Well, I liked the King, and as King I respected him, respected the office, at least respected it as much as I was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy, but as men I looked down upon him and his nobles privately, and he and they liked me, and respected my office. But as an animal without birth or sham title they looked down upon me, and were not particularly private about it either. I didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn't charge for their opinion about me. The count was square, the books balanced, everybody was satisfied. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain Chapter 9 The Tournament They were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot, and very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bullfights they were too, but just a little wearysome to the practical mind. However, I was generally on hand for two reasons. A man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked, especially as a statesman. And both as businessmen and statesmen I wanted to study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improvement on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did in my administration, and it was on the very first day of it, too, was to start a patent office. For I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel anyway but sideways, or back ways. Things ran along a tournament nearly every week. Now and then the boys used to want me to take a hand, I mean, Sir Lancelot and the rest. But I said I would buy and buy, no hurry yet, and too much government machinery to oil up and set to rights and started going. We had one tournament which was continued from day to day during more than a week, and as many as five hundred nights took part in it from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They came on horseback from everywhere, from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea, and many brought ladies, and all brought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd as to costumery, and very characteristic of the country and the time in the way of high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. It was fight or look on, all day and every day, and sing, gamble, dance, carouse, half the night, every night. They had a most noble good time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful ladies shining in their barbaric splendors would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists, with a lance-shaft, the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view. Only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief and look ostentatiously broken hearted, and then you could lay two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere, and she was afraid the public hadn't found it out. The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but I didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples. They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me and broke the saw-buck too, but I let it pass. And as for my axe, well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axe to a surgeon I would pick my century. I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed an intelligent priest from my department of public morals and agriculture and ordered him to report it, for it was my purpose, by and by, when I should have gotten the people along far enough to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country is a patent office, then work up your school system, and after that, out with your paper. A newspaper has its faults and plenty of them, but no matter. It's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't you forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation without it. There isn't any way. So I wanted to sample things and be finding out what sort of reporter material I might be able to rake together out of the sixth century when I should come to need it. Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item. You see, he had kept books for the undertaker department of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details. The more details, the more swag. Bearers, mutes, candles, prayers, everything counts. And if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough, you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a night that was likely to advertise. No, I mean a night that had influence, and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles. Of course this novice's report lacked a whoop and crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the true ring, but its antique wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure for its more important lax. Here is an extract from it. Then Sir Brian Dilley Isles and Grimoire Grumerson, Knights of the Castle, encountered with Sir Aglival and Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grimoire Grumerson to the earth. Then came Sir Caradose of the Dolores Tower and Sir Turquine, Knights of the Castle, and there encountered with them Sir Percival DeGalus and Sir Lamarack DeGalus, that were two brethren, and there encountered Sir Percival with Sir Caradose and either break their spears unto their hands, and then Sir Turquine with Sir Lamarack, and either of them smote down other horse and all to the earth, and either parties rescued other and horse them again, and Sir Arnold and Sir Gautair, Knights of the Castle, encountered with Sir Blandalus and Sir Kay, and these four knights encountered mightily and break their spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from the Castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel, and there Sir Pertolope, the Green Knight, smote down Sir Lionel, brother to Sir Lancelot. All this was marked by noble heralds who bear him best, and their names. Then Sir Bleobaris break his spear upon Sir Gareth, but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth. When Sir Galahotun saw that, he bade Sir Gareth keep him, and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galahot got a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadun and his brother Lacot male tail, and Sir Sagromor Ladizeris, and Sir Dodinus the Savage, and all these he bear down with one spear. When King Aswesants of Ireland saw Sir Gareth fair so, he marveled what he might be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue, and thus at every course that he rode to and from, he changed his color, so that there might neither King nor Knight have ready cognizance of him. Then Sir Agwesants, the King of Ireland, encountered with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all, and then King Parados of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man, and in the same wise he served King Uriens of the land of Gore, and then there came in Sir Bagdemagus, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth, and Bagdemagus' son Maligmanus break a spear upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly, and then Sir Galahot, the noble prince, cried on high, Night with the many colors, well hast thou justed! Now make thee ready, that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him, and he got a great spear, and so they encountered together, and there the prince break his spear, but Sir Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down, had not his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that Knight with the many colors is a good Knight, wherefore the King called unto him Sir Lancelot, and prayed him to encounter with that Knight. Sir, said Lancelot, I may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good Knight doth so well upon some day, it is no good Knight's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a Knight hath done so great labour. For per adventure, said Sir Lancelot, his quarrel is here this day, and per adventure he is best beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see well he paineth himself, and enforceth him to do great deeds, and therefore, said Sir Lancelot, as for me, this day he shall have the honour. Though it lay in my power to put him from it, I would not. There was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons of state I struck out of my priest's report. You will have noticed that Gary was doing some great fighting in the engagement. When I say Gary, I mean Sir Gareth. Gary was my private pet name for him. It suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and that was the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one, much less to him. Being a noble, he would not have endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to proceed. I sat in the private box set apart for me as the King's minister. While Sir Dinadon was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat down and began to talk. For he was always making up to me, because I was a stranger, and he liked to have a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that stage of where, where the teller has to do the laughing himself while the other person looks sick. I had always responded to his efforts as well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest and had most hated and most loathed all of my life, he had at least spared it me. It was one which I had heard attributed to every humorous person who had ever stood on American soil from Columbus down to Artemis Ward. It was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest jokes for an hour, and never got a laugh. And then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons rung him gratefully by the hand, and said, it had been the funniest thing they had ever heard, and it was all they could do to keep from laughing right out in meeting. That anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling. And yet I had sat under the telling of it hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope to know what my feelings were to hear this armor-plated ass start in on it again in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of history, while even Lactantheus might be referred to as the late Lactantheus, and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred years yet. Just as he finished, the call-boy came. So ha-hawing like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and I knew nothing more. It was some minutes before I came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to see Sir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I unconsciously out with the prayer, I hope to gracious he's killed. But by ill luck, before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashed into Sir Sagramore, the desirous, and sent him thundering over his horse's cropper, and Sir Sagramore caught my remark, and thought I meant it for him. Well, whenever one of those people got a thing in his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved my breath, and offered no explanations. As soon as Sir Sagramore got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future. Place of settlement, the lists where the offence had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flyer at the Holy Grail now, and then it was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that day, as you may say. That was all. Every year expeditions went out Holy Grailing, and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for them. There was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actually wanted me to put in. Well, I should smile. End of chapter 9. This is chapter 10. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information. Or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, chapter 10. Beginnings of Civilization. The round table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. The King thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I might gain renown, and be the more worthy to meet Sir Sagromore when the several years should have rolled away. I excused myself for the present. I said it would take me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly. Then I should be ready. All the chances were that at the end of that time Sir Sagromore would still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be lost by the postponement. I should then have been in office six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinery would be so well developed that I could take a holiday without its working any harm. I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way, nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find, and I kept agents out raking the country for more all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts, experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit, for I was afraid of the church. I had started a teacher factory and a lot of Sunday schools the first thing, as a result I now had an admirable system of graded schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of Protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted to, there was perfect freedom in that matter, but I confined public religious teaching to the churches and the Sunday schools, permitting nothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to a front a law of human nature. Spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as our physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with a religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it, and besides I was afraid of a united church, it makes a mighty power, the mighty is conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. They had formerly been worked as savages always worked mines, holes grubbed in the earth, and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by hand at the rate of a ton a day, but I had begun to put the mining on a scientific basis as early as I could. Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramore's challenge struck me. Four years rolled by, and then, well, you would never imagine it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same, namely the despot, the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But, as a perishable, perfect man must die and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor. An earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible. My work showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I had the civilization of the nineteenth-century booming under its very nose. It was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact, and to be heard from yet, if I lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a fact, and as substantial a fact, as any serene volcano standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky, and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. My schools and churches were children four years before. They were grown up now. My shops of that day were vast factories now, where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now, where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and flood the midnight world with light at any moment. But, I was not going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy. The people could not have stood it, and, moreover, I should have had the established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute. No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on my light one candle-powered at a time, and meant to continue to do so. I had scattered some branch school secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. I meant to work this racket more and more as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest secrets was my West Point, my military academy. I kept that most jealously out of sight, and I did the same with my naval academy, which I had established at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my satisfaction. Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand. He was a darling. He was equal to anything. There wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line. Nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in my civilization nurseries. He took to it like a duck. There was an editor concealed in him sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way. He talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing steadily. It was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavor. We had another large departure on hand too. This was a telegraph and a telephone. Our first venture in this line. These wires were for private service only as yet, and must be kept private until a ripe day should come. We had a gang of men on the road working mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires. We were afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good enough in both instances for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention, which was perfect. My men had orders to strike across country avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence and leaving experts in charge. Nobody could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up for the present. It would be poor wisdom to antagonize the church. As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when I arrived in it to all intents and purposes. I had made changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus far I had not even meddled with taxation outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had systematized those and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. As a result these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equibly distributed than before that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general. Personally I struck an interruption now, but I did not mind it. It could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. The king had reminded me several times of late that the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had about run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honour of breaking a lance with Sir Sagromore, who was still outgrailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions and might be found any year now. So, you see, I was expecting this interruption. It did not take me by surprise. CHAPTER XII There never was such a country for wandering liars, and they were of both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving, and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting help to get her out of some far away castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now, you would think that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger would be to ask for credentials, yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and common sense a thing as that. No, everybody swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not around, one of these people came along. It was a she one this time, and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses. They had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six years. The masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye, the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit, sort of fruit not mentioned, their usual slovenliness in statistics. Would you believe it? The king and the whole round table were raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every night of the table jumped for the chance and begged for it. But to their vexation and chagrin, the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all. By an effort I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news, but he could not contain his. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a steady discharge, delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. On my side I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I said I was glad, and in a way it was true. I was as glad as a person is when he is scalped. Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be done. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff. I must get at the wheat in this case. So I sent for the girl, and she came. She was a cumbly enough creature and soft and modest. But if signs went for anything she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. I said, my dear, have you been questioned as two particulars? She said she hadn't. Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask to make sure. It's the way I've been raised. Now, you mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you we must go a little slow. You may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you are, but to take it for granted isn't business. You understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions. Just answer up fair and square and don't be afraid. Where do you live when you are at home? In the Land of Motor, fair sir. Land of Motor. I don't remember hearing of it before. Parents living? As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, since it is many years that I have lain shot up in the castle. Your name, please. I height the demoiselle Alissande, the Cartelois, and it please you. Do you know anybody here who can identify you? That we're not likely, fair Lord, I being come hither now for the first time. Have you brought any letters, any documents, any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful? Of a certainty no. And wherefore should I? Have I not a tongue? And cannot I say all that myself? But you're saying it, you know, and somebody else is saying it is different. Different? How might that be? I fear me, I do not understand. Don't understand? Land of—why, you see—you see—my great Scott, can't you understand a little thing like that? Can't you understand the difference between your—why—why do you look so innocent and idiotic? I, in truth, I know not, but in it were the will of God. Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind my seeming excited, I'm not. Let us change the subject. Now as to this castle, with forty-five princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it, tell me, where is this harem? Harem? The castle, you understand, where is the castle? Oh, as to that it is great and strong, and well-beseen, and lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues. How many? Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and, being made all in the same image, and tinked with the same color, one may not know the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them, except they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that, being not within man's capacity. For ye will note, hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance. Whereabouts does the castle lie? What's the direction from here? Ah, please you, sir, it hath no direction from here, but reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore, wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under the one sky, and on under another, where so if ye be minded that it is in the east, and when, to the word, ye shall observe that the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and this marvel happening again, and yet again, and still again, it will grieve you that you hath thought by vanities of the mind to thwart, and bring to not the will of him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth him, and if it pleas him not, will the rather that he even all castles and all directions there unto vanish out of the earth, leaving the places wherein they tarry desolate and vacant, so warning his creatures that where he will he will, and where he will not he, oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest. Never mind about the direction. Hang the direction, I beg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons. I am not well to-day. Pay no attention when I solicuise. It is an old habit, an old bad habit, and hard to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food that was raised for ever and ever before he was born. Good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickens thirteen hundred years old. But come, never mind about that. Let's, um, have you got such a thing as a map of that region about you, now a good map? Is it, per adventure, that manner of thing which, of late, the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and salt added thereto doth? What, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know what a map is? There, there, never mind. Don't explain, I hate explanations. They fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Run along, dear, a good day. Show her the way, Clarence. Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. It may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a hydraulic, nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting even. It was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfect ass, and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up the whole party, and think of the simple ways of this court. This wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king and his palace than she would have had to get into the poor house in my day in country. In fact, he was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale. With that adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a corpses to a coroner. Just as I was ending up these reflections Clarence came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl, hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find the castle. The youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself what I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. Why, great guns, I said! Don't I want to find the castle? And how else would I go about it? La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, I mean, she will go with thee. They always do. She will ride with thee. Ride with me, nonsense. But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee. Thou shalt see. What? She browsed around the hills and scour the woods with me, alone, and I as good as engaged to be married. Why, it's scandalous. Think how it would look. My, the dear face that rose before me. The boy was eager to know all about this tender matter. I swore him to secrecy and then whispered her name, Puss Flanagan. He looked disappointed, and said he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was for the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me where she lived. In eased heart I came to myself and stopped, a little confused, and then I said, Never mind now, I'll tell you some time. And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day? It was but a little thing to promise, thirteen hundred years or so, and he so eager, so I said yes. But I sighed. I couldn't help it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But that is the way we are made. We don't reason where we feel we just feel. My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they were good children, but just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants and how to scoop them in, and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to need salves or instructions or charms against enchantments, and least of all, arms and armor on a foray of any kind, even against fire-spouting dragons and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. I was to have an early breakfast and start at dawn, for that was the usual way, but I had the demon's own time with my armor and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold iron, then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail. These are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet fishnet. It is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night's shirt, yet plenty used it for that, tax collectors and reformers, and one horse-kings with a defective title, and those sorts of people. Then you put on your shoes, flatboats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel, and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs and your creases on your thighs, then come your back plate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded. Then you hitch onto the breastplate the half petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is scalloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coals scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on. Next you belt on your sword, then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck. And there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mold. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking. There is so little of the meat, even when you get down to it by comparison with a shell. The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as not I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked, and tall, and broad, and grand. He had on his head a conical steel cask that only came down to his ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose. And all the rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers, and all. But pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which of course was of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from his shoulders to his ankles, and from his middle to the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for a two. I would have given a good deal for that Ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sun was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck, so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your horse yourself. No, if you try it, he would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups. And all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else, like somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up the mast they called a spear in its socket by my left foot, and I gripped it with my hand. Lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to see. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup cup her own self. There was nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on a billion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. And so we started, and everybody gave us a good-bye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met going down the hill and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. They said, Oh, what a guy! And Hove clawed at us. In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect anything. They don't care for anything or anybody. They say, Go up, bald head, to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of antiquity. They sass me in the holy gloom of the middle ages, and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan's administration. I remember, because I was there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled with his boys, and I wanted to get down and settle with mine. But it wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without a Derek. END OF CHAPTER XI. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, CHAPTER XII. SLOW TORTURE. Straight off we were in the country. It was most lovely and pleasant in those silven solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade. And beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away and billowy perspective to the horizon, with that wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave summit, which we knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall. We dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs, and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to hear. And at times we left the world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried by, and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was, and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder, and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree-trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remoteness of the woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare. About a third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare, it was along there somewhere a couple of hours or so after sun-up. It wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It was beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a very long pull after that without any shade. Now it is curious how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all at first, I began to mind now, and more and more too, all the time. The first ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care. I got along and said, never mind. It isn't any matter, and dropped it out of my mind. But now it was different. I wanted it all the time. It was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest. I couldn't get it out of my mind. And so at last I lost my temper and said, hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. You see, I had my handkerchief in my helmet and some other things. But it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there, and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularly convenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there so handy and close by, and yet not get atable, made it all the worse in the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you want, mainly. Everyone has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from everything else, took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet. And mile after mile there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief. And it was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing on paper. But it was not a little thing at all. It was the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of course these iron dudes at the round table would think it was scandalous and maybe raise show about it. But as for me, give me comfort first and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds, and get into my nose, and make me sneeze and cry. And of course I said things I often to have said. I don't deny that. I am not better than others. We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even an ogre. And in the mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre, that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of nothing but getting his armor, but so I got his bandana, he could keep his hardware for all of me. Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time. Well, when you are hot that way, every little thing irritates you. When I trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me. And moreover I couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging now about my breast, now around my back. And if I dropped into a walk, my joints creaked and screeched in that weary some way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gate, I was like to get fried in that stove. And besides, the quieter you went, the heavier the iron settled down on you, and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute. And you had to be always changing hands and passing your spear over to the other foot. It got so irksome for one hand to hold it long at a time. Well, you know, when you perspire that way in rivers, there comes a time when you, when you, well, when you itch, you are inside, your hands are outside. So there you are, nothing but iron between. It is not a light thing, but it sound as it may. First it is one place, then another, then some more, and it goes on spreading and spreading. And at last the territory is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. And when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I couldn't get the visor up, and I could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time, and the fly, well, you know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty? He only minded the shaking enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting in a way that a person already so distressed as I was simply could not stand. So I gave in, and got Alessande to unship the helmet and relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and I drank, and then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think how refreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable. It was good to have a rest, and peace. But nothing is quite perfect in this life at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco, not the real thing, but what some of the Indians use, the inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again. But no matches. Gradually as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon my understanding that we were weather bound. An armed novice cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was not enough. Not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until somebody should come along. Waiting in silence would have been agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think how it was that rational, or even half-rational men, could ever have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences, and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what I had suffered today they had had to suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out, and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out. But thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn't think where Sandy was. She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a comfort. But you can't cork that kind. They would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think something would surely happen to her works by and by, but no, they never got out of order. She never had to slack up for words. She could grind and pump and churn and buzz by the week and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was just nothing but wind. She never had any ideas any more than a fog has. She was a perfect blather-skite. I mean for your jaw, jaw, jaw. Talk, talk, talk! Jabber, jabber, jabber! But just as good as she could be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning on account of having that hornet's nest of other troubles. But more than once in the afternoon, I had to say, Take a rest, child! The way you are using up all the domestic air the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's a low enough treasury without that. CHAPTER XIII. The Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court, CHAPTER XIII. Free man! Yes, it is strange how little the while at a time a person can be contented. Only a little while back when I was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity and this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then. Yet already I was getting dissatisfied, partly because I could not light my pipe, for although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches with me, and partly because we had nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlike improvidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There was probably not a night of all the round table combination who would not rather have died than have been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff, and yet there could not be anything more sensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. Night approached and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. But I was obliged to remain in my armor because I could not get it off by myself and yet could not allow Alessandro to help, because it would have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would not have amounted to that in reality because I had clothes on underneath, but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to stripping off that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should have been embarrassed. With the storm came a change of weather, and the stronger the wind blew, and the wild of the rain lashed around, the colder and colder it got. Pretty soon various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside my armor to get warm, and while some of them behaved well enough and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless, uncomfortable sort and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting where they did not know what, especially the ants, which went tickling along in worrisome procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are a kind of creatures which I never wished to sleep with again. It would be my advice to persons situated in this way to not roll or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse than they were before, and of course makes you objugate harder too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash around he would die, so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other. There is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could still distinguish that tickling just as a corpse does when he is taking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armor after this trip. All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my tired head. How do people stand this miserable armor? How have they managed to stand at all these generations? And how can they sleep at night for dreading the tortures of next day? When the morning came at last I was in a bad enough plight, seedy, drowsy, fagged from want of sleep, weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting, pining for a bath, and to get rid of the animals, and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared with the nobly-born, the titled aristocrat, the demoiselle Alissande de la Cartreloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel. She had slept like the dead, and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not missing it. Measured by modern standards they were merely modified savages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to get to breakfast, and that smacks of the savage too. On their journeys, those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them, and also how to freight up against the probable fasts before starting, after the style of the Indian and the Anaconda, as like as not Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me, and when I proposed to breakfast with them they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that, at first, they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side. She said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle, a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them and not because it insulted or offended them for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were free men. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree, small, independent farmers, artisans, etc., which is to say they were the nation, the actual nation. They were about all of it that was useful or worth saving or really respect worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance this gilded minority, instead of being in the tale of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying at the other end of it, had elected itself to be the nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth, and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God, and so not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly American ear. They were free men, but they could not leave the estates of their Lord or their bishop without his permission. They could not prepare their own bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay roundly for the same. They could not sell a piece of their own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering him in cash for the privilege. They had to harvest his grain for him gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened storm. They had to let him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain around the trees. They had to smother their anger when his hunting-parties galloped through their fields, laying waste the result of their patient toil. They were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my Lord's dove-coat settled on their crops, they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be. When the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it. First the church carted off its fat tenth, then the King's commissioner took his twentieth, then my Lord's people made a mighty in-road upon the remainder, after which the skinned free man had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble. There were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes again, and yet other taxes upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the wasteful nobility or the all-devouring church. If the baron would sleep unvexed, the free man must sit up all night after his day's work, and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet. If the free man's daughter, but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is unprintable, and finally if the free man, grown desperate with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him at midnight at the crossroads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. And here were these free men assembled in the early morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three days each, gratis, every head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it was like reading about France and the French before the ever memorable and blessed revolution which swept a thousand years of such villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood, one a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hog's head of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two reins of terror, if we would but remember it and consider it, the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood, the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years, the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions, but our shutters are all for the horrors of the minor terror, the momentary terror so to speak, whereas what is the horror of swift death by the ax compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror, that unspeakably bitter and awful terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. These poor ostensible free men who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me were as full of humble reverence for their king and church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed who, with a free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families, including the voters, and would also elect that a certain hundred family should be raised to dizzy summits of rank and closed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families, including his own. They all looked unhit, and said, they didn't know, that they had never thought about it before, and it had never occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government. I said I had seen one, and that it would last until it had an established church. Again they were all unhit, at first, but presently one man looked up and asked me to state that proposition again, and state it slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. I did it, and after a little he had the idea, and he brought his fist down and said, he didn't believe a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down in the mud and dirt in any such way, and that to steal from a nation its will and preference must be a crime, and the first of all crimes. I said to myself, this one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove myself its loyalist citizen by making a wholesome change in its system of government. You see, my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing. It is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to. Institutions are extraneous. They are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags, that is a loyalty of unreason. It is pure animal. It belongs to monarchy. Was invented by monarchy. Let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose constitution declares that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit, and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient. Under that Gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the Commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal. He is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay does not excuse him. It is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does. And now here I was in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the 994 to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and proposed to change it would have made the whole six shudder as one man. It would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. So to speak I was to become a stockholder in a corporation where 994 of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the 994 dupes needed was a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the boss ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution. But I knew that the Jack Cade or the Watt Tyler who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Therefore the deal which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the Cade Tyler sort. So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and mistaut herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had finished I got him to lend me a little ink from his veins and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark put him in the man factory and gave it to him and said, Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of Amias Le Poulet, whom I call Clarence and he will understand. He is a priest then, said the man, and some of the enthusiasm went out of his face. How a priest, didn't I tell you that no chattel of the church, no bond slave of pope or bishop can enter my man factory? Didn't I tell you that you couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was your own free property? Mary it is so, and for that I was glad. Wherefore it liked me not and bred in me a cold doubt to hear of this priest being there. But he isn't a priest, I tell you. The man looked far from satisfied. He said, He is not a priest and yet can read. He is not a priest and yet can read, yes, and write, too, for that matter. I taught him myself. The man's face cleared, and it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that factory. I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why, I will be your slave. No, you won't. You won't be anybody's slave. Take your family and go along. Your lord, the bishop, will confiscate your small property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right. I paid three pennies for my breakfast and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfast a dozen persons for that money. But I was feeling good by this time, and I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway. And then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where these pennies being made of iron and not stinted in weight my half-dollars worth was a good deal of a burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true, but one reason for it was that I hadn't got the proportions of things entirely adjusted even yet after so long a sojourn in Britain, hadn't got along to where I was able to absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing. Just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased me, and them too, not less. I had adopted the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters and half-dollars, and also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this new blood freshen up its life. The farmers were bound to throw in something to sort of offset my liberality, whether I would or no, so I let them give me a flint and steel, and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy and me on our horse I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet all those people broke for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none but my enemies, and I promised with my hand on my heart that if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass before me they should see that only those who remained behind would be struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness. There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough to remain behind to see what would happen. I lost some time now, for these big children, their fear is gone, became so ravaged with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks, but I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wanted to the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was a gain. But above all other benefits accruing I had learned something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come along now. We tarried with a holy hermit that night, and my opportunity came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing a vast meadow by way of shortcut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted a remark which she had begun that morning, with a cry, Defend thee, Lord! Peril of life is toward! And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen armed knights and their squires, and straightway there was bustle among them and tightening of saddle girths for the mount. My pipe was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too. None of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about, one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came in a body. They came with a whir and a rush. They came like a volley from a battery. Came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight, for a man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready to break over me. Then spouted a column of white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter. This was a finer sight than the other one. But these people stopped two or three hundred yards away, and this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed and fear came. I judged, I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant, and was going to be eloquent. But I stopped her, and told her my magic had miscarried somehow or other, and she must mount with all dispatch, and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my enchantment had disabled those knights. They were not riding on because they couldn't. Wait! They would drop out of their saddles presently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could not deceive such trusting simplicity. So I said it was a mistake, that when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly. No, the men would not die. There was something wrong about my apparatus. I couldn't tell what. But we must hurry and get away, for those people would attack us again in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said, Look a day, sir. They be not that breed. Sir Lancelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail them again and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer and destroy them. And so, likewise, will Sir Pelinor, and Sir Aglival, and Sir Kharados, and may have others. But there be none else that will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye, they have not their fill, but yet desire more. Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave? Nobody's hindering. Good lad, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, I'm sure. Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dream not of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them. Come, really, is that sooth, as you people say? If they want to, why don't they? It would like them much, but any what how dragons are esteemed, he would not hold them blamable, they fear to come. Well, then I suppose I go to them instead, and ah, with ye well, they would not abide your coming. I will go. And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubtful errand myself. I presently saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was a relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings. I mean, in the conversation. Otherwise, the interview wouldn't have been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business well, in fact admirably. She said that when she told those people I was the boss, it hit them where they lived. Smote them sore with fear and dread was her word. And then they were ready to put up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appear at Arthur's court within two days and yield them with horse and harness, and be my knights henceforth and subject to my command. How much better she managed that thing than I should have done it myself. She was a daisy. And so I'm proprietor of some knights, said I as we wrote off. Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assets of that sort? I shan't know what to do with them, unless I raffle them off. How many of them are there, Sandy? Seven, please, you sir, and their squires. It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out? Where do they hang out? Yes, where do they live? I understood they not. That will I tell, iftsoons. Then she said musingly and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue. Hang they out. Hang they out. Where hang? Where do they hang out? Right so. Where do they hang out? Of a truth, the phrase hath affair, and winsome grace, and is prettily worded with all. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idleness, whereby I may, per adventure, learn it. Where do they hang out? Even so, already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and for as much as— Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy. Cowboys? Yes, the knights, you know. You were going to tell me about them, a wild bat, you remember? Figuratively speaking, games called. Game? Yes, yes, yes. Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your statistics. And don't burn so much kindling getting your fires started. Tell me about the knights. I will well, and lightly will begin. So they too departed, and rode into a great forest, and— Great scot! You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works a-going. It was my own fault. She would be thirty days getting down to those facts, and she generally began without a preface, and finished without a result. If you interrupted her, she would either go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. So interruptions only did harm. And yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently too, in order to save my life. A person would die if he let her monotony drip on him right along all day. Great scot! I said in my distress. She went right back, and began over again. So they too departed, and rode into a great forest, and— Which two? Sir Gawain and Sir Uain. And so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great forest. Then was Sir Gawain, where, in a valley by a turret, of twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and the damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawain where, how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the damsels came by it, they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the shield. Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and I mean your best too, society's very choicest brands. The humblest hello-girl, along ten thousand miles of wire, could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners to the highest duchess in Arthur's land. Hello, girl? Yes, but don't you ask me to explain. It's a new kind of girl. They don't have them here. One often speaks sharply to them when they are not the least in fault. And he can't get over feeling sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years. It's such shabby, mean conduct and so unprovoked. The fact is, no gentleman ever does it, though. I, well, I myself, if I've got to confess, prevent her, she never mind her. Never mind her. I tell you, I couldn't ever explain her, so you would understand. Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawain and Sir Gawain went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a knight in this county that owneth this white shield. And he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateeth all ladies and gentle women, and therefore we do all this despite to the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawain. It besiemeth evil a good knight to despise all ladies and gentle women, and per adventure, though he hate you, he hath some cause, and per adventure he loatheth in some other places, ladies and gentle women, and be loved again, and he such a man of prowess, as ye speak of. Man of prowess, yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. Man of brains, that is the thing they never think of. Tom Sayers, John Heenan, John L. Sullivan, pity, but you could be here. You would have your legs under the round table, and Sir, in front of your names, within the twenty-four hours, and you could bring about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses of the court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just a sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck, with the biggest strings of scalps at his belt. And he be such a man of prowess, as ye speak of, said Sir Gawain. Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhouse, the king's son of Ireland. Son of the king of Ireland, ye mean. The other form doesn't mean anything. And look out and hold on tight now, we must jump this gully. There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in the circus, he is born before his time. I know him well, said Sir Gawain. He is a passing good night, as any is on live. On live. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that you are a shade to archaic. But it isn't any matter. For I saw him once proved at a justse, where many nights were gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, said Sir Gawain, damsels, me thinketh ye are to blame. For it is to suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long there from, and then may those nights match him on horseback, and that is more your worship than thus, for I will abide no longer to see a night shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Gawain and Sir Gawain departed a little from them, and then, where they were, where Sir Marhouse came riding on a great horse straight toward them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhouse, they fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield and said on high, Sir Marhouse, defend thee! And so they ran together that the knight break his spear on Marhouse, and Sir Marhouse smote him so hard that he break his neck and the horse's back. Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things. It ruined so many horses. That saw the other knight of the turret and dressed him toward Marhouse, and they went so eagerly together that the knight of the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead. Another horse gone. I tell you, it is a custom that ought to be broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud and support it. So these knights came together with great random—I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter. But I didn't say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. That Sir Gawain smote Sir Marhouse that his spear breasted in pieces on the shield, and Sir Marhouse smote him so sore that horse and man he bear to the earth and hurt Sir Gawain on the left side. The truth is, Alessande, these archaics are a little too simple. The vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of variety. They run too much to level Saharas, a fact, and not enough to picturesque detail. This throws about them a certain air of the monotonous. In fact, the fights are all alike. A couple of people come together with great random—random is a good word—and so is exegesis, for that matter, and so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct, and a hundred others, but land, a body ought to discriminate. They come together with great random, and a spear is brassed, and one party break his shield, and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horsetail and break his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in and brassed his spear, and the other man brassed his shield, and down he goes, horse and man, over his horsetail, and break his neck, and then there's another elected, and another, and another, and still another, till the material is all used up, and when you come to figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whipped, and as a picture of living, raging, roaring battle, show why it's pale and noiseless, just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle, the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, towns burned down, no insurance, boy brassed a window, firemen break his neck. Why, that ain't a picture. It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb Sandy, didn't turn a feather. Her steam soared steadily up again the minute I took off the lid. Then Sir Maras turned his horse and rode toward Gawain with his spear, and when Sir Gawain saw that he dressed his shield, and they adventured their spears, and they came together with all the might of their horses, that either knight smote others so hard in the midst of their shields. But Sir Gawain's spear break I knew it would, but Sir Maras's spear held, and therewith Sir Gawain and his horse rushed down to the earth, just so, and break his back, and lightly Sir Gawain rose upon his feet and pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Maras on foot, and therewith either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms, and their hawbarks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawain, fro at past nine o' the clock, waxed by the space of three hours ever stronger and stronger, and thrice his might was increased. All this spied, Sir Maras, and had great wonder how his might increased, and so they wounded other passing soar, and then when it was come noon the pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds of my boyhood days. Kneeewhaven, ten minutes for refreshments. Condruckle, strike the gong bell two minutes before the train leaves. Passengers, for the shoreline, please take seats in the rear cair. This cair don't go no further. Apples, oranges, banners, sanches, popcorn. In waxed past noon and drew toward even song, Sir Gawain's strength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unethas he might do or any longer, and Sir Maras was then bigger and bigger, which strained his armor, of course, and yet little would one of these people mind a small thing like that. And so, Sir Knight, said Sir Maras, I have well felt that year a passing good night, and a marvellous man of might as ever if I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawain, gentle Knight, ye say the word that I should say, and therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren. But I lost the thread there and dozed off to slumber. Thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength, strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch, should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take a jackass, for instance. A jackass has that kind of strength and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass. But a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place, and yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done, and you never know what is going to come of it. When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that Alessand had wandered a long way off with her people, and so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water, above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting thereby. In this country, said Sir Marhouse, came never night since it was christened, but he found strange adventures. This is not good form, Alessand. Sir Marhouse, the king's son of Ireland, talks like all the rest. You ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive. By this means one would recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should make him say, In this country be jabbers. Came never night since it was christened, and he found strange adventures be jabbers. You see how much better that sounds. Came never night, but he found strange adventures be jabbers. Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit his passing hard to say, though per adventure that will not tarry but better speed with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she was three-score winter of age or more. The damsel was, even so, dear lord, and her hair was white under the garland. Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not. The loose fit kind that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and fall out when you laugh. The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen years of age, billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded out of my hearing. Fifteen. Break, my heart! Oh, my lost darling! Just her age, who was so gentle and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory to a vague, dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer mornings out the sweet dreams of her and say, Hello, central! Just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a, Hello, hank! That was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. I could not follow Alessane's further explanation of who our captured knights were now. I mean, in case she should ever get to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts were far away and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale caught here and there, and now and then, I merely noted in a vague way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south to seek adventures, and meet again and lie after a year and day, year and day, and without baggage. It was of a peace with the general simplicity of the country. The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when Alessane had begun to tell me who the cowboys were, so she had made pretty good progress with it for her. She would arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground. A huge, strong, venerable structure whose gray towers and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the one we were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it. She said she had passed it without calling, when she went down to Camelot. End of Chapter 15 A kinetic of Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter 16, Morgan Lafay. If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed, that is, measured by modern standards of veracity. Yet, measured by the standards of their own time and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple. You discounted a statement, 97 percent. The rest was fact. Now, after making this allowance, the truth remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the doorbell, I mean, hailing the warders, it was the sensible thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also, a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this sign on his tabard. Persimmon's soap! All the prima donna use it. That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of night errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had started a number of these people out, the bravest nights I could get, each sandwiched between bulletin boards bearing one device or another, and I judged that, by and by, when they got to be numerous enough, they would begin to look ridiculous, and then even the steel-clad ass that hadn't any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion. Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the church. I mean, would be a step toward that. Next, education. Next, freedom. And then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any established church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day, in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time, there were old English men who imagined that they had been born in a free country, a free country with the Corporation Act and the tests still enforcing it, timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an established anachronism with. My missionaries were taught to spell out the guilt signs on their tabards. The showy gilding was a neat idea. I could have got the king to wear a bulletin board for the sake of that barbaric splendor. They were to spell out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was, and if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionaries' next move was to get the family together and try it on himself. He was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could convince the nobility that soap was harmless. If any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit. The woods were full of them. Saints, they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody stood in all of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince the duke, give him up, let him alone. Whenever my missionaries overcame a night errant on the road, they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and get a bulletin board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. As a consequence, the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two hands, but before I had left home I was already employing fifteen, and running night and day, and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and Sir Lancelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse up there than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air, and he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies present too, but much these people ever cared for that. They could swear before children if the wind was their way when the factory was going. This missionary night's name was La Cote Maltaille, and he said that his castle was the abode of Morgan Le Fay, sister of King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about as big as the District of Columbia. You could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. Kings and kingdoms were as thick in Britain as they had been in Little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake, yet he had tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit. But the hermit died. This was indeed a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, this poor sir La Cote Maltaille, and sorrowed passing sore. And so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I said, Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have brains, you and I, and for such as have brains there are no defeats but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement, an advertisement for our soap, and the biggest one to draw that was ever thought of, an advertisement that will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhorn victory. We will put on your bulletin board, patronized by the elect. How does that strike you? Verily it is wonderfully be thought. Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad it's a corker. So the poor coal-porters grief vanished away. He was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine which he had once made with a damsel named Maldison, who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a different way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he bade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it. Sandy and I discussed his story as we rode along, and she said that Lakot's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that trip. For the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but Maldison didn't do it, and also persisted afterward in sticking to him after all his defeats. But said I, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil. She said that that wouldn't answer, he must. He couldn't decline, it wouldn't be regular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too burdensome some time, I would let a knight defeat me on the chance that she would desert to him. In due time we were challenged by the warders from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant to tell about that visit, but it was not a disappointment, for I knew Mrs. Le Fay by reputation and was not expecting anything pleasant. She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with cold malice, all her history was black with crime, and among her crimes murder was common. I was most curious to see her, as curious as I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise, she was beautiful. Black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its gloomy freshness. She could have passed for old Urien's granddaughter. She could have been mistaken for a sister to her own son. As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered into her presence. King Urien's was there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued look, and also the son, Sir Urien Le Blanche Amain's, in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on account of his trip with Sir Gawain and Sir Marhouse, which Sandy had been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here. She was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousness, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute or something talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy an undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden slalver, and kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. She slipped a dirk into him, in as matter a fact away as another person would have harpooned a rat. Poor child! He slumped to the floor, twisted his silk and limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the old king was rung an involuntary, oh, of compassion. The look he got made him cut it suddenly short, and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Eway, not a sign from his mother, went to the anti-room and called some servants, and meanwhile, madame, went rippling sweetly along with her talk. I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked, she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no box in handling the body and getting it out. When they came with fresh, clean towels, she sent back for the other kind. And when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that Lakot Maltail had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. Morgan Lafay rippled along as musically as ever, marvelous woman, and what a glance she had. When it fell in reproof upon those servants they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of her cloud. I could have got the habit myself. It was the same with that poor old brayer Urians. He was always on the ragged edge of apprehension. She could not even turn toward him, but he winced. In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up like storm. She called for her guards and said, Hail me these violets to the dungeons! That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say or do, but not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with a tranquilous confidence and said, God's wounds, does thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It is the boss! Now what a happy idea that was, and so simple. Yet it would never have occurred to me. I was born modest, not all over, but in spots. And this was one of the spots. The effect upon Madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and blandishments. But nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said, La, but do list thine handmaid, as if one gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who has vanquished Merlin and not be jesting. By mine enchantments I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly curious to see. The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission. Madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that I was deceived by her excuse, for her fright dissolved away, and she was soon so important to have me give an exhibition and kill somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However to my relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers, I will say this much for the nobility, that tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the piety's enjoined by the church. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat. More than once I had seen a noble after ambushing and dispatching his enemy, retired to the nearest wayside shrine, and humbly give thanks without even waiting to rob the body. There was to be nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Ben Venuto Cellini that rough-hewn saint ten centuries later. All the nobles of Britain with their families attended divine service morning and night daily in their private chapels, and even the worst of them had family worship five or six times a day besides. The credit of this belonged entirely to the church, although I was no friend of that Catholic church I was obliged to admit this, and often in spite of me I found myself saying, What would this country be without the church? After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was lighted by hundreds of grease jets, and everything was as fine and lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the hosts. At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the king, queen, and their son Prince Uain. Stretching down the hall from this was the general table on the floor. At this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their families of both sexes. The resident court, in effect, sixty-one persons. Below the salt sat minor officers of the household with their principal subordinates, altogether a hundred and eighteen persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It was a very fine show. In a gallery, a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as in the sweet by and by. It was new and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged after dinner. After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table set a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion of waiters broke away from their posts and darted, rushed, flew, fetched, and carried, and the mighty feeding began. No words anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops opened and shot in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean machinery. The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast, the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portally and imposing at the start, nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop skirt, and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all the other dishes. With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began, and the talk. Gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous, both sexes, and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrific to hear, but nobody blushed, and when the nub was sprung, the assemblage let go with a horse laugh that shook the fortress. Ladies answered back with his storyettes that would almost have made Queen Margaret of Navarre, or even the great Elizabeth of England, hide behind a handkerchief. But nobody hid here, but only laughed. How old, you may say. In pretty much all of these dreadful stories, ecclesiastics were the hearty heroes, but that didn't worry the chaplain any. He had his laugh with the rest. More than that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as any that was sung that night. By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing, and as a rule drunk. Some weepingly, some affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead, and under the table. Of the ladies the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess whose wedding eve this was, and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough. Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the young daughter of the regent d'Orléans at the famous dinner when she was carried foul-mouthed intoxicated and helpless to her bed in the lost and lamented days of the ancien régime. Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far off-door at the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady leaning upon a crutch-stick, and she lifted the stick and pointed it toward the queen and cried out, The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity, who have slain my innocent grandchild, and made desolate this old heart that had nor chick, nor friend, nor stay, nor comfort in all this world but him. Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an awful thing to those people. But the queen rose up majestic with the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command. Lay hands on her, to the stake with her. The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame. It was a cruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy gave me a look. I knew she had another inspiration. I said, Do what you choose. She was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. She indicated me, and said, Madam, he saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or he will dissolve the castle, and it shall vanish away like the instable fabric of a dream. Confounded what a crazy contract to pledge a person to. What if the queen—but my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off. For the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance, but gave a counter-manding sign, and sunk into her seat. When she reached it, she was sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage rose, whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob, overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, shouldering, crowding—anything to get out before I should change my mind and puff the castle into the measureless, dim vacancies of space. Well, well, well, they were a superstitious lot. It is all a body can do to conceive of it. The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid to hang the composer without first consulting me. I was very sorry for her, indeed, any one would have been, for she was really suffering. So I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I therefore considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the musicians ordered into our presence to play that sweet by-and-by again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gains little by the arbitrary exercise of ironclad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little concession now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy. Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more and measureably happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got a little the start of her. I mean it set her music going, her silver bell of a tongue! Dear me, she was a master-talker! It would not become me to suggest that it was pretty late, and that I was a tired man and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I had the chance. Now I must stick it out. There was no other way. So she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if from deep down under us, a far away sound as of a muffled shriek, with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. The queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure. She tilted her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound bored its way up through the stillness again. What is it, I said? It is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long, it is many hours now. Endureth what? The rack? Come, ye shall see a blithe sight. And he yield not his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder. What a silky smooth hellion she was, and so composed and serene, when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that man's pain. Conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night. A chill uncanny journey, and a long one, and not made the shorter or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymous informer of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. I said, Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, Your Highness. It were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser. I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. But, and I would, I could not, for that the accuser came masked by night and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, and so the forester knoweth him not. Then is this unknown the only person who saw the stag killed? Mary no man saw the killing, but this unknown saw this hardy wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester. And so the unknown was near the dead stag too. Isn't it just possible that he did the killing himself? His loyal zeal, in a mask, looks just a shade suspicious. But what is Your Highness's idea for racking the prisoner? Where is the prophet? He will not confess else. And then were his soul lost. For his crime his life is forfeited by the law, and of surety will I see that he payeth it. But it were peril to my own soul to let him die unconfessed and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling me into hell for his accommodation. But, Your Highness, suppose he has nothing to confess. As to that we shall see anon. And I rack him to death, and he confess not. It will peradventure show that he had indeed not to confess. He will grant that that is sooth. Then shall I not be damned for an unconfessed man that had not to confess. Wherefore I shall be safe. It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified training. They wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land would not have been able to see that her position was defective. As we entered the rack cell, I caught a picture that will not go from me. I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame, on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes, which led over windlesses, at either end. There was no colour in him. His features were contorted and set, and sweat drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over him on each side. The executioner stood by. Guards were on duty. Smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls. In a corner crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes. And in her lap lay a little child asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold, the executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which rung a cry from both the prisoner and the woman. But I shouted, and the executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke. I could not let this horror go on. It would have killed me to see it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak to the prisoner privately. And when she was going to object, I spoke in a low voice and said I did not want to make a scene before her servants, but I must have my way, for I was King Arthur's representative and was speaking in his name. She saw she had to yield. I asked her to endorse me to these people and then leave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill and even went further than I was meaning to require. I only wanted the backing of her own authority, but she said, You will do in all things as this Lord shall command. It is the boss. It was certainly a good word to conjure with. You could see it by the squirming of these rats. The queen's guards fell into line, and she and they marched away with their torch-bearers and woke the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack and placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts and wine given him to drink. The woman crept near and looked on eagerly, lovingly, but timorously, like one who fears a repulse. Indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead and jumped back, the picture of fright, when I turned unconsciously toward her. It was pitiful to see. Lord, I said, Stroke him lass, if you want to. Do anything you remind her, don't mind me. Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's when you do it a kindness that it understands. The baby was out of her way, and she had her cheek against the man's in a minute, and her hands fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. The man revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he could do. I judged I might clear the den now, and I did. Cleared it of all but the family and myself, and then I said, Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter. I know the other side. The man moved his head in a sign of refusal, but the woman looked pleased, as it seemed to me, pleased with my suggestion. I went on. You know of me? Yes, all do in Arthur's realms. If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should not be afraid to speak. The woman broke in eagerly. Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him? Thou canst and wilt? And he suffereth so, and it is for me, for me! And how can I bear it? I would I might see him die, a sweet, swift death. Oh, my Hugo, I cannot bear this one! And she fell to sobbing and groveling about my feet, and still imploring—imploring what, the man's death? I could not quite get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said, Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask? Shall I starve, whom I love? To win a gentle death? I win thou newest me better. Well, said I, I can't quite make this out. It is a puzzle. Now, ah, dear my lord, and ye will but persuade him. Consider how these his tortures wound me. Oh, and he will not speak, whereas the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death. What are you maundering about? He's going out from here a free man and whole. He's not going to die. The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out, He is saved! For it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's servant. Arthur, the king whose word is gold! Well, then you do believe I can be trusted after all. Why didn't you before? Who doubted? Not I, indeed, and not she. Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then? Ye had made no promise. Else had I been otherwise. I see, I see, and yet I believe I don't quite see after all. You stood the torture and refused to confess, which shows plain enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing to confess. Why, my lord, how so? It was I that killed the deer. You did? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed up business that ever. Dear Lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but— You did? It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him to do that for? Sithit would bring him a quick death and save him all this cruel pain. Well, yes, there is reason in that. But he didn't want the quick death. He? Why, of a surety he did. Well, then why in the world didn't he confess? Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter? Oh, heart of gold, now I see it. The bitter law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man, and you, true wife, and the woman that you are, you would have bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death. Well, it humbles a body to think what your sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both for my colony. You'll like it there. It's a factory where I'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men. Well, I arranged all that, and I had the man sent to his home. I had a great desire to rack the executioner, not because he was a good painstaking and pain-giving official, for surely it was not to his discredit that he performed his functions well, but to pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that young woman. The priests told me about this, and were generously hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority of these that were down on the ground among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom frat it about it, and never many minutes at a time. It has never been my way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people reconciled to an established church. We must have a religion, it goes without saying, but my idea is to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad, and an established church is only a political machine. It was invented for that. It is nursed, cradled, preserved for that. It is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. That wasn't law, it wasn't gospel, it was only an opinion, my opinion, and I was only a man, one man. So it wasn't worth any more than the popes, or any less for that matter. Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook the just complaint of the priests. The man must be punished somehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him leader of the band, the new one that was to be started. He begged hard and said he couldn't play. A plausible excuse, but too thin. There wasn't a musician in the country that could. The queen was a good deal outraged next morning when she found she was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But I told her she must bear this cross, that while by law and custom she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the King's name, I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had killed it in sudden passion and not for gain, and he had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't make her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance in the killing of venison or of a person, so I gave it up and let her sulk it out. I did think I was going to make her see it by remarking that her own sudden passion, in the case of the page, modified that crime. Crime, she exclaimed. How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth! Man, I am going to pay for him! Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training. Training is everything. Training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature. It is folly. There is no such thing as nature. What we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own. No opinions of our own. They are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambrick needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by and inherited from a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the atom clan or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me. The rest may land in she all, and welcome for all I care. No, confound her. Her intellect was good. She had brains enough, but her training made her an ass, that is, from a many centuries later point of view. To kill the page was no crime, it was her right. And upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one. Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved a compliment for one thing, and I tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my throat. She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to pay for him. That was law for some other people, but not for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a large and generous thing to pay for that lad, and that I ought in common fairness to come out with something handsome about it, but I couldn't. My mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing in my fancy that poor old grandma with a broken heart and that fair young creature lying butchered his little silken pumps and vanities laced with his golden blood. How could she pay for him? Whom could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman trained as she had been deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not able to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak, and the pity of it was that it was true. Madam, your people will adore you for this. Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived. Some of those laws were too bad altogether too bad. A master might kill his slave for nothing, for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time, just as we have seen that the crowned head could do it with his slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could kill a free commoner and pay for him, cash or garden truck. A noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. Anybody could kill somebody except the commoner and the slave. These had no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't stand murder. It made short work of the experimenter and of his family too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much as a Damien's scratch, which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damien's dose for it just the same. They pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show and crack jokes and have a good time. And some of the performances of the best people present were as tough and as properly unprintable as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his chapter about the dismemberment of Louis the Fifteen's poor awkward enemy. I had had enough of this grisly place by this time and wanted to leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind that my conscience kept prodding me about and wouldn't let me forget. If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person, and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay in the long run. It would be much better to have less good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion. I am only one man. Others, with less experience, may think differently. They have a right to their view. I only stand to this. I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it because we prize anything that is ours, and yet how foolish it was to think so. If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is. If I had an anvil in me, would I prize it? Of course not, and yet when you come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience and an anvil. I mean, for comfort, I have noticed it a thousand times. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids when you couldn't stand it any longer, but there isn't any way that you can work off a conscience, at least so it will stay worked off. Not that I know of, anyway. There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it bothered me all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king. But what would be the use? He was but an extinct volcano. He had been active in his time, but his fire was out. This good while, he was only a stately ash pile now. Gentle enough and kindly enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. He was nothing this so-called king. The queen was the only power there, and she was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. However, I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting the worst, you get something that is not so bad after all. So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal highness. I said I had been having a general jail delivery at Camelot and among neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like to examine her collection, her brick-a-brack, that is to say, her prisoners. She resisted, but I was expecting that. But she finally consented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about ended my discomfort. She called her guards and torches, and we went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castles' foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living rock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of them was a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground and would not answer a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing it might be that was disturbing with sound and light, the meaningless dull dream that was become her life. After that she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave no further sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middle age, apparently, but only apparently. She had been there nine years and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner, and had been sent here, on her bridal night, by Sir Bruce Sansepite, a neighbouring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said Lord, she had refused what has since been called le droit du Seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence, and spilt half a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had interfered at that point, believing the bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and trembling wedding-guests in the parlor, and left him there astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered against both bride and groom. The said lord, being cramped for a dungeon-room, had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals, and here in her Bastille they had been ever since. Hither indeed they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never seen each other since. Here they were kenneled like toads in the same rock. They had passed nine pitch-dark years within fifty feet of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not. All the first years their only question had been asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stones in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones. Is he alive? Is she alive? But they had never got an answer, and at last that question was not asked any more, or any other. I wanted to see the man after hearing all this. He was thirty-four years old and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block of stone with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly over in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again, and took no further notice of us. There were some pathetically suggestive dumb witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles were cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached. But this apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chains ceased to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner. I could not rouse the man, so I said we would take him to her and see to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him once, roses, pearls, and dew made flesh for him. A wonder-work, the master-work of nature, with eyes like no other eyes and voice like no other voice, and a freshness and lie the young grace and beauty that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams, as he thought, and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant blood leaping, the sight of her. But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and looked dimly, wandering into each other's faces a while, with a sort of weak animal curiosity. Then forgot each other's presence, and dropped their eyes. And you saw that they were away again, and wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know nothing about. I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not like it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter, but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breus Sansepite. However, I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it, I would fix him so that he could. I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat holes, and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killed another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the best of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that I left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public well in one of his wretched villages. The queen was bound to hang him for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it. It was no crime to kill an assassin. But I said I was willing to let her hang him for destroying the well. So she concluded to put up with that, as it was better than nothing. Dear me, for what trifling offence is the most of those forty-seven men and women were shut up there? Indeed, some were there for no distinct offence at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite. And not all was the queen's, by any means, but a friend's. The newest prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He said he believed that men were about all like, and one man as good as another, barring clothes. He said he believed that if you were to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel clerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose and sent him to the factory. Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow slit had been pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of these poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallows whole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the arrow slit and see his own home off yonder in the valley, and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache and longing through that crack. He could see the light shine there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and come out, his wife and children, some of them no doubt, though he could not make out at that distance. In the course of years he noted festivities there and tried to rejoice and wondered if they were weddings or what they might be, and he noted funerals, and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin, but he could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was wife or child. He could see the procession form, with priests and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with them. He had left behind him five children and a wife, and in nineteen years he had seen five burials issue, and none of them humble enough in pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost five of his treasures. There must still be one remaining, one now infinitely unspeakably precious, but which one, wife or child? That was the question that tortured him by night and by day, asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest of some sort and a half array of light when you are in a dungeon is a great support to the body and preserver of the intellect. This man was in pretty good condition yet. By the time he had finished telling me his distressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that you would have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity. That is to say, I was as burning up as he was to find out which member of the family it was that was left. So I took him over home myself, and an amazing kind of surprise party it was, too. Typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole niagras of happy tears, and by George we found the four-time young matron graying toward the imminent verge of her half-century, and the babies all men and women, and some of them married and experimenting family-wise themselves, for not a soul of the tribe was dead. Conceive of the ingenious devilishness of that queen, she had a special hatred for this prisoner, and she had invented all those funerals herself, to scorch his heart with, and the sublimus stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving the family invoice a funeral short, so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing. But for me he never would have got out. Morgan Le Fay hated him with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him, and yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she had, but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people are above a certain social grade, their hair is all burn. Consider it, among these forty-seven captives there were five whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer known. One woman and four men, all bent and wrinkled, and mined, extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten these details, at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, nothing definite, and nothing that they repeated twice in the same way. The succession of priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the captives, and remind them that God had put them there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission to oppression was what he loved to see in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor old human ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went but little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years. How much longer this privation has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queen knew nothing about these poor creatures except that they were heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former firm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with their persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no value and had felt no interested them. I said to the queen, Then why in the world didn't you set them free? The question was a puzzler. She didn't know why she hadn't. The thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting the veritable history of future prisoners of the castle deep without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now that, with her training, those inherited prisoners were merely property, nothing more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property it does not occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it. When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world and the glare of the afternoon sun, previously blindfolding them in charity for eyes so long untortured by light, they were a spectacle to look at—skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic frights, every one, legitimatist possible children of monarchy by the grace of God and the established church. I muttered absently. I wish I could photograph them. You've seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She hesitated a moment, then her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she would do it for me. I thought to myself, she? Why? What can she know about photography? But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she was moving on the procession with an ax. Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan Le Fay. I have seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph her procession, but being in doubt, it was just like her to try to do it with an ax. CHAPTER XIX Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early. It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious barrels full of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable old buzzard roost. I mean, for me, of course, the place was all right and agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used to high life all her days. Poor girl, her jaws had had a weary some rest now for a while, and I was expecting to get the consequences. I was right. But she had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses, which were worth more for the occasion than wisdom double their size. So I thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she started it up. Now turn we unto Sir Marhouse, that road with a damsel of thirty winter of age southward. Are you going to see if you can work up another half stretch on the trail of the Cowboys, Sandy? Even so, fair my lord. Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it. Begin over again. Start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and I will load my pipe and give good attention. Now turn we unto Sir Marhouse, that road with a damsel of thirty winter of age southward, and so they came into a deep forest, and by fortune they were knighted, and rode along in a deep way, and at the last they came into a courtelage, where abode the Duke of South Marshes, and there they asked Harbour. And on the morning the Duke sent unto Sir Marhouse, and bade him make him ready, and so Sir Marhouse arose and armed him, and there was a mass-songer for him, and he break his fast, and so mounted on horseback in the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. So there was the Duke already on horseback, clean, armed, and his six sons by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they encountered, whereas the Duke and his two sons break their spears upon him, but Sir Marhouse held up his spear and touched none of them. Then came the four sons by couples, and two of them break their spears, and so did the other two, and all this while Sir Marhouse touched them not. Then Sir Marhouse ran to the Duke, and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth, and so he served his sons, and then Sir Marhouse alight down, and bade the Duke yield him, or else he would slay him. And then some of his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhouse. Then Sir Marhouse said to the Duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will do the uttermost to you all. When the Duke saw he might not escape the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them to Sir Marhouse, and they kneeled all down and put the pommels of their swords to the knight, and so he received them. And then they hope up their father, and so by their common assent promised unto Sir Marhouse, never to be foes unto King Arthur, and thereupon at Whitsentide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in the king's grace. Footnote! The story is borrowed, language and all, from the mort d'arture. M.T. Even so stand at the history fair, Sir Boss. Now you shall wit that that very Duke and his six sons are they whom but few days past you also did overcome, and send to Arthur's court. Why, Sandy, you can't mean it, and I speak not so, let it be the worst for me. Well, well, well, now who would ever have thought it? One whole Duke and six Dukelets. Why, Sandy, it was an elegant hall. Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the Knight-errantry line. Now, what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. You're rich, yes, suddenly rich. For about a day, maybe a week. Then somebody corners the market on you, and down goes your bucket-shop. Ain't that so, Sandy? Whether so ever it be that my mind, Miss Caryth, beraying simple language in such sort that the words do seem to come end-long and overthwart. There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around it that way, Sandy. It's so, just as I say. I know it's so. And, moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, Knight-errantry is worse than pork. For whatever happens, the pork's left, and so somebody's benefit anyway. But when the market breaks in a Knight-errantry world, and every night in the pool passes in his checks, what have you got for assets? Just a rubbish pile of battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can you call those assets? Give me pork every time. Am I right? Ah, per adventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters, whereon to the confusions of these but late-adventured haps, and fortunes whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us, me, Seamoth—no, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far as it goes. But you don't know business. That's where the trouble is. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong to be always trying. However, that aside, it was a good haul, anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's court. And, speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this is for women and men that never get old. Now there's Morgan Lafay, as fresh and young as a vassar-pullet, to all appearances, and here is this old Duke of the South Marches still slashing away with sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family as he has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawain killed seven of his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhouse and me to take into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winter of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom. How old are you, Sandy? It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her. The mill had shut down for repairs, or something. Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse-carrying triple, man, woman, and armor. Then we stopped for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook. Right so came by and by a knight riding, and as he drew near, he made dolerous moan, and by the words of it I perceived that he was cursing and swearing, yet nevertheless was I glad of his coming. For that I saw he bore a bulletin board, whereon in letters all of shining gold was writ, use Peterson's prophylactic toothbrush, all the go. I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for night of mine. It was Sir Mattock de la Montaigne, a burly great fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace of sending Sir Lancelot down over his horsetail once. He was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld when asked. That was that the reason he didn't quite succeed was that he was interrupted and sent down over horsetail himself. This innocent, vast lover did not see any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was so fine to look at, with his broad, mailed shoulders, and the grand Leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic toothbrush with Matto, try no you don't. This was a tooth-wash that I was introducing. He was a weary, he said, and indeed he looked it, but he would not alight. He said he was after the stove-polished man, and with this he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The both border referred to as Sir Oseis of Sir Luce, a brave knight, and of considerable celebrity, on account of his having tried conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a mogul than Sir Gaharis himself, although not successfully. He was of a light and laughing disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polished sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing serious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do was to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in pre-delictions toward neatness against the time when the stove should appear upon the stage. Sir Maddock was very bitter, and break out anew with cursings. He said he had cursed his soul to rags, and yet he would not get down from his horse. Neither would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until he should have found Sir Oseis and settled this account. It appeared by what I could piece together of the unprofane fragments of his statement that he had chanced upon Sir Oseis at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he could head off a company of travellers who would be rare customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With characteristic zeal, Sir Maddock had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful cross-lot riding had overhauled his game, and behold it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the dungeons the evening before. Poor old creatures! It was all of twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth. Blank, blank, blank him, said Sir Maddock, and I do not stove polish him, and I may find him, leave it to me, for never no knight that hights Oseis, or on else may do me this disservice, and bide on live, and I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a great oath this day. And with these words and others he lightly took his spear and got him fence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon one of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. He was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not seen for fifty years, and about him and caressing him were also descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now. But to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind was stagnant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast half a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old wife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could remember him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hand and went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castle could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense. But this old wife knew, and so did her old child, who stood there among her married sons and daughters, trying to realize a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set before her face. It was a curious situation. Yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious, to it that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation indeed of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb, uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead, when you can say that of a man he has struck bottom, I reckon. There is no lower deep for him. I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the unget aroundable fact that all gentle Kent and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion. It being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed then was a reign of terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them. Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement and feverish expectancy. She said we were approaching the Ogre's Castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind. This sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's excitement increased every moment, and so did mine, for that sort of thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reason with your heart. It has its own laws and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse, motioned me to stop and went creeping stealthily, with her head bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker, and they kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse over the declivity, and also while I was creeping to her side on my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her finger, and said in a panting whisper, The castle! The castle! Now where it looms! What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said, Castle! It is nothing but a pigsty! A pigsty with a waddled fence around it! She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out of her face, and during many moments she was lost in thought and silent. Then it was not enchanted a foretime, she said in amusing fashion, as if to herself. And how strange is this marvel! And how awful! That to the one perception it is enchanted, and died in a base and shameful aspect! Yet to the perception of the other it is not enchanted. Suffered no change, but stands firm and stately still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air from its towers. And God shield us how it pricks the heart to see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces. We have tarried along and are to blame. I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to me, not to her. It would be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion. It couldn't be done. I must just humor it. So I said, This is a common case, the enchanting of a thing, to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of it before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. And hazardous too! For in attempting a disenchantment without the true key, you are liable to air, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, and the cats into rats, and so on. And then, by reducing your materials to nothing, finally, or to an odorless gas, which you can't follow, which of course amounts to the same thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to everybody else. And at the same time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is a lady, that is enough for me. I know how to treat her. Thanks! Oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel, and I know that thou will deliver them, for that thou art minded to great deeds, and art as strong a knight of your hands, and as brave to will and to do as any that is on live. I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three yonder that, to my disordered eyes, are starvelling swineherds? The ogres, are they changed also? It is most wonderful, now I am fearful. For how can't thou strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature are to three invisible? Ah, go wherely, fair sir, this is a mightier emprise than I wend. You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is how much of an ogre is invisible. Then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you be afraid, I will make short work of this bunco-steerer. Stay where you are. I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced, but plucky and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the swineherds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. I was just in time, for the church, the lord of the manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along next day, and swept off pretty much all of the stock, leaving the swineherds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But now the tax-people could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children, and he said that last year, when a priest came and of his ten pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him and offered him a child, and said, Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet rob me of the wayer with all to feed it? How curious! The same thing had happened in the wails of my day under this same old established church, which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise. I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and Beck and Sandy to come, which she did, and not leisurely, but with the rush of a prairie fire. When I saw her fling herself upon those hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strained them to her heart, and kissed them, and caressed them, and called them reverently by grand, princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race. We had to drive those hogs home ten miles, and no ladies were ever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road, no path. They broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all directions, over rocks and hills, and the roughest places they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughly accosted. Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. The troublesomeest old sow of the lot had to be called my lady, and your highness like the rest. It is annoying and difficult to scour round after hogs in armor. There was one small countess, with an iron ring in her snout, and hardly any hair on her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a race of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where we had started, from having made not a rod of real progress. I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along, squealing. When I overtook Sandy, she was horrified, and said it was in the last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train. We got the hogs home just at dark, most of them. The princess Neravens de Morgannor was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting, namely Miss Angela Bohun, and the demoiselle Elaine de Courtmanes, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side, a couple of the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also among the missing were several mere baronesses, and I wanted them to stay missing, but no, all that sausage meat had to be found, so servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills to that end. Of course the whole drove was housed in the house, and great guns, while I never saw anything like it, nor ever heard anything like it, and never smelt anything like it. It was like an insurrection in a gasometer. CHAPTER XXI When I did get to bed, at last I was unspeakably tired. The stretching out and the relaxing of the long, tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! But that was as far as I could get. Sleep was out of the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake my thoughts were busy, of course, and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom could produce, and yet, from my point of view, she was acting like a crazy woman. I land the power of training, of influence, of education. It can bring a body up to believe anything. I had to put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not a lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine to demonstrate how easy it is to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have been taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon uninfluenced by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour, had seen a man unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of sight among the clouds, and had listened without any necromancer's help to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles away, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in enchantments. Nobody had any doubts, to doubt that a castle could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs would have been the same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actuality of the telephone and its wonders, and in both cases would be absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy was sane, that must be admitted. If I also would be sane to Sandy, I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones to myself. Also I believe that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that occupied all space above. But as I was the only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too. If I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody as a madman. The next morning Sandy assembled a swine in the dining-room and gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. I could have eaten with the hogs if I had birth approaching my lofty official rank, but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at the second table. The family were not at home. I said, How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves? Family? Yes. Which family, good my lord? Why, this family, your own family. Seuss to say I understand you not. I have no family. No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home? Now, how indeed might that be? I have no home. Well, then, whose home is this? Ah, whichy well I would tell you, and I knew myself. Come, you don't even know these people? Then, who invited us here? Not invited us. We but came. That is all. Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The effrontery of it is beyond admiration. Sandy blandly marched into a man's house and cram it full of the only really invaluable nobility the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever venture to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was your home. What will the man say? What will he say? For Seuss, what can he say but give thanks? Thanks for what? Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise. Verily, now troubles my understanding with strange words. Do you dream that one of his estate is like to have them honor twice in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to Grace's house with all? Well, no, when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that this is the first time he has had a treat like this. Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech and due humility. He were a dog else in the air and ancestor of dogs. To my mind the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so. It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said, the day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together and be moving. Wherefore, fair sir and boss, we want to take them to their home, don't we? La! but list to him. They be of all the regions of the earth. Each must hide to her own home. When, you, we might do all these journeys in one so brief life as he had appointed that created life, and there to death likewise with help of Adam, who, by sin done through persuasion of his help, meet she being wrought upon the beat raid by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that serpent-height Satan, a four-time consecrated and set apart unto that evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew and nature earth so white and pure, when so it hove with the shining multitudes its brethren born in glade and shade of that fair heaven, wherein all such as native be to that rich estate and great scot. My lord? Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't you see we could distribute these people around the earth in less time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. We mustn't talk now. We must act. You want to be careful. You mustn't let your mill get the start of you that way at a time like this. To business now, and sharps the word. Who is to take the aristocracy home? Even their friends. These will come for them from the far parts of the earth. This was lightning from a clear sky for unexpectedness, and the relief of it was like parting to a prisoner. She would remain to deliver the goods, of course. Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully ended, I will go home and report, and if ever another one I also am ready, I will go with thee. This was recalling the pardon. How? How will you go with me? Why should you? Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonour. I may not part from thee until in nightly encounter in the field some over-matching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were to blame and I thought that that might ever happen. Elected for the long term, I sighed to myself, I may as well make the best of it. So then I spoke up and said, All right, let us make a start. While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that whole peerage away to the servants, and I asked them to take a duster and duster round a little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and promenaded, but they considered that that would be hardly worthwhile and would moreover be a rather grave departure from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. The departure from custom, that settled it. It was a nation capable of committing any crime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance. They would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. It was a kind of satire on nature. It was the scientific method, the geologic method. It deposited the history of the family in a stratified record, and the antiquary could dig through it and tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family had introduced successively for a hundred years. The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless, for it was hourly being borne in upon me now that if I would govern this country wisely I must be posted in the details of its life and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny. This company of pilgrims resembled chossers in this, that it had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. There were young men and old men, young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, and there was not a side saddle in the party, for this specialty was to remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet. It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd, pious, happy, merry, and full of unconscious coarseness and innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of the English wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled the lightedest applause. And sometimes, when a bright remark was made at one end of the procession, and started on its travels toward the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of laughter it threw off from its boughs as it plowed along, and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake. Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted me. She said, They journey to the valley of holiness, for to be blessed of the godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansed from sin. Where is this watering place? It lieth a two-day journey hence by the borders of the land that hight the Cuckoo Kingdom. Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place? Oh, of truth, yes! There be none more so. Of all time there lived there an abbot and his monks. Be like were none in the world more holy than these, for they gave themselves to study of pious books, and spoke not the one to the other or indeed to any, and ate decayed herbs and not thereto, and slept hard and prayed much and washed never. Although they wore the same garment until it fell from their bodies through age and decay, right so came they to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities and visited by rich and poor and reverenced. Proceed. But always there was lack of water there, whereas upon a time the holy abbot prayed and for answer a great stream of clear water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the fickle monks tempted of the fiend, they wrought with their abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings, that he would construct a bath. And when he was become a weary and might not resist more, he said, Have ye your will then, and granted that they ask. Now mark thou what is to forsake the ways of purity the which he loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as white as snow, and lo, in that moment his sign appeared in miraculous rebuke, for his insulted water ceased to flow and utterly vanished away. They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crime is regarded in this country. Be like, but it was their first sin, and they had been of perfect life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers, tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water to flow again, even processions, even burnt offerings, even votive candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them, and all in the land did marvel. How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, and at times sees its asignets and greenbacks languish to zero, and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy. And so upon a time after year and day the good abbot made humble surrender and destroyed the bath, and behold, his anger was in that moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure. Then I take it nobody has washed since. He that would say it could have his halter free, yes, and swiftly would he need it too. The community has prospered since. Even from that very day the fame of the miracle went abroad into all lands. From every land came monks to join. They came even as the fishes come in shoals, and the monastery added building to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms and took them in. And nuns came also, and more again, and yet more, and built over against the monastery on the on side of the veil, and added building to building until mighty was that nunnery. And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving labours together, and together they built a fair and great foundling asylum midway of the valley between. You spoke of some hermit, Sandy. These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermit strives best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. He shall not find no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit of a kind he thinketh new, and not to be found, but in some far strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and swamps that line that valley of holiness, and whatsoever be his breed it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there. I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat, good-humoured face, proposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some further crumbs of fact, but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintance with him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the immemorial way, to that same old anecdote, the one Sir Dinadun told me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagamore, and was challenged of him on account of it. I excused myself, and dropped to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence from this troubled life, this veil of tears, this brief day of broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle in monotonous defeat, and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote. Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims, but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy giddiness whether of youth or age. Yet both were here, both age and youth, grey old men and women, strong men and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children were smileless. There was not a face among all these half-a-hundred people, but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness, which is bread of long and hard trials, and old acquaintance with despair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled hands to a sole leather belt about their waists. And all except the children were also linked together in a file six feet apart by a single chain which led from collar to collar all down the line. They were on foot, and had trapped three hundred miles in eighteen days upon the cheapest odds and ends of food and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these change every night, bundled together like swine. They had upon their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be closed. Their irons had shaped the skin from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet were torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a hundred of these unfortunates, but about a half had been sold on the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut the shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain and straightened them up. He did not speak. The whip conveyed his desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as we rode along by. They showed no consciousness of our presence, and they made no sound but one. That was the dull and awful clank of their chains from end to end of the long file as forty-three burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloud of its own making. All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seen the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and has written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was reminded of this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, young mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their faces, plain to see, and Lord, how plain to read! Or it was the track of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, and it hurt me to the heart to read that writing and reflect that it was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of life. And no doubt, she reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash and flicked a flaker skin from her naked shoulder. It stung me as if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file and jumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl and said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg and cry and implore in a passion of terror, but the master gave no attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made the men slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on the ground and hold her there and expose her body. And then he laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she shrieking and struggling the while pitiously. One of the men who was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was reviled and flogged. All our pilgrims looked on and commented on the expert way in which the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelong everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slavery could do in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior lobe of human feeling, for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that. I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that would not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a name for riding over the country's laws and the citizens' rights' roughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death of slavery, that I was resolved upon. But I would try to fix it, so that when I became its executioner it should be by command of the nation. Just here was the wayside shop of a smith, and now arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable here where her irons could be taken off. They were removed, then there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to which should pay the black smith. The moment the girl was delivered from her iron she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbing, into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she was whipped. He strained her to his breath, and smothered her face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain of his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right. It was husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force. The girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight, and even after that we could still make out the fading plate of those receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life? Well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away. But I knew I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there it is to this day to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it. We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was where, where a night came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him for night of mine, Sir Osana LaCure Hardy. He was in the gentleman's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was plug hats. He was clothed all in steel in the beautifulest armor of the time, up to where his helmet ought to have been. But he hadn't any helmet. He wore a shiny stovepipe hat, and was ridiculous a spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of my superstitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it grotesque and absurd. Sir Osana Saddle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight, he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug, and made him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Osana and get his news. How is trade, I asked. You will note that I have but these four left. Yet were they sixteen when as I got me from Camelot? Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Osana. Where have you been foraging of late? I am, but now come from the valley of holiness, please you, sir. I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring in the monkry more than common? By the mass ye may not question it. Give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, and thou values thy crown. So get ye lightly to the stable and do even as I bid. Sir, it is parlous news I bring. And, be these pilgrims, then ye may not do better, good folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell. Sith, it concerneth you, for as much as ye go to find that ye will not find, and seek that ye will seek in vain my life being hostage for my word, and my word and message being these, namely, that hap has happened, whereof the like has not been seen no more but once this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that that said misfortune shriek the holy valley in that form by commandment of the most high, where to by reasons just and causes there unto contributing wherein the matter, the miraculous font, hath ceased to flow. This shout burst from twenty pilgrim mouths at once. Ye say, well, good people, I was verging to it even when ye spake. Has somebody been washing again? Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to be some other sin, but none with what? How are they feeling about the calamity? None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry, the prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions none of these have ceased, nor night nor day, and so the monks and the nuns, and the fountlings be all exhausted and do hang up prayers rid upon parchment, since that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And last they sent for thee, sir boss, to try magic and enchantment, and if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin, and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that water, though he burst the globe, and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish it, and wright bravely doth he work his magic, and call upon his helions to hide them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon a copper mirror, and ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt sun and sun over the dire labours of his task, and if ye, breakfast was ready, as soon as it was over I showed to sir Osana these words which I had written on the inside of his hat, chemical department, laboratory extension, section G, PXXP, send two of first size, two of number three, and six of number four, together with the proper complementary details, and two of my trained assistants, and I said, Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and show the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these required matters in the valley of holiness with all possible dispatch. I will well, sir boss, and he was off. CHAPTER XXII The pilgrims were human beings, otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist. They didn't do as horses or cats or angle worms would probably have done, turn back and get at something profitable. No! Anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings. We made good time, and a couple of hours before sunset we stood upon the high confines of the valley of holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its features, that is, its large features. These were the three masses of buildings. They were distant and isolated temporalities, shrunken to toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert and was. Such a scene is always mournful. It is so impressively still and looks so steeped in death. But there was a sound here which interrupted the stillness only to add to its mournfulness. This was the faint far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits. We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. The bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote upon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despair possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his ghastly face. Everywhere these black-robed, soft-sandled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny. The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic, even to tears. But he did the shedding himself. He said, "'Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work, and we bring not the water back again, and soon we are ruined, and the good work of two hundred years must end, and see thou do it with enchantments that be holy, for the church will not endure that work in her cause be done by devil's magic. When I work, father, be sure there will be no devil's work connected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil, and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlin working strictly on pious lines? Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath to make his promise good. Well, in that case let him proceed. But surely you will not sit idle by but help. I will not answer to mixed methods, father. Neither would it be professional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid each other. We might as well cut rates and be done with it. It would arrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract. No other magician can touch it till he throws it up. But I will take it from him. It is a terrible emergency, and the act is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will give law to the church? The church giveth law to all, and what she wills to do that she may do hurt whom it may. I will take it from him. You shall begin upon the moment. It may not be, father. No doubt as you say, where power is supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury. But we poor magicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magician, in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. He is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it. The abbot's face lighted. Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade him to abandon it. No, no, father. It skills not, as these people say. If he were persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret. It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment of mine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out its secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block me for a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this? A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have it thy way, my son, but my heart is heavy with this disappointment. Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign of repose where inwardly is none. Of course it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to wave etiquette and quit, and call it half a day, since he would never be able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time, which is to say the big miracles, the ones that gave him his reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but Merlin was present. He couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see. A crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine. There was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself, and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, and that would take two or three days. My presence gave the monks hope and cheered them up a good deal, in so much that they ate a square meal that night for the first time in ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced with food, their spirits began to rise fast. When the mead began to go around, they rose faster. By the time everybody was half seas over, the Holy Community was in good shape to make a night of it, so we stayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters got to be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that made the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide, and the round bellies shake with laughter, and questionable songs were bellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells. At last I ventured a story myself, and vast was the success of it, not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous thing. But the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places. The eighth time I told it, they began to crumble. At the twelfth repetition they fell apart in chunks, and at the fifteenth they disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This language is figurative. Those islanders, well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast. I was at the well next day, be times. Merlin was there enchanting away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not in a pleasant humor, and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract was a shade too hefty for a novice, he unlimbered his tongue and cursed like a bishop, French bishop of the Regency days, I mean. Matters were about as I expected to find them. The fountain was an ordinary well. It had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie that had created its reputation was not miraculous. I could have told it myself with one hand tied behind me. The well was in a dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut stone chapel, whose walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would have made a chromophile good, pictures historically commemorative of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels. They are always on deck when there is a miracle to the fore. So is to get put in the picture perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company. Look at the old masters. The well chamber was dimly lighted by lamps. The water was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel, when there was water to draw, I mean. And none but monks could enter the well chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantation. He never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used his eyes instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in the customary way. But no, he was an old numbskull, a magician who believed in his own magic, and no magician can thrive who was handicapped with a superstition like that. I had an idea that the well had sprung leak, that some of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen, and exposed fishers that allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain, ninety-eight feet. Then I called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion. A considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing a good big fisher. I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was correct, because I had another one that had a showy point or two about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America many centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most nobly by having a person of no special value drop a dynamite bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment anyway. He ought to make up his mind to get even. That is what I did, I said to myself. I am in no hurry. I can wait. That bomb will come good yet. And it did, too. When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks and let down a fish-line. The well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked, How deep is the well? That, sir, I wit not, having never been told. How does the water usually stand in it? Near to the top these two centuries as the testimony goeth brought down to us through our predecessors. It was true, as to recent times at least, for there was witness to it, and better witness than a monk. Only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showed wear and use. The rest of it was unworn and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow again. The leak had be fallen again now, and these children would have prayed and processioned and told their bells for a heavenly sucker till they all dried up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical form and feature, and for a man in those days to have had an idea that his ancestors hadn't had would have brought him under suspicion of being illegitimate. I said to the monk, It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we will try if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the parlor magic line, and he may not succeed, in fact, is not likely to succeed, but that should be nothing to his discredit. The man that can do this kind of miracle knows enough to keep hotel. Hotel? I mind not to have heard of hotel. It's what you call hostile. The man that can do this miracle can keep hostile. I can do this miracle. I shall do this miracle, yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occult powers to the last strain. None knows that truth is better than the brotherhood indeed, for it is of record that a foretime it was parlous difficult and took a year. Nathan, God sends you good success, and to that end will we pray. As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up with the difficulty of this enterprise. He would fill up the others. In two days the solicitude would be booming. On my way home at noon I met Sandy. She had been sampling the hermits. I said, I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there a matinee? Which please, you sir? Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons? Who? The hermits, of course. Keep open? Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon? Knock off? Knock off? Yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off? I never saw such a dunderhead. Can't you understand anything at all? In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires. Shut up shop, draw? There, never mind. Let it go. You make me tired. You can't seem to understand the simplest thing. I would. I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow that I fail, albeit since I am but a simple damsel and thought of none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning that do anoint with of sovereignty him that partaketh of that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverent state to the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that great consecration, seeeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol of that other sort of lack and loss, which men do publish to the pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief do lie be powdered and be strewn, and so when such shall in the darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery these shut up shops and draw the game and bank the fires, it is but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that can beget and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow sounding miracles of speech, and if there do and sooth confusion in that humbler mind and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true, which ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, and ye had noted this complexion of mood and mind and understood that I would I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might nor could, nor might not nor could not, might be by advantage turned to the desired would, and so I pray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good my master and most dear lord." I couldn't make it all out, that is, the details, but I got the general idea, and enough of it too to be ashamed. It was not fair to spring those nineteenth-century technicalities upon the untutored infant of the sixth, and then rail at her because she couldn't get their drift, and when she was making the honest best drive at it she could too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't fetch the home plate, and so I apologized. Then we meandered pleasantly away toward the hermit-holes in sociable converse together, and better friends than ever. I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl. Nowadays, whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the mother of the German language. I was so impressed with this that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence and stood uncovered, and if words had been water I had been drowned sure. She had exactly the German way. Whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark or a sermon or a psychopedia or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth. We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister him unmolested. It was another's to lean against a rock all day long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims, and pray. It was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours. It was another's to drag about with him year in and year out eighty pounds of iron. It was another's to never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrims around to look. A woman who had the white hair of age and no other apparel was black from crown to heel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects lost in reverent wonder and envious of the fleckless sanctity which these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven. By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was a mighty celebrity. His fame had penetrated all Christendom. The noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part of the valley, and it took all that space to hold his crowds. His stand was a pillar sixty feet high with a broad platform on top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day for twenty years up there, bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a stopwatch, and he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four revolutions in twenty-four minutes and forty-six seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement. So I made a note in my memorandum book, proposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme and got five years' good service out of him, in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first rate to linen shirts, which was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all. He was going Sundays, the same as weekdays, and it was no use to waste the power. These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the materials. I furnished those myself. It would not have been right to make him do that. And they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar-and-a-half a piece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded race-horse in Arthurdome. They were regarded as a perfect protection against sin and advertised as such by my knights everywhere, with a paint-pot and stencil-plate, and so much that there was not a cliff or boulder or a dead wall in England, but you could read on it at a mile distance, by the only genuine St. Stylite patronized by the nobility Patent applied for. There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. As it extended I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings, and a knobby thing for duchesses, and that sort, with ruffles down the forehatch, and the running gear clued up with a feather stitch to the lured, and then hauled aft with a backstay, and triced up with a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets. Yes, it was a daisy. But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to standing on one leg. I found that there was something to matter with the other one, so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking Sir Bors to Gannis into camp financially along with certain of his friends, for the work stopped within a year, and the good saint got him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him. When I saw him that first time, however, his personal condition will not quite bear description here. You can read it in the Lives of the Saints. NOTE! All the details concerning the Hermits in this chapter are from Lecky, but greatly modified. This book not being a history, but only a tale. The majority of the historian's frank details were too strong for reproduction in it. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, Chapter 23 Restoration of the Fountain Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin was still burning smoke-powders and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down hearted for, of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. Finally I said, How does the thing promise by this time, partner? Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands of the east, and it fail me, not can avail. Peace, until I finish! He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for the Hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting and about exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously for results. Merlin said, If any laborer of mortal might break the spell that binds these waters, this which I have but just assayed had done it, it has failed. Whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is a truth established. The sign of this failure is that the most potent spirit known to the magicians of the east, and whose name none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. The mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. The water will flow no more for ever, good father. I have done what man could. Suffer me to go. Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of consternation. He turned to me with the signs of it in his face and said, Ye have heard him. Is it true? Part of it is. Not all, then? Not all? What part is true? That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spell upon the well. God's wounds, then, are we ruined? Possibly. But not certainly? Ye mean not certainly? That is it. Wherefore ye also mean that when he says none can break the spell, yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true. There are conditions under which an effort to break it may have some chance, that is, some small, some trifling chance of success. The conditions? Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these. I want the well and the surroundings for the space of half a mile entirely to myself, from sunset to day, until I remove the ban, and nobody allowed to cross the ground but by my authority. Are these all? Yes. And you have no fear to try? Oh, none. One may fail, of course, and one may also succeed. One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions. These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandment to that effect. Wait! said Merlin with an evil smile. Ye wit that he that would break this spell must know that spirit's name? Yes, I know his name. And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye must likewise pronounce it? Knew ye that? Yes, I knew that, too. You had that knowledge. Art of fool! Are ye minded to utter that name and die? Utter it? Why, certainly. I would utter it if it was Welch. Ye are even a dead man, then, and I go to tell Arthur. That's all right, take your grip-stack and get along. The thing for you to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin. It was a home-shot, and it made him wince, for he was the worst weather failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the danger signals along the coast there was a weak's dead calm, sure, and every time he prophesied that fair weather it rained brick backs. But I kept him in the weather bureau right along to undermine his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain and enjoy it. My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had travelled double tides. They had packed meals along, and had brought everything I needed-tools, pump, lead pipe, Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, Roman candles, coloured fire sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries- everything necessary for the statelyest kind of a miracle. They got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed the required conditions. We took possession of the well and its surroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shaped fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed. Before the noon mass was over we were at the well again, for there was a deal to do yet, and I was determined to spring the miracle before midnight for business reasons, for whereas a miracle worked for the church on a weak day is worth a good deal, it is worth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine hours the water had risen to its customary level, that is to say it was within twenty-three feet of the top. We put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital. We bore it into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the well chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long enough to reach the door of the chapel and project beyond the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at the proper time. We knocked the head out of an empty hog's head and hoisted this hog's head to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hog's head as thick as they would loosely stand all the different breeds of rockets there are, and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the roof, blue on one corner, green on another, red on another and purple on the last, and grounded a wire in each. About two hundred yards off in the flat we built a pan of scantlings about four feet high and laid planks on it and so made a platform. We covered it with swelled tapestries borrowed for the occasion and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count. You want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye. You want to make matters comfortable for your head guest. Then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of these things or I know human nature. You can't throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble and work and sometimes money, but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires to the ground at the chapel and then brought them under the ground to the platform and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common multitude and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open at ten thirty, performance to begin at eleven twenty-five sharp. I wished I could charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as ten before anybody was around and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time and make the fur fly. Then we went home to supper. The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was become one huge camp. We should have a good house, no question about that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening and announced the coming attempt which put every pulse up to fever heat. They gave notice that the Abbott and his official suite would move in state and occupy the platform at ten thirty, up to which time all the region which was under my band must be clear. The bells would then cease from tolling and this sign should be permission to the multitudes to close in and take their places. I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the Abbott's solemn procession hove in sight, which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence because it was a starless black night and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin and took a front seat on the platform. He was as good as his word for once. One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the band, but they were there just the same. The moment the bells stopped those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast black wave and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow and then it solidified itself and you could have walked upon a pavement of human heads to, well, miles. We had a solemn stage wait now for about twenty minutes, a thing I had counted on for effect. It is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence a noble Latin chant, men's voices, broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad for two minutes, with my face uplifted. That always produces a dead hush, and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble and many women to faint. Constantinople, the tannish, your doodle sacks for Fife and Marker's Giselshaft! Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word I touched off one of my electric connections, and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare. It was immense that effect. Lots of people shrieked. Women curled up and quit in every direction. Foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly, and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns. He had never seen anything to begin with that before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted my hands and groaned out this word as it were in agony. A helist and dynamite theater, shikes and spankens, astendens versigungen, and turned on the red fire. You should have heard that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue. After sixty seconds I shouted, Transfall, troopen, troopen, transport, trample, theater, Ebertongans, stride and tragedy, and lit up the green fire. After waiting only forty seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of words. Mechamousse, man and mass and men can murder more and meeter more, more moony you meant to maher. And whirled on the purple glare. There they were, all going at once red, blue, green, purple. Four furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and ready, so I said to the Abbot, The time is come, father! I am about to pronounce the dread name and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up and take hold of something. Then I shouted to the people, Behold! In another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. If it break all will know it, for you will see the sacred water gush from the chapel door. I stood a few moments to let the hearers have a chance to spread my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks. Then I made a grand exhibition of extra posturing and gesturing, and shouted, Lo! I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread name I command it. Then I touched off the hog's head of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith, with a hissing rush and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels. One mighty groan of terror started up from the masked people, then suddenly broke into a wild hosanna of joy, for there, fair and plain, in the uncanny glare they saw the freed water leaping forth. The old abbot could not speak a word for tears and the choking in his throat. Without utterance of any sort he folded me in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech, and harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel. You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down in that water and kiss it, kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was long gone away and lost and was come home again. Yes, it was pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before. I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down like a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had never come to since. He never had heard that name before, neither had I, but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would have been the right one. He admitted afterward that the spirit's own mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did. He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tell him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it. But he didn't arrive. When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind of a superior being. And I was. I was aware of that. I took along a night shift of monks and taught them the mystery of the pump, and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the people out there were going to sit up with the water all night. Consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle itself, and they were full of wonder over it, and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance. It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it. I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it. My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious now. It seemed worthwhile to try to turn it to some valuable account. The thought came to me the next morning and was suggested by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two centuries before had been worldly-minded enough to want to wash. It might be that there was eleven of this unrighteousness still remaining. So I sounded a brother, wouldn't you like a bath? He shuddered at the thought, the thought of the peril of it to the well, but he said with feeling, One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that blessed refreshment, sith, that he was a boy. Would God I might wash me? But it may not be fair, sir. Tempt me not. It is forbidden. And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this brother. He blanched at the idea. I don't mean that you could see him blench, or of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench was there just the same, and within a book's cover's thickness of the surface, too, blenched and trembled. He said, Ah, son, ask or else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted out of a grateful heart, but this, oh, this, would you drive away the blessed water again? No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge which teaches me that there was an error that other time when it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain. A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. My knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite another sort of sin. These are brave words, but, ah, but right welcome if they be true. They are true indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father. Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever. You promise this? You promise this? Say the word, say you promise it? I do promise it. Then will I have the first bath myself! Go, get ye to your work! Tarry not, tarry not, but go! I and my boys were at work straight off. The ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing. They'd been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear as things accursed. In two days we had it all done, and the water in—a spacious pool of clear, pure water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too. It came in and went out through the ancient pipes. The old abbot kept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down black and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and worried and full of boatings. But he came back white and joyful, and the game was made. Another triumph scored. It was a good campaign that we made in that valley of holiness, and I was very well satisfied and ready to move on now, but I struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. Of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This was the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me—what time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace. When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But everybody was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward health and strength again. So I gained fast. Sandy was worn out with nursing, so I made up my mind to turn out and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up. My idea was to disguise myself as a free man of peasant degree and wander through the country a week or two on foot. This would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest class of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation of the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman there would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out from their private joys and troubles, and I would get no further than the outside shell. One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley when I came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low precipice and recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had lately been offered a situation in the great Sahara where lions and sandflies made the hermit life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its reputation. My surprise was great! The place was newly swept and scoured. Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavern I heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation. Hello, Central! Is this you, Camelot? Behold, thou mayst clad thy heart, and thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that cometh in the unexpected guise, and maketh itself manifest in impossible places. Here standeth in the flesh his mightiness the boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak. Now what a radical reversal of things this was! What a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities! What a fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables! The home of the bogus miracle become the home of a real one. The den of a medieval hermit turned into a telephone office. The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized one of my young fellows. I said, How long has this office been established here, Uphius? But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, and it please you, we saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that where so many lights be, needs must they indicate a town of goodly size. Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's a good stand anyway. Do you know where you are? Of that I have had no time to make inquiry, for when as my comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, I got me into needed rest proposing to inquire when I waked, and report the place's name to Camelot for record. Well, this is the valley of holiness. It didn't take. I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I had supposed he would. He merely said, I will so report it. Why, the surrounding regions are filled with a noise of late wonders that have happened here. You didn't hear of them? Ah, ye will remember we moved by night, and avoid speech with all. We learn not but that we get by the telephone from Camelot. Why, they know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain? Oh, that! Indeed, yes. But the name of this valley doth woundily differ from the name of that one. Indeed, to differ wider were not possible. What was the name, then? The valley of hellishness. That explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know the name of the place now. Call up Camelot. He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy's voice again. It was like being home. After some affectionate interchanges and some account of my late illness, I said, What is new? The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this hour to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place where the infernal spirit spouted true hell flames to the clouds. And ye listen sharply, ye may hear me wink, and hear me likewise smile a smile, sith to his eye that made selection of those flames from out of our stock, and sent them by your order. Does the king know the way to this place? The king? No, nor to any other in his realms, may have. But the lads that hope you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night. This will bring them here when? Mid-afternoon, or later the third day. Anything else in the way of news? The king hath begun the raising of the standing army he suggested to him. One regiment is complete and officered. The mischief. I wanted a main hand in that myself. There is only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer a regular army. Yes, and now you will marvel to know there's not so much as one west pointer in that regiment. What are you talking about? Are you an earnest? It is truly as I have said. Why, this is making me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was the method? Competitive examination? Indeed, I know not of the method. I but know this. These officers be all of noble family and are born. What is it you call it? Chuckleheads. There's something wrong, Clarence. Comfort yourself then, for two candidates for lieutenancy do travel hencewith the king. Young nobles both. And if you but wait where you are you will hear them questioned. That is news to the purpose. I will get one west pointer in any way. Mount a man and send him to that school with a message. Let him kill horses if necessary, but he must be there before sunset tonight and say, There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to the school. Prithee, let me connect you with it. Sounded good. In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning communication with distant regions, I was breathing the breath of life again after long suffocation. I realized then what a creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these years and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it. I gave my order to the superintendent of the academy personally. I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doing without these conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn't going to wear armor anymore at present, and therefore could get at my pockets. When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interest going on. The abbot and his monks were assembled in the great hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of the fantastic, as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian medicine man wears. He was mowing and mumbling and gesticulating and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor, the regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia, so he said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as good as gold and past current everywhere. How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's terms. His specialty was to tell you what any individual on the face of the globe was doing at the moment, and what he had done at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of the East was doing now. The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer. This reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at just at this moment. The fraud went through some more memory and then made grave announcement. The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put money in the palm of a holy begging fryer. One, two, three pieces, and they be all of silver. A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out all around. It is marvelous, wonderful, what study, what labor to have acquired them. So amazing power is this. Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Ind was doing? Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Ind was doing. Then he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at, also what the King of the remote seas was about, and so on and so on. And with each new marvel, the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place sometime, but no, he never had to hesitate. He always knew, and always with unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose my supremacy. This fellow would capture my following. I should be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel and do it right away, too. I said, If I may ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certain person is doing. Speak and freely, I will tell you. It will be difficult, perhaps impossible. My art knows not the word. The more difficult it is, the more certainly will I reveal it to you. You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty high, too. You could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it. If you make no mistake, if you tell me truly what I want to know, I will give you two hundred silver pennies. The fortune is mine. I will tell you what you would know. Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand. Ah! It was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician was hit hard. It was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him. He didn't know how to meet it. He looked stunned, confused. He couldn't say a word. Come, I said, what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up right off and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with my right hand. They will endorse you, if you tell correctly. He was still dumb. Very well. I'll tell you why you don't speak up and tell. It is because you don't know. You, a magician. Good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud and liar. This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now. Superstitious boatings were in every mind. The magician began to pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around, for it indicated that his mood was not destructive. He said, It has struck me speechless the frivolity of this person's speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the purple and them only. Had he asked me what Arthur the Great King is doing, it were another matter, and I had told you, but the doings of a subject interest me not. Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said anybody, and so I supposed anybody included, well, anybody that is everybody. It doth anybody that is of lofty birth, and the better if he be royal. That it besemoth might be well, said the abbot, who saw his opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, for it were not likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings, than such as be born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the King, would you know of him? broke in the enchanter. Most gladly ye, and gratefully. Everybody was full of awe and interest again, right away, the incorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly, and looked at me with a, there, now, what can you say to that, ere, when the announcement came, The King is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep. God's benison upon him, said the abbot, and crossed himself. May that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul! And so it might be if he were sleeping, I said, but the King is not sleeping, the King rides. Here was trouble again, a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which of us to believe. I still had some reputation left. The magician's scorn was stirred, and he said, Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help. You have lived in the woods and lost much by it. I use incantations myself, as this good brotherhood are aware, but only on occasions of moment. When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up. That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the Queen and the court, and got this information. They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the King. I said, That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements. The Queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Now perhaps you can spread yourself a little and tell us where the King and Queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going. They sleep now, as I said, but on the morrow they will ride, for they go a journey toward the sea. And where will they be the day after tomorrow at Vespers? Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done. That is another lie by the space of a hundred and fifty miles. Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, and they will be here in this valley. That was a noble shot. It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followed the thing right up. If the King does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail. If he does, I will ride you on a rail instead. Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the King had passed through two towns that were on the line. I spotted his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he kept up his gate he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming. There seemed to be no preparations making to receive him in state. A strange thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this. That other magician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I asked a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, Yes, the magician had tried some further enchantments, and found out that the court had concluded to make no journey at all but stay at home. Think of that. Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer, who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word. However, it was not good politics to let the king come without any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and started them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was the sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage and humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed him the head of the state, marching in and never a monk on hand to offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad his spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces. The next minute the bells were dinning furiously and the various buildings were vomiting monks and nuns who went swarming in a rush toward the coming procession, and with them went that magician, and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order, and his reputation was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit around and do it. He has got to be on deck and attending to business right along. CHAPTER XXV When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was a fashion of the time. The commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual. He held court in the gate at sunrise, and tried cases, for he was himself chief justice of the king's bench. He shone very well in his latter office. He was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest, according to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights, I mean his rearing, often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slave-holders' moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over. And a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slave-holders under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any, even to the noble himself, unless the fact itself be an offense. For the statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize, and in but indifferently modified measure, the very air and tone of the actual slave-holder. And behind these are the slave-holders' spirit, the slave-holders' blunted feeling. They are the result of the same cause in both cases. The possessor's old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. The king's judgments brought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in famine-time. Her own children would fare a shade better than the rest. One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing. The girl's property was within a scenery held by the church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant sion of the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the church out of one of its rites as Lord of the Senor, the one heretofore referred to as the Droit du Senor. The penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was that the lordship of the Senor was vested in the bishop, and the particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated, and that an older law of the church itself strictly barred the bishop from exercising it. It was a very odd case indeed. It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money that built the mansion-house. A person who had not taken the sacrament according to the Anglican right could not stand as a candidate for sheriff of London. Thus dissenters were ineligible. They could not run if asked. They could not serve if elected. The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device. They passed a bylaw imposing a fine of four hundred pounds upon anyone who should refuse to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine of six hundred pounds upon any person who, after being elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and elected a lot of dissenters, one after another, and kept it up until they had collected fifteen thousand pounds in fines. And there stands the stately mansion-house to this day, to keep the blushing citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day, when a band of Yankees slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth. The girl's case seemed strong to me. The bishop's case was just as strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out of this hall. But he got out. I append his decision. Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a child's affair for simpleness. And the young bride had conveyed notice, as in duty bound to her feudal lord and proper master and protector, the bishop, she had suffered no loss for the said bishop, could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary convenience, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus would she have kept all she had. Whereas failing in her first duty, she hath by that failure failed in all, for whoso clinging to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall. It being no defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any deliverance from his peril as he shall find. Party, the woman's case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the last farthing that she doth possess and be there to mulch it in the costs. Next! Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months old. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree. And in these pretty clothes she crying on his shoulder and he trying to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, bedless, breadless. Why, the very beggars by the road sides were not so poor as they. Well, the king was out of the hole, and on terms satisfactory to the church and the rest of the aristocracy no doubt. Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. Arthur's people were, of course, poor material for a republic because they had been debased so long by monarchy, and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that has come to seem to have sense and meaning. The sense and meaning implied when it is used. That is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being capable of self-government. And the implied sense of it is that there has been a nation somewhere, sometime or other, which wasn't capable of it, wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it. The masterminds of all nations in all ages have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation and from the mass of the nation only, not from its privileged classes. And so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade was, whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day that it had not the material and abundance whereby to govern itself. Which is to assert an always self-proven fact that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people, and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the lowest. King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations. I had not supposed he would move in the matter while I was away, and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining the merits of officers. I had only remarked that it would be wise to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination, and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. That ought to have been attended to before I left. For the king was so taken with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait, but must get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head. I was impatient to see what this was, and to show, too, how much more admirable was the one which I should display to the examining board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity. When the board was assembled, I followed him in, and behind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a bright young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my West Point professors. When I saw the board, I did not know whether to cry or to laugh. The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Noroye King at Arms. The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his department, and all three were priests, of course, all officials who had to know how to read and write were priests. My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head of the board opened on him with official solemnity. Name? Mallease. Son of? Webster. Webster, Webster. My memory faileth to recall the name. Condition? Weaver. Weaver. God keep us. The king was staggered from his summit to his foundations. One clerk fainted, and the others came near it. The chairman pulled himself together and said indignantly, It is sufficient. Get you hence. But I appealed to the king. I beg that my candidate might be examined. The king was willing, but the board, who were all well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the Weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs, and the king turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. It was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining, and counter-mining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice, revolver practice, and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail out, if you understand, and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves and do it like nothing too, all about eclipses and comets and solstices and constellations, and mean time and sidereal time and dinner time and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bully rag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't come, and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judged that the cake was ours, and by a large majority. Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had come to West Point so ignorant that when I asked him, if a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, what ought he to do? Answered up naively and said, Get up and brush himself. One of the young nobles was called up now. I thought I would question him a little myself. I said, Can your lordship read? His face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me. Takest me for a clock? I traw I am not of a blood that— Answer the question. He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer, No. Can you write? He wanted to resent this too, but I said, You will confine yourself to the questions and make no comments. You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing of the sort will be permitted. Can you write? No. Do you know the multiplication table? I wit not what you refer to. How much is nine times six? It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it has not in my life days occurred, and so not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge. If A. trade a barrel of onions to B. worth two pence the bushel in exchange for a sheep worth four pence and a dog worth a penny, and C. kill the dog before delivery, because, bitten by the same, who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A. from B, and which part he pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money? If A. is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit which might have enured from the dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, use of fruct. Barely in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, who moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have I never heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and congestion of the ducts of thought. Wherefore I beseech you, let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas I tried to help, I should but damage their cause the more, and yet may have not lived myself to see the dissolution wrought. What do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation? If there be such, may have his Grace the King did promulgate them, whilst that I lay sick about the beginning of the year, and thereby fail to hear his proclamation. What do you know of the science of optics? I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of honor, but him you call the science of optics I have not heard of before. Per adventure it is a new dignity. Yes, in this country, try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official position of any kind under the sun. Why, he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sword out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job, but that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and they turned him inside out on the line of scientific war and found him empty, of course. He knew somewhat about the warfare of the time, bushwhacking around for ogres and bullfights in the tournament ring and such things, but otherwise he was empty and useless. Then we took the other young noble in hand, and he was the first one's twin for ignorance and incapacity. I delivered them into the hands of the chairman of the board with the comfortable consciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined in the previous order of precedence. Name, so you please. Pertipol, son of Sir Pertipol, Baron of Barley Mash. Grandfather? Also, Sir Pertipol, Baron of Barley Mash. Great grandfather? The same name and title. Great, great grandfather? We had none worshipful, sir, the line failing before it had reached so far back. It matters not. It is a good four generations and fulfills the requirements of the rule. Fulfills what rule, I asked? The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the candidate is not eligible. A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can prove four generations of noble descent? Even so, neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that qualification. Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such a qualification as that? What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and boss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even-arm holy mother-church herself. As how? For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding saints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations. I see. I see. It is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the one case a man lies dead alive four generations. Mummified in ignorance and sloth. And that qualifies him to command live people and take their wheel and woe into his impotent hands. And in the other case a man lies bedded with death and worms for generations and that qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's grace approve of this strange law? Why, truly, I see not about it that is strange. All places of honor and of profit do belong by natural right to them that be of noble blood. And so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so without this or any rule. The rule is but to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring in to contempt these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I would blame and I permitted this calamity. You can permit it, and you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to any. I yield. Proceed, sir chief of the Haralds College. The chairman resumed as follows. By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the throne and state did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British nobility? He built a brewery. Sire, the board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for a decision after due examination of his competitor. The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of mobility himself, so there was a tie in military qualifications that far. He stood aside a moment, and Sire Peritopol was questioned further. Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line? She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble. She was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character in so much that in these regards was she pure of the best lady in the land. That will do, stand down. He called up the competing lordling again and asked, What was the rank and condition of the great grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your great house? She was a king's Lehman, and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own uphold and merit from the sewer where she was born. Ah, this indeed is true nobility. This is the right and perfect intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in contempt. It is the humble step, which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine. I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised myself an easy and zenith scouring triumph, and this was the outcome. I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face. I told him to go home and be patient. This wasn't the end. I had a private audience with the king and made a proposition. I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. It would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it. In fact, I had as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it, and thus make it at the crack regiment, the envied regiment, the king's own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way, and go wither it would and come when it pleased in time of war and be utterly swell and independent. This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper. Nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency, and we would make this regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the king's own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual. The king was charmed with the idea. When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thought I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. You see, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race and very fruitful. Whenever a child was born to any of these, and it was pretty often, there was wild joy in the nation's mouth and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. The joy was questionable, but the grief was honest, because the event meant another call for a royal grant. Long was the list of these royalties and they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not believe this latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. If I could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect with the nation. But no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He had something like a religious passion for royal grant. He seemed to look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that there was not another respectable family in England that would humble itself to hold out the hat, however that is as far as I ever got. He always cut me short there and peremptily too. But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crack regiment out of officers alone, not a single private. Half of it would consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to major general, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses. And they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. These princes of the blood should range and rank from lieutenant general up to Field Marshall, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the state. Moreover, and this was the master's stroke, it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and all compelling title, which I would presently invent, and they and they only in all England should be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood should have free choice. Join that regiment, get that great title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay out, and receive a grant. Needless touch of all, unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be born into the regiment, and start fair with good wages and a permanent situation upon due notice from the parents. All the boys would join, I was sure of that, so all existing grants would be relinquished, that the newly born would always join was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the royal grant, would cease to be a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past. When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure himself. Nothing should stop him. He would drop everything and go along. It was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once, but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed for the king's evil, to touch for it, I mean, and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house, and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when he said mournfully, Thou forgettest that Lancelot is here, and where Lancelot is? She noticed not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth. Of course I changed the subject. Yes, Guinevere was beautiful, it is true, but take her all round she was pretty slack. I never meddled in these matters. They weren't my affair, but I did hate to see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that much. Many's the time she had asked me, Sir Boss, has't seen Sir Lancelot bout? But if ever she went fretting around for the king I didn't happen to be around at the time. There was a very good layout for the king's evil business, very tidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state. About him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Maranel, a hermit of the quack doctor species, to introduce the sick, all abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors in a thick jumble lay or sat the scruffulous under a strong light. It was as good as a tableau. In fact, it had all the look of being gotten up for that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundred sick people present. The work was slow. It lacked the interest of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before. The thing soon became tedious. But the proprieties required me to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who only imagined something with the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound, but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scruffulous when not dead, you would understand that the annual King's Evil Appropriation was just the river and harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury, and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the King's Evil. I covered six sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other sevenths be inflated into five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the King's Evil Department, a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the nickel sum, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule I do not approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough in this case, or it was just a gift, anyway. Of course you can water a gift as much as you want to, and I generally do. The old coin and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown oraging as a rule, but some of them were Roman. They were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full. They were hammered, not minted, and they were in so worn with use that the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel with a first-rate likeness of the King on one side of it, and Guinevere on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out of scrawfula as handy as a nobler coin, and please the scrawfulous fancy more. And I was right. This batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving and expense was a notable economy. You will see that by these figures. We touched a trifle over seven hundred of the eight hundred patients. At former rates this would have cost the government about two hundred and forty dollars. At a new rate we pulled through for about thirty-five dollars, thus saving upward of two hundred dollars at one swoop. To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke consider these other figures. The annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution of three days average wages of every individual of the population, counting every individual as if he were a man. If you take a nation of sixty million, where average wages are two dollars per day, three days wages taken from each individual will provide three hundred and sixty million dollars, and pay the government's expenses. In my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it. And it made him comfortable to think so, whereas in fact it was paid by the American people and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the one hundred millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day laborer was precisely the same. Each paid six dollars. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur and the United populations of the British Islands amounted to something less than one million. A mechanic's average wage was three cents a day when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national government's expenses were ninety thousand dollars a year, or about two hundred and fifty dollars a day. Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's evil day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense into the bargain, a saving which would have been the equivalent of eight hundred thousand dollars in my day in America. In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source, the wisdom of my boyhood. For the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, however lowly may be its origin, in my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin. The coin would answer me better than the buttons. All hands were happy and nobody hurt. Maranel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate. If he couldn't qualify he was warmed off. If he could he was passed along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover. Then the king stroked the ulcers while the reading continued. Finally the patient graduated and got his nickel. The king hanging it around his neck himself and was dismissed. Would you think that that would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astalot there was a chapel where the virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there. The girl said so herself, and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence. A picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach. Whereas on the contrary thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound. And even the well could look upon it and live. Of course when I was told these things I did not believe them. But when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the cures affected myself and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches arrive and pray before that picture and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony. In other places people operated on a patient's mind without saying a word to him and cured him. In others experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them and appealed to their faith and those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne, the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign, has passed away. In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil but there was no occasion for this diffidence. They could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty. Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsiveness is stroked. Again those words were being droned out. They shall lay their hands on the sick, when outside there rang clear as a clarion, a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears. Camelot, weakly Hosanna and literary volcano, latest eruption, only two cents, all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness. One greater than kings had arrived, the News Boy. But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do. I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper. The Adam News Boy of the world went around the corner to get my change. It is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display headlines. I had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me. High times in the Valley of Holiness, the water works corked. Prayer Merlin works his arts, but gets left. But the boss scores on his first innings. The miraculous well uncorked amid awful outbursts of infernal fire and smoke and thunder. The buzzard roost astonished. Unparalleled rejoined blings. And so on and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies, which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me. Local smoke and cinders. Sir Lancelot met up with old King Agrivence of Ireland unexpectedly last week, over only more south of Sir Balmoral, the merveilleuse, Hogg's Dastur. The widow has been notified. Expedition number three will start a doubt the first of next month on a search for Sir Sagramorla de Zyrus. It is in command of the renowned Knight of the Red Lawns assisted by Sir Persant of Inde, who is competed intelligent, courteous, and in every way a brick and further assisted by Sir Palamades, the Sarmasen, who is no Huckleberry himself. This is no picnic these boys mean business. It is. The readers of the Hazana will regret to learn that the handsome and popular Sir Charley of Gaul, who during his four-week stay at the bull and halibut, the city, has won every heart by his polished manners and elegant conversation will pull out today for home. Give us another call, Charlie. The bidsidness and of the funeral of the late Sir Dalyance, the Duke's son of Cornwall, killed in an encounter with the giant of the knotted bludgeon last Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of Enchantment, was in the hands of the ever affable and efficient mumble Prince of Undertakers, then whom there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad offices performed. Give him a trial. The cordial thanks of the Hazana office are due, from editor down to devil, to the ever-courteous and thoughtful Lord Highstude of the palace's third assistant-vert for several saucers of ice-cream, a quality calculated to make the E.I. of the recipients humid with gur-dude, and it done it. When this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the Hazana would like a chance to suggest. The demoiselle Irene Doolap of South Astelot is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the Catleman's boarding hoax, Riverlane, this city. Young Barker, the bellows-mender, is home again, and looks much improved by his vacation roundup among the outlying Smithies. See his ad. Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning. I knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The court circular pleased me better. Indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved. Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular and acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage, in fact, the only sensible way, is to disguise repetitiousness a fact under variety of form, skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It deceives the eye, you think it is a new fact. It gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything. This excites you and you drain the whole column with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single beam. Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and businesslike. All I say is it was not the best way. Court circular, on Monday the king rode in the park. On Tuesday the king rode in the park. On Wednesday the king rode in the park. On Thursday the king rode in the park. On Friday the king rode in the park. On Saturday the king rode in the park. On Sunday the king rode in the park. However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proofreading anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur's day in realm. As a rule the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame, but I did not much mind these things, they are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself. I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had to postpone because the monks around me beseeched me so with eager questions. What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a handkerchief? Saddle blanket? Part of a shirt? What is it made of? How thin it is? And how dainty and frail, and how it rattles? With it where do you think, and won't the rain injure it? Is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They suspected it was writing because those among them who knew how to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek recognize some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole. I put my information in the simplest form I could. It is a public journal! I will explain what that is another time. It is not cloth, it is made of paper. Sometime I will explain what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter, and not written by hand, but printed. By and by I will explain what printing is. A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail. They can't be told apart. Then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration. A thousand? Barely a mighty work, a year's work for many men. No, merely a day's work for a man and a boy. They crossed themselves and whiffed out a protective prayer or two. A miracle! A wonder! Dark work of enchantment! I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through. Ah! How true! Amazing, amazing! These be the very haps as they happened in marvellous exactness! And might they take this strange thing in their hands and feel of it and examine it? They would be very careful. Yes, they took it, handling it as cautiously and devotedly, as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region, and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes, how beautiful to me! For it was not this, my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute an unforced compliment to it. I knew then how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby and close themselves about it with one eager impulse and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness, and be as if it were not for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches halfway to that serene far summit, or yields half so divine a contentment. During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven. I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Chapter 27 The Yankee and the King Travel Incognito About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead, but hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were banged for and aft both. The slaves were bangless and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverted a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a half-inch long. I tried to do it inartistically and succeeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got his rubberly sandals on and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth which hung straight from his neck to his ankle bones, he was no longer the comliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhansomest and most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barbed alike and could pass for small farmers or farm bailiffs or shepherds or carters. Yes, or for village artisans, if we chose. Our costume being in effect universal among the poor because of its strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheap to be a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest material there was for mail attire, manufactured material, you understand. We slipped away an hour before dawn and by broad sunup had made eight or ten miles and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack. It was laden with provisions. Provisions for the king to taper down on till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage. I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside and then gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. Then I said I would find some water for him and strolled away. Part of my project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence, even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours. Then I had a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want to break him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sit together now when in company or people would notice. But it would not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when there was no necessity of it. I found the water some three hundred yards away and had been resting about twenty minutes when I heard voices. That is all right, I thought. Peasant's going to work, nobody else likely to be stirring this early. But the next moment these comers jingled into sight around a turn of the road, smartly clad people of quality with luggage mules and servants in their train. I was off like a shot through the bushes by the shortest cut. For a while it did seem that these people would pass the king before I could get to him, but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I canted my body forward, inflated my breast and held my breath and flew. I arrived, and in plenty good enough time, too. Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony. Jump, jump to your feet, some quality are coming. Is that a marvel? Let them come! But, my liege, you must not be seen sitting, rise, and stand in humble posture while they pass. You are a peasant, you know. True, I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war with Gaul. He was up by this time, but a farm could have got up quicker if there was any kind of a boom in real estate. And, right, so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream, the which a humbler attitude, my lord the king, vanquick, duck your head, more, still more, droop it. He did his honest best, but, lord, it was no great things. He looked as humble as the leaning tower of Pisa. It is the most you could say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous flunky at the tail end of it raised his whip, but I jumped in time and was under it when it fell, and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax. He wanted to eat up the procession. I said, It would end our adventures at the very start, and we, being without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. If we are going to succeed in our imprise, we must not only look the peasant, but act the peasant. It is wisdom. None can gain say it. Let's go on, Sir Boss. I will take note and learn, and do the best I may. He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen better. If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day long, and an anxious mother at his heels all the while, and just saving it by a hair from drowning itself, or breaking its neck with each new experiment, you've seen the king and me. If I could have foreseen what the king was going to be like, I should have said, No! If anybody wants to make his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout. I can do better with a menagerie and last longer. And yet, during the first three days, I never allowed him to enter a hut or other dwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate, it would be in small inns and on the road. So to these places we can find ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? He didn't improve a bit that I could see. He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh astonishers in new and unexpected places toward evening on the second day. What does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk from inside his robe? Great guns, my liege! Where did you get that? From a smuggler at the inn, Yester Eve. What in the world possessed you to buy it? We have escaped diver's dangers by wit, thy wit. But I have bethought me that it were but crudence if I bore a weapon too. Thine might fail thee in some pinch. But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What would a lord say? Yes, or any other person of whatever condition if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person. It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then. I persuaded him to throw the dirk away, and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself. We walked along silent and thinking. Finally the king said, When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath apparel in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project? It was a startling question and a puzzler. I didn't quite know how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, I ended up by saying the natural thing. But, Sire, how can I know what your thoughts are? The king stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. I believed thou art greater than Merlin, and truly in magic thou art, but prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet. I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground. After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said, Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are two kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are but a little way off. The other is the gift to foretell things that are whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift, do you think? Oh, the last, most surely. True. Does Merlin possess it? Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and the future kingship that were twenty years away. Has he ever gone beyond that? He would not claim more, I think. It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years. These are few, I wean. There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed even seven hundred and twenty. Grammarcy, it is marvellous! But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing. What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch of time as seven hundred years? My liege! As clear as the vision of an eagle, does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half? My land, you should have seen the king's eye spread slowly open and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch. That settled prayer, Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his facts with these people. All he had to do was to state them. It never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement. Now, then, I continued. I could work both kinds of prophecy, the long and the short, if I chose to take the trouble to keep in practice, but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because the other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort. Stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course, I went up now and then and flirted out a minor prophecy, but not often, hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there was great talk when you reached the valley of holiness about my having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival two or three days beforehand. Indeed, yes, I mined it now. Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier and piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain if it had been five hundred years away instead of two or three days. How amazing that it should be so! Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five hundred seconds off. And yet, in reason, it should clearly be the other way. It should be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, for indeed it is so close by that one uninspired might almost see it. In truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most strangely making the difficult the easy and the easy difficult. It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it. You could know it for a king's under a diving belt, if you could hear it work its intellect. I had a new trade now and plenty of business in it. The king was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live in them. From that time out I prophesied myself bald-headed trying to supply the demand. I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a profit was the worst. Still it had its ameliorations. A profit doesn't have to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it off in a cool place for arrest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone. It will work itself. The result is prophecy. Every day a night errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgotten himself sure, and said something to them in a style, a suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him well out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look with all his eyes, and a proud light would flash from them, and his nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and I knew he was longing for a brush with them. But about noon of the third day I had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had been suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days before. A caution which I had afterward decided to leave untaken. I was so loath to institute it. But now I had just had a fresher reminder. While striding heatlessly along with jaw spread and intellect at rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed my toe and fell sprawling. I was so pale I couldn't think for a moment. Then I got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack. I had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. It was a good thing to have along. The time would come when I could do a valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing to have about me, and I didn't like to ask the king to carry it. Yet I must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get along with its society. I got it out and slipped it into my script, and just then here came a couple of nights. The king stood, stately as a statue, gazing toward them, had forgotten himself again, of course, and before I could get a word of warning out, it was time for him to skip, and well that he did it too. He supposed they would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt underfoot? When had he ever turned aside himself or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knight in time to judiciously save him the trouble? The knight paid no attention to the king at all. It was his place to look out himself, and if he hadn't skipped, he would have been placidly written down and laughed at besides. The king was in a flaming fury and launched out his challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor. The knights were some little distance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worthwhile to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled and started for us. Not a moment must be lost. I started for them. I passed them at a rattling gate, and as I went by I flung out a hair-lifting, soul-scorching, thirteen-jointed insult which made the king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. I got it out of the nineteenth century, where they know how. They had such headway that they were nearly to the king before they could check up. Then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind hooves and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to breast. I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up a great boulder at the roadside. When they were within thirty yards of me, they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express came tearing for me. When they were within fifteen yards, I sent that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just under the horses' noses. Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembled a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi, and during the next fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and hardware and horse flesh. I say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for some years to come, in trying to explain it, I mean. As for filling it up, that service would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few peasants of that senoree, and they wouldn't get anything for it, either. But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with a dynamite bomb. This information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noble miracle in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it couldn't be done, except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. Otherwise he would be on-coring at every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I hadn't any more bombs along. END OF CHAPTER XXVII. CHAPTER XXVIII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. CHAPTER XXVIII. DRILLING THE KING. On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, we had been tramping an hour in the chilled on. I came to a resolution. The king must be drilled. Things could not go on so. He must be taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling. The very cats would know this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a halt and said, Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right. There is no discrepancy. But as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong. There is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your soldierly stride, your lordly port, these will not do. You stand too straight. Your looks are too high, too confident. The cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders. They do not droop the chin. They do not depress the high level of the eye-glance. They do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick. You must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters. Or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this. The king took careful note and then tried an imitation. Pretty fair, pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please. They are very good. Eyes too high. Pray don't look at the horizon. Look at the ground. Ten steps in front of you. Ah, that is better. That is very good. Wait, please. You betray too much vigor. Too much decision. You want more of a shamble. Look at me, please. This is what I mean. Now you are getting it. That is the idea. At least it sort of approaches it. Yes, that is pretty fair. But there is a great big something wanting. I don't quite know what it is. Please walk thirty yards so I can get a perspective on the thing. Now then, your head's right. Speeds right. Shoulders right. Eyes right. Chin right. Gate. Carriage. General style right. Everything's right. And yet the fact remains the, the aggregate's wrong. The account don't balance. Do it again, please. Now I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I've struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting. That's what's the trouble. It's all amateur. Mechanical details all right. Almost to a hair. Everything's about the delusion perfect except that it don't delude. What then must one do to prevail? Let me think. I can't seem to quite get at it. In fact, there isn't anything that can write the matter, but practice. This is a good place for it. Roots and stony ground to break up your stately gate. A region not liable to interruption. Only one field and one hut in sight. And they so far away that nobody could see us from there. It will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling, you sire. After the drill had gone on a little while, I said, Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder and the family are before us. Proceed, please, across the head of the house. The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument and said with frozen austerity, Violet, bring a seat and serve to me what cheer you have. Ah, your grace, that is not well done. In what lack of it? These people do not call each other violets. Nay, is that true? Yes, only those above them call them so. Then must I try again. I will call him villain. No, no, for he may be a free man. So, then, per adventure, I should call him Goodman. That would answer your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend or brother. Brother? To dirt like that? But we are pretending to be dirt like that, too. It is even true, I will say it. Brother, bring a seat and there to what cheer you have with all. Now it is right. Not quite, not wholly right. You have asked for one, not us. For one, not both. Food for one. A seat for one. The king looked puzzled. He wasn't a very heavyweight intellectually. His head was an hourglass. It could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. Would you have a seat also, and sit? If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals, and playing the deception pretty poorly, too. It is well, and truly said. How wonderful is truth! Come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may. Yes, he must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not youer and napkin with more show of respect to the one than to the other. And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. He must bring nothing outside. We will go in, in among the dirt, and possibly other repulsive things, and take the food with the household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal terms, except the man be of the serf class. And finally there will be no youer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Please walk again, my liege. There it is better, it is the best yet, but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop. Give me then the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, I wean, and not the weight. For armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it. Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing, strap it upon my back. He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate pair of shoulders. They could not seem to learn the trick of stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on, eye-prompting and correcting. Now make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors. You are out of work, which is horseshoeing, let us say, and can get none. And your wife is sick, your children are crying, because they are hungry, and so on and so on. I drilled him as representing, in turn, all sorts of people out of luck, and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. But Lord, it was only just words, words. They meant nothing in the world to him. I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about the working classes, and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know all about both, and so far, as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down, and I will be satisfied too. Intellectual work is misnamed. It is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work, and as for the musician with a fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him, why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but Lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair, but there it is and nothing can change it. The higher the pay and enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay and cash also, and it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility, and kingship. 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 gleamed. 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 straggler 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. Smallpox. 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 ye speak not unwisely, but it were shame that a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should withhold his hand, where be such as need 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. There, sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there, and bring me news of what ye find. Be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking, being already broke. Abide, said the king, and give the woman to eat. I will go, and ye 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 ye 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 borne. 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 commoners 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 forbad 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 you, what is left to live for? Her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the church's curses 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, interrupted King in a subdued voice. I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness. Ah, my annus, 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 with 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 trickled 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, or 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 blast for me. 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. CHAPTER XXXXX, the tragedy of the manor house. 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 the 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 demur, 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 seemingly 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 caste. 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. Fires 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 faraway 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. Straight away there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out. The rain poured down in a deluge. No matter, we must try to cut this man down on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected. If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord, so let him be. If others hanged him, 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, the hair look abroad. Two others hanging within fifty yards of us. It is not weather 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 shakedown on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible 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, or, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable. We slept till far into the afternoon and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in 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? Marry, 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 vaults 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. Before 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 gubelle 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. Oh, 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 neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause. The others helped for none other reason. All rejoiced today 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 it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that never 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 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 behaviour, 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 mill-rays, 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 and overfist, 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 dicken the boss mason and smug the boss wheel-ride out there too. The coal 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 driven. 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. Then 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 today, just before you came back from the village. For although he wouldn't be likely to say such a thing to you, because Jones isn't a talker and is dividend 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, brethren, 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 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, tolin and Lindsey 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! Consider the vastness of the sum! Well, 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 is in 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 dinnertime 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. END OF CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter 32. Dowley's Humiliation Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in 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 Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children. They were up and down all night to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure, not to say delirium, was so fresh and novel and 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 Marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden. But they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were, which all went for nothing. He didn't notice any 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 consciences, friends, if this is not also true. By my head, yes, cried the Mason. I can testify it, and I do, said the Wheelwright. And as to furniture, you 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 must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth. Now ye know what manner of man I am, Brother Jones, said the Smith, with a fine and friendly 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. Whit ye 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 a 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 a 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 poor, 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 pops 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 madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped ooze and eyes, 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. Taken 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 a 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 dinner sets, 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 mill rays. 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 prayeth you. 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 fetched back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole, keep the change! There was an amazed murmur to this effect. Apparently 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 already, 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, dowly 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 castes. You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man. He can't ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it. He knuckles down. You can't insult him after that. No, I don't mean quite that. Of course, you can insult him. I only mean it's difficult, and so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands, it doesn't pay to try. I had the Smith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich. I could have had his adoration if I'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 bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so as long as England should exist in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges, and other royal and noble clothes horses, and leave unhonored 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 half way. Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the 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, Shepard, Swinehead. 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 get? Carpenter, dowber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like? On the average, fifty mill-rays, half a cent a day! 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 and even fifteen mill-rays a day! And I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself within the week, for protection, to 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 is the way I started in on him. I asked, 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 a pound. We pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs? Fifty mill-rays a dozen. What do you 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 for 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, 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'st knocked there from the stuffing? And, Miss Call, not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted me to hear it. Well, I was stunned. Partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him, and were of his mind, if you might call it mind. My position was simple enough, 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 confessed it 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, Barely 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. Dally 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 tow 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 gulped 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 capablest 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 blushed, 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 he, said dolly. He could say more than that and speak no lie. There's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath an income like to that income of an earl. 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 50 weeks to earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen too. Brother Dali, 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, neared 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 offense and then kill him? There was no answer. I had scored my first point. For the first time the smith wasn't up and ready. The 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 offense 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? Bally 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 Dolly, for you must inform, so save the 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, Dolly, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil—oh, I tell you it was a smasher. You ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent Dolly 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 a stranger if I chose to go and report, well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover from the shock. They couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful, why, they weren't any better than so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands and take a drink all round and laugh it off, and there an end. But no, you see, I was an unknown person among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people. A people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind 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. 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-barreled 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—wee, 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. Confounded 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 does 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-rate. 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 a 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, men 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 worthwhile 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 wave from where we took the water. Yes, Sire, 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 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 Horatious and keep the bridge. For a 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 stone 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! ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye, and whence are ye? Explain. We are but peaceful strangers, sir, I said, and traveling upon our own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquainted here. We have 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 traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rain some time after dark at a roadside inn, some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles. My lord went immediately to his room after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning we 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 height can be net, when so 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 party, at a moderate and comfortable gate. And in conversation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond Cambonet. 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 proved 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 doth 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 you 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 free men, who could not prove that they were free men, 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 on 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. CHAPTER XXXV It's a world of surprises. The king brooded, this was natural. But what would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course, from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest, from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurest, from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched. He couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when I first found it out, that I couldn't believe it. It didn't seem natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared, and I got a right focus on it, I saw I was mistaken. It was natural. For this reason, a king is a mere artificiality. And so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities. But as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that high. Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure, a thing which was plainly nonsense and full of the baldest conceit. I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for me to argue on, and in fact I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars, whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages the world had never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth a fourth of it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops, or about the recent weather, or about the condition of politics, or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology, no matter what I sighed, or I knew what was coming, he was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever we halted, where there was a crowd, he would give a look which said plainly, if that thing could be tried over again now with this kind of folk, you would see a different result. Well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars. But before he was done with his sweating and worrying, I wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this. Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half-chump with a thirty-dollar style. Pity, but style was marketable! At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner was a practical person, and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could have given the man some valuable advice, but I didn't. You mustn't volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant style even when he was a willing and anxious pupil. Now then, to undertake to reduce the king's style to a slave's style and by force—go to!—it was a stately contract. Never mind the details, it will save me trouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that, at the end of a week, there was plenty of evidence that lash, and club, and fist had done their work well. The king's body was a sight to see and to weep over, but his spirit—it wasn't even phased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he dies, whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you can't. This man found that from his first effort down to his latest he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him and did it. So he gave up at last and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king. He was a man. And when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth and suffering, and what English man was the most interested in the slavery question by that time? His grace the king. Yes, from being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever heard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question which I had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that I had not thought had prudent to meddle in a matter further. Would he abolish slavery? His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time. I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not good being awkwardly put together, and with the crash word almost in the middle instead of at the end, where of course it ought to have been. I was ready and willing to get free now. I hadn't wanted to get free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, but had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded the king from them. But now, ah, it was a new atmosphere. Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmed with it. It would require time, yes, and patience too, a great deal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully assure ones, but none that would be as picturesque as this, none that could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give this one up. It might delay us months, but no matter. I would carry it out or break something. Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken by a snowstorm, while still a mile from the village we were making for. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from likelihood of sucker. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and others passed moving and threatened with death. Our master was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living, and made a stand, jump, slap ourselves to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying, and seeing our group she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human. She was so battered and bloody the mob wanted to burn her. Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around this poor creature to shelter her he saw his chance. He said, Burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine that. They were willing. They fastened her to a post. They brought wood and piled it about her. They applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast, and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor, harmless mother. That was the sort of master we had. I took his number. That snowstorm cost him nine of his flock, and he was more brutal to us than ever after that for many days together. He was so enraged over his loss. We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession, and such a procession. All the riff-raff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it, and all drunk at that. In the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen, suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down upon it, and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled, fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the cart, hooting and shouting profane and ribbled remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing, a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London society. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made the undershare of provide a stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away on every side, occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began to tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice, how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land. I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said it in, and so I change it into my own words. Law is intended to meet out justice. Sometimes it fails, this cannot be helped. We can only grieve and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thing to death, and it is right. But another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child, and before God that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death. A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England, and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she, for he was doing his whole duty. He worked early and late at his handicraft. His bread was honest bread, well and fairly earned. He was prospering. He was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family. He was adding his might to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon his holy home and swept it away. That young husband was waylaid and impressed and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought him everywhere. She moved the hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. Little by little all her small possessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. She begged while she had strength. When she was starving at last and her milk failing, she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a scent, thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by the owner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial. The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke too, by permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that, when she was overborn with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain, and she knew nothing rightly except that she was so hungry. For a moment all were touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression. But the prosecuting officer replied that whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property. Oh, my God, is there no property in ruined homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British law holds precious? And so he must require sentence. When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose, trembling up his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes, and when the awful words came he cried out, Oh, poor child, poor child, I did not know it was death, and fell as a tree falls. When they lifted him up, his reason was gone. Before the sun was set he had taken his own life. A kindly man, a man whose heart was right at bottom, had his murder to this, that is to be now done here, and charged them both where they belong, to the rulers, and the bitter laws of Britain. The time has come, my child, let me pray over thee, not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who needed more. After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing and laughing and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for a romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged, and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach, but she clasped her hands and made a wild spring toward him with a shriek, but the rope and the under-sheriff held her short. Then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried, One more kiss, oh my God, one more, one more, it is the dying that begs it. She got it, she almost smothered the little thing, and when they got it away again she cried out, Oh my child, my darling, it will die, it has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother. It has them all, said the good priest. All these will I be to it till I die. You should have seen her face then. Gratitude! Lord, what do you want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire. A look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the Treasury of Heaven, where all things that are divine belong. London, to a slave, was a sufficiently interesting place. It was merely a great big village, and mainly mud and thatch. The streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking and drifting swarm of rags and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor. The king had a palace there. He saw the outside of it. It made him sigh, yes, and swear a little, in a poor, juvenile, sixth-century way. We saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule, hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counter-fitting pennies. It was the sight of a newsboy, and I couldn't get at him. Still, I had one comfort. Here was proof that Clarence was still alive and banging away. I meant to be with him before long, but all it was full of cheer. I had one little glimpse of another thing one day which gave me a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop, telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little piece of it. It was just what I needed in order to carry out my project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave chain, assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and… but you get my idea. You see what a stunning dramatic surprise I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible if I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron, which I could shape into a lockpick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened whenever I might choose. But I never had any luck. No such thing ever happened to fall in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who had come twice before to dicker for me without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and all was provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it—twenty-two dollars. He wouldn't bait a cent. The king was greatly admired because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn't saleable. Nobody wanted that kind of a slave. I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe, but this time I succeeded. I captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way. I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straight away a chance to be sad again, for when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said, what would be worded thus in modern English? Tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throw the other one in. The king couldn't get his breath. He was in such a fury. He began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away discussing, and he will keep the offer open to his open till tomorrow at this hour. Then I will answer you at that time, said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him. I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it. I whispered in his ear to this effect, your grace will go for nothing but after another fashion, and so shall I. Tonight we shall both be free. Ah, how is that? With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks and cast off these chains tonight. When he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town for priors of this caravan of slaves. That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. That evening we waited patiently for our fellow slaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have enough of it left for our needs, so I made several premature attempts and merely delayed things by it, or I couldn't seem to touch a padlock there in the dark without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang. But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. I took a good breath of relief and reached for the king's irons. Too late, in comes the master with a light in one hand and his heavy walking staff in the other. I snuggled close among the wallow snorers to conceal as nearly as possible that I was naked of irons, and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring from a man the moment he should bend over me. But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else, then sat down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him. Quick said the king, fetch him back! Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a moment. But dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively. We fought and scuffled and struggled and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions. It was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd fell across my back as a reminder, and I knew what it meant. I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster. Here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction. I tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was I who had been fighting him, and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty law-breakers, as was the custom. And what might—just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction. The freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, and by George it was the wrong man. End of Chapter 36 This is Chapter 37. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, Chapter 37. An awful predicament. Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there overnight by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician. I was doing my best. Naturally I was running with all my might. The night was dark. I ran against this common person here who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me. Although I told him my errand, and implored him for the sake of the great Earl, my master's mortal peril, the common person interrupted and said it was a lie, and was going to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word. Silence, sirrah, from the court. Take him hence, and give him a few stripes, whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go! Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise that court's fault that this high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too. He was starting to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it, which was true, but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me, and so forth and so on, and I got myself away, still mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under my feet. I was soon at the slave-quarters. Empty. Everybody gone. That is, everybody except one body, the slave-masters. It lay there all battered to pulp, and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter. There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master in the night, and thou ceased how it ended. Yes, and how did it begin? There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way. By magic arts was thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any ways injured. When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with a despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and break his back, and in other endeavours ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end. This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt upon the trial. Mary, the trial is over! Over? Would they be a weak, think you, and the matter so simple? They were not the half a quarter of an hour at it. Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time. Which ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. They condemned them in a body, which ye not the law, which men say the Romans left behind them here when they went, that if one slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it. True, I had forgotten, and when will these die? Be like within a four and twenty hours, albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if per adventure they may find the missing one mean time. The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable. Is it likely they will find him? Before the day is spent, yes, they seek him everywhere. They stand at the gates of the town with certain of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out, but he will be first examined. Might one see the place where the rest are confined? The outside of it, yes. The inside of it, but he will not want to see that. I took the address of that prison for future reference, and then sauntered off. At the first second hand clothing shop I came to, up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed my worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my former self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it, and followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's shop, which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked the door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise, but I said, save your wind. If you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle your instrument lively now, call Camelot. This does amaze me. How should such as you know ought of such matters as call Camelot? I am a desperate man. Call Camelot or get away from the instrument, and I will do it myself. What, you? Yes, certainly. Stop gambling. Call the palace. He made the call. Now, then, call Clarence. Clarence, who? Never mind Clarence, who? Say you want Clarence. You'll get an answer. He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes, ten minutes. How long it did seem. And then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice, for Clarence had been my own pupil. Now, my lad, vacate. They would have known my touch, maybe, and so your call was surest. But I'm all right now. He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen, but it didn't win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilities with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight off, thus. The king is here and in danger. We were captured and brought here as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity, and the fact is I am not in a position to try. Send a telegram for the palace here, which will carry conviction with it. His answer came straight away. They don't know anything about the telegraph. They haven't had any experience yet. The line to London is so new. Better not venture that. They might hang you. Think up something else. Might hang us. Little he knew how closely he was crowding the fax. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an idea struck me, and I started it along. Send five hundred picked knights with Lancelot in the lead, and send them on the jump. Let them enter by the south-west gate and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm. The answer was prompt. They shall start in half an hour. All right, Clarence. Now tell this lad here that I am a friend of yours and a deadhead, and that he must be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine. The instrument began to talk to the youth, and I hurried away. I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock. Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground was in good condition and had no snow or mud, they would probably make a seven-mile gate. They would have to change horses a couple of times. They would arrive about six or a little after. It would still be plenty light enough. They would see the white cloth, which I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. We would surround that prison and have the king out in no time. It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though I would have preferred noonday on account of the more theatrical aspect the thing would have. Now then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized and make myself known. That would help us out of our escape, without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change until I should finally reach silk and velvet and be ready for my project. So I started. But the scheme fell through like scat. The first corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves snooping around with a watchman. I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before. I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. Those people had stopped and were talking together and looking in at the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out there and look for the escaped slave who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, and my part was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out. She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket, and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable. Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake, a double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque one. It is the crying defect of my character, and then I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being human, would naturally do. Whereas, when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's not natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels. He would find a stout, oaken door, securely locked between him and me. Before he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping into a succession of baffling disguises, which would soon get me into a sort of raiment, which was a sureer protection from meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word and followed my instructions. And so, as I came trotting out of that cul-de-sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul-de-sac, however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that. Let it go. Charge it up to profit and loss. Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from a long voyage and all that sort of thing, just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then I reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised than hurt. He stretched his eyes wide and said, What? Wouldst have me let thee of all men escape and not hang with us? When th' art the very cause of our hanging? Go to! Go to! was their way of saying I should smile, or I like that. Queer talkers, those people! Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said, You're not going to be hanged? None of us are. Both men laughed, and the slave said, He have not ranked as a fool before. You might better keep your reputation seeing the strain would not be for long. It will stand it, I reckon. Before tomorrow we shall be out of prison and free to go where we will, besides. The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat and said, Out of prison, yes, he say true, and free likewise to go where you will, so you wander not out of his grace, the devil's sultry realm. I kept my temper and said indifferently, Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within a day or two? I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed. Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it? Even that, I only thought. Then I know now. I felt sarcastical, so I said, O sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us then what you know, that ye will all be hanged today at mid-afternoon. Oh, that shot hit home, lean upon me. The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My nights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the King of England, nor me, which was more important. More important not merely to me, but to the nation, the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn't anything to say. I knew what the man meant, that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place today. Well, the missing slave was found. Nearing four in the afternoon, the scene was just outside the walls of London, a cool, comfortable, superb day with a brilliant sun, the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The multitude was prodigious and far-reaching, and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful in that thought. Look at it how you might. There we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force with their ladies. We recognized a good many of them. The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the King. The moment we were freed of our bonds, he sprang up in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself Arthur King of Britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, although the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it, by cat-calls, jeers, and shouts of, Let him speak! The King! The King! His humble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master, his serene and sacred raggedness! But he went for nothing. He put on all his majesty, and sat under this reign of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was great in his way. Absently I had taken off my white bandage, and wound it about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this, they began upon me. They said, Doubtless this sailor man is his minister! Observe his costly badge of office! I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said, Yes, I am his minister, the boss, and to-morrow you will hear that from Camelot, which—I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. But presently there was silence, for the sheriffs of London, in their official robes with their subordinates, began to make a stir, which indicated that business was about to begin. In the hush which followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. Then a slave was blindfolded. The hangman unslung his rope. There lay the smooth road below us. We upon one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side. A good clear road, and kept free by the police. How good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities. I followed its receding thread out into the distance, not a horseman on it, or sign of one. There was a jerk, and a slave hung dangling, dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied. A second rope was unslung. In a moment another slave was dangling. In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It was dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back I missed the king. They were blindfolding him. I was paralyzed. I couldn't move. I was choking. My tongue was petrified. They finished blindfolding him. They led him under the rope. I couldn't shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the noose around his neck. Then everything let go in me, and I made a spring to the rescue. And as I made it, I shot one more glance abroad. By George! Here they came! A tilting! Five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles! The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord how the plume streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession of webby wheels. I waved my right arm as Lancelot swept in. He recognized my rag. I tore away noose and bandage and shouted, On your knees every rascal of you and salute the king, who fails shall sup in hell to-night! I always use that high style when I'm climaxing in effect. Well, it was noble to see Lancelot and the boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave the sheriffs and such overboard, and it was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, I thought to myself, Well, really there is something peculiarly grand about the gate and bearing of a king after all. I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all round, it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated. And presently up comes Clarence, his own self, and winks and says, very modernly, Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I've had the boys practicing this long time privately, and just hungry for a chance to show off. End of Chapter 38 This is Chapter 39. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 39. The Yankees Fight with the Knights Home again at Camelot. A morning or two later I found the paper damp from the press by my plate at the breakfast table. I turned to the advertising columns, knowing I should find something of personal interest to me there. It was this. De Par le Roi Know that the great Lord and illustrious knight, Sir Sagromor Le Desiris, having condescended to meet the King's minister, Hank Morgan, the which is surnamed The Boss, for satisfaction of offence anciently given, these will engage in the lists by Camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month. The battle will be one outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no composition. Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect. It will be observed by a glance at our advertising columns that the community is to be favored with a treat of unusual interest in the tournament line. The names of the artists are warrant of good entertainment. The box office will be open at noon of the thirteenth, admission three cents, reserved seats five, proceeds to go to the hospital fund. The royal pair and all the court will be present. With these exceptions and the press and the clergy, the free list is strictly suspended. Parties are hereby warned against buying tickets of speculators. They will not be good at the door. Everybody knows and likes The Boss. Everybody knows and likes Sir Sag. Come, let us give the lads a good send-off. Remember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity. And one whose broad begevalence stretches out its helping hand, warm with the blood of a loving heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition, or color. The only charity yet established in the earth, which has no politico-religious stopcock on its compassion, but says, Here flows the stream, let all come and drink. Turn out all hands, fetch along your doughnuts, and your gum drops, and have a good time. Pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with. And circus lemonade, three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water. And B, this is the first tournament under the new law, which allow each combatant to use any weapon he may prefer. You may want to make a note of that. Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not because a tournament was a great matter. It was not because Sir Sagramore had found the holy grail, for he had not, but had failed. It was not because the second official personage in the kingdom was one of the dualists. No, all these features were commonplace. Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a dual between mere men, so to speak, but a dual between two mighty magicians. A dual not of muscle, but of mind. Not of human skill, but of superhuman art and craft. A final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. It was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of comparison with a spectacle like this. They could be but child's play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a dual between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing Sir Sagramore's arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him, from the spirits of the air, a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his antagonist, while still visible to other men. Against Sir Sagramore, so weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could accomplish nothing. Against him no known enchantments could prevail. These facts were sure. Regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question, might there be still other enchantments unknown to Merlin which could render Sir Sagramore's veil transparent to me and make his enchanted male vulnerable to my weapons. This was the one thing to be decided in the lists. Until then, the world must remain in suspense. So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die, the life of knight errantry. I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts. I was the champion of hard, unsentimental common sense and reason. I was entering the lists to either destroy knight errantry, or be its victim. Vast as the showgrounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists at ten o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth. The mammoth grandstand was closed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fried tributary kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy. With our own royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets—well, I never saw anything to begin with it, but a fight between an upper Mississippi sunset and the aurora borealis, the huge camp of beflagged and gay-coloured tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff standing sentinel at every door in a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight. You see, every night was there who had any ambition or any caste feeling. For my feeling toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their chance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramore, others would have the right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond. Down at our end there were but two tents, one for me, and another for my servants. At the appointed hour the king made a sign, and the heralds in their tabards appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. There was a pause, then a ringing bugle blast, which was the signal for us to come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face. Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramore, an imposing tower of iron stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its socket, and grasped in his strong hand his grand horse's face and breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground. Oh, a most noble picture! A great shout went up of welcome and admiration. Then out I came, but I didn't get any shout. There was a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugle blast cut its career short. I was in the simplest and comfort-blist of gymnast costumes, flesh-colored tights from neck to heel with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bare-headed. My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. He was a beauty-glossiest silk and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridal and ranger saddle. The iron tower and the gorgeous bed-quilt came cumbersly, but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up to meet them. We halted, the tower saluted, I responded, then we wheeled and rode side by side to the grandstand and faced our king and queen, to whom we made abeasance. The queen exclaimed, "'A lax service! We'll fight naked, and without lance or sword or—' But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her business. The bugles rang again, and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position. Now old Merlin stepped into view, and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramour which turned him into Hamlet's ghost. The king made a sign. The bugles blew. Sir Sagramour laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him, cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's position and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening word for me, said, "'Go it, Slim Jim!' It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favour for me, and furnished the language too. When that formidable lance-point was within a yard and a half of my breast, I twitched my horse aside without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up, and down we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me. This same thing was repeated once more, and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramour lost his temper, and it once changed his tactics and set himself the task of chasing me down. Why, he hadn't any show in the world at that. It was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side. I whirled out of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped him on the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase into my own hands, and after that, turn or twist or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again. He found himself always in front of the end of his maneuver. So he gave up that business and retired to his end of the lists. His temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle and grasped the coil in my right hand. This time you should have seen him come. It was a business trip, sure. By his gait there was blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head. The moment he was under way, I started for him. When the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagromore out of the saddle. Great scot, but there was a sensation. Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. These people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From all around and everywhere the shout went up, Encore! Encore! I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters because the whole night air entry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagromore had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my station, and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor for Sir Sagromore, and that couldn't take long, or there were so many hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight off. Sir Harvest the Revel. Bzzz! Here he came, like a house of fire. I dodged. He passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck. A second or so later, pffst! The saddle was empty. I got another Encore, and another, and another, and still another. When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the iron clads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a result, they decided that it was time to wave etiquette, and send their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that little world, I lassoed Sir Lamarac de Gallis, and after him Sir Gala had. So you see, there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower, bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Lancelot himself. A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur, king of Britain. Yonder was Guinevere, yes, and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets, and in the Tented Camp Yonder renounced knights from many lands, and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the knights of the Table Round, the most illustrious in Christendom. And biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was Yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes, and all by myself, here was I laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wish she could see me now. In that moment down came the invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind. The courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward. The fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink, I was towing Sir Lancelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me. Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn and sat there drunk with glory, the victory is perfect, no other will venture against me. Night air entry is dead. Now imagine my astonishment and everybody else's too, to hear the peculiar bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the list. There was a mystery here. I couldn't account for this thing. Next I noticed Merlin gliding away from me, and then I noticed that my lasso was gone. The old sleight of hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagromore riding again with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely rearranged. I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's hoofs, he said. Thou art quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this, and he touched the hilt of his great sword. And ye are not able to see it because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbersome lance, but a sword, and I wean you will not be able to avoid it. His visor was up, and there was death in his smile. I should never be able to dodge his sword, that was plain. Somebody was going to die this time. If he got the drop on me I could name the corpse. We rode forward together and saluted the royalties. This time the king was disturbed. He said, Where is thy strange weapon? It is stolen, Sire. Hast another at hand? No, Sire, I brought only the one. Then Merlin mixed in. He brought but the one, because there was but the one to bring. There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the king of the demons of the sea. This man is a pretender, an ignorant. Else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea. Then he is weaponless, said the king. Sir Sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow. And I will lend, said Sir Lancelot, limping up, he is as brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall have mine. He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagramore said, Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons. It was his privilege to choose them and bring them, if he has aired on his head be it. Night, said the king, Thou art overwrought with passion. It disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked man? And he do it, he shall answer to me, said Sir Lancelot. I will answer it to any he that desireeth, retorted Sir Sagramore hotly. Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his low down a smile of malicious gratification. Tis well said, right well said, and tis enough of parlaying. Let, my lord, the king deliver the battle-signal! The king had to yield. The bugle made proclamation, and we turned apart and rode to our stations. There we stood a hundred yards apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like hoarse statues. And so we remained in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, everybody gazing, nobody stirring. It seemed as if the king could not take heart to give the signal. But alas he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed. Sir Sagramore's long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come. I sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got so excited that they shouted to me, Fly! Fly! Save thyself! This is Mercer! I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparition had got within fifteen paces of me. Then I snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster. There was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell what had happened. Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay, Sir Sagramore, stone dead. The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life was actually gone out of the man, and no reason for it visible. No hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a hole through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that, and as a bullet wound there produced his but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and swaddlings under the armor. The body was dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefied with astonishment naturally. I was requested to come and explain the miracle. But I remained in my tracks like a statue and said, If it is a command I will come, but my Lord the King knows that I am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire to come against me. I waited. Nobody challenged. Then I said, If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly one, I do not wait for them to challenge me. I challenge them. It is a gallant offer, said the King, and well besiems you. Whom will you name first? I name none. I challenge all. Here I stand, and dare the chivalry of England to come against me, not by individuals, but in mass. What! shouted a score of knights. You have heard the challenge. Take it. Or I proclaim you Recreant Knights and Vanquished every one. It was a bluff, you know. At such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth. Forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call, and you rake in the chips. But just this once, well, things looked squally. In just no time five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatched both revolvers from the holsters, and began to measure distances and calculate chances. Bang! one saddle empty, bang another one, bang, bang, and a bag too. Well it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it. If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man, and I detected the wavering in the crowd, which was premonitory of panic. An instant lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it. I raised both revolvers and pointed them. The halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment, then broken fled. The day was mine. Knight air entry was a doomed institution. The march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? You never could imagine it. And Brear Merlin, his stock was flat again. Somehow every time the magic of Falderall tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of Falderall got left. End of Chapter 39 This is Chapter 40. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 40. Three years later. When I broke the back of Knight air entry that time, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret. So the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so, I must just simply paralyze them. Nothing short of that would answer. You see, I was bluffing that last time in the field. It would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion if I gave them a chance, so I must not give them time, and I didn't. I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper. I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth, and destroy it. I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said. I could do what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain case of put up or shut up. They were wise, and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning. Consider the three years' sped. Now look around on England, a happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere and several colleges. A number of pretty good newspapers. Even authorship was taking a start. Sir Dinadon, the humorist, was first in the field with a volume of gray-headed jokes, which I had been familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer, I wouldn't have said anything, but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book, and hanged the author. After he was dead and gone—all men were equal before the law—taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine. I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover America. We were building several lines of railway, and our line from Camelot to London was already finished and in operation. I was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and distinguished honor. My idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility and make them useful and keep them out of mischief. The plan worked very well. The competition for the places was hot. The conductor of the 433 Express was a Duke. There wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of Earl. They were good men, every one. But they had two defects, which I couldn't cure, so had to wink at. They wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would knock down fair—I mean, rob the company. There was hardly a night in all the land who wasn't in some useful employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities. Their penchant for wandering and their experience in it made them all together the most effective spreaders of civilization we had. They went closed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade a person to try a sewing machine on the installment plan, or a melodian, or a barbed wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on. I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly long four-point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins. Not as an established church, but a go-as-you-please one. And the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike, at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who, at middle age, should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. Arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age, that is to say forty, and I believe that in that time I could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world, a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it, I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me. I found that out. Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family. They would know as much. They would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats. They would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it. They would be wholly inexpensive. Finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and Tom VII or Tom XI or Tom XIV by the Grace of God King would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. And as a rule, said he in his neat modern English, the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarchs. The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king and would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and the royal butchers would presently begin to disappear. Their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house. We should become a factory. We should supply the thrones of the world. Within forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin, then, to end no more for ever. Me-ow-st! Wow! Hang am I, suppose he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He didn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about it either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her, and said beseechingly, Speak, darling! Speak! What is it? Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped almost inaudibly. Hello, Santru! Quick! I shouted to Clarence. Telephone the king's homey a path to come. In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere all over the palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance. Membranas croop. I bent down and whispered, Wake up, sweetheart! Hello, Santru! She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say, Papa! That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for preparations of sulfur. I roasted out the croup kettle myself, for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often I could soothe away its troubles, and get it to laugh through the tear-dos on its eyelashes, when even its mother couldn't. Sir Lancelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great hall now, on his way to the stockboard. He was president of the stockboard, and occupied the siege perilous, which he had bought of Sir Gallahad, where the stockboard consisted of the knights of the round table, and they used the round table for business purposes now. Seats at it were worth, well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Lancelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day. But what of that? He was the same old Lancelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him. Bulls and bears might fight it out their own way, for all of him. He would come right in here and stand by a little hello central for all he was worth, and that was what he did. He shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp, and was firing up the Krupp Kettle. By this time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready. Sir Lancelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added there too, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the steam-pout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shaped now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church wardens with Willowbark and Sumac Tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased. It couldn't get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Lancelot in his noble armor, sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard of snowy church warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But of course Guinevere—however, it's no use to cry over what's done and can't be helped. Well, he stood watch and watch with me, right straight through for three days and nights till the child was out of danger. Then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden head. Then laid her softly in Sandy's lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again in this world. Lord, what a world of heartbreak it is! The doctors said we must take the child away if we would coax her back to health and strength again. And she must have sea air. So we took a man of war and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. If we had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have been plenty comfortable enough. Even as it was we made out very well in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts and luxuries from the ship. At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them which was their hearty spirit of emulation. I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't decepted sovereign. As for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around, Arthur. You couldn't throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course, I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor, and they wouldn't do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. So one of the teams wore chainmail ulsters, and the other wore plate armor made of my new decimer steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result. When a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes, and when a man was running and threw himself on a stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron clad coming into port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his last. They broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him. Here are the names of the nines. Bessemers, King Arthur, King Lot of Lothian, King of North Gallus, King Marcel, King of Little Britain, King Labour, King Pelham of Lysingies, King Bagdemagus, King Ptolemy Lafaintis, Ulsters, Emperor Lucius, King Logris, King Markle of Ireland, King Morgennor, King Mark of Cornwall, King Nentris of Garlot, King Melodius of Lannis, King of the Lake, the Soudan of Syria. Umpire, Clarence. The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people, and for solid fun would be worth going round the world to see. Everything would be favourable. It was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. End of Chapter 40 This is Chapter 41. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 41. The Interdict. However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters. Our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we too stood watch and watch, day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple and genuine and good she was. She was a flawless wife and mother, and yet I had married her for no other particular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some night should win her from me in the field. She had hunted Britain over for me, had found me at the hanging bout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the Placidus way and as of right. I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument short, and we had a wedding. Now, I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw. Within the twelfth month I became her worshipper, and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships, the one is earthly, the other divine. In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many a time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. It touched me to tears, and also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me. The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide always in our ears. Now thou dost kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child. But I didn't know it all the same. I hadn't an idea in the world, but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game, so I never let on, but said, Yes, I know, sweetheart, how dear and good it is of you, too. But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter at first. Then its music will be perfect. Pleased to the marrow, she murmured, Hello, Central! I didn't laugh. I'm always thankful for that. But the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I could hear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake. The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased. But I told her I'd give an order for it, that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honour and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. This was not true, but it answered. Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick room. Then our reward came. The center of the universe turned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn't the term. There isn't any term for it. You know that yourself, if you've watched your child through the valley of the shadow, and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. Why, we were back in this world in one instant. Then we looked the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same moment, more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet. In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. They had been steeped in troubled boatings all this time, their faces showed it. I called an escort, and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea. Where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with its white-winged flocks? Vanished, every one, not a sail from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank, just a dead and empty solitude in place of all that brisk and breezy life. I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandy this ghastly news. We could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain. Had there been an invasion, an earthquake, a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? But guessing was profitless. I must go, at once. I borrowed the king's navy, a ship no bigger than a steam-launch, and was soon ready. The parting—yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary, the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy. The darling mispronunciations of childhood, dear me, there's no music that can touch it, and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again. Well, how good it was to be able to carry that gracious memory away with me. I approached England the next morning, with a wide highway of salt water all to myself. There were ships in the harbour at Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them. It was Sunday, yet at Canterbury the streets were empty. Strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness of death was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last, in the further edge of that town, I saw a small funeral procession, just a family and a few friends following a coffin—no priest. A funeral without bell, book, or candle. There was a church there, close at hand, but they passed it by, weeping, and did not enter it. I glanced up at the bell free, and there hung the bell, shrouded in black, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew. Now I understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken England. Invasion? Invasion is a triviality to it. It was the interdict. I asked no questions. I didn't need to ask any. The church had struck. The thing for me to do was to get into a disguise and go wherely. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that time I travelled alone. I could not risk the embarrassment of company. A miserable journey, a desolate silence everywhere, even in London itself. Traffic had ceased. Men did not talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples. They moved aimlessly about each man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror in his heart. The tower showed recent war scars. Early much had been happening. Of course I meant to take the train to Camelot. Train? Why? The station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved on. The journey to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen. The Monday and the Tuesday different in no way from the Sunday. I arrived far in the night. From being the best electric lighted town in the kingdom and the most like a recumbent son of anything you ever saw, it was become simply a blot. A blot upon darkness. That is to say it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness. And so you could see it a little better. It made me feel as if—maybe—it was symbolical. A sort of sign, but the church was going to keep the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that. I found no life stirring in the somber streets. I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not a spark visible upon it. The drawbridge was down. The great gate stood wide. I entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound I heard, and it was sepulchral enough in those huge vacant courts. End of Chapter 41 This is Chapter 42. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Chapter 42. War I found Clarence alone in his quarters drowned in melancholy, and in place of the electric light he had reinstituted the ancient rag lamp and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight. He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying, Oh, it's worth a billion mill-rays to look upon a live person again. He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all, which frightened me one may easily believe that. Quick now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster, I said. How did it come about? Well, if there hadn't been any Queen Guinevere, it wouldn't have come so early. But it would have come anyway. It would have come on our own account by and by, by luck it happened to come on the Queens. And, Sir Lancelots? Just so. Give me the details. I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily a scance at the Queen and Sir Lancelot. Yes, King Arthur's. And only one heart that was without suspicion. Yes, the Kings. A heart that isn't capable of thinking evil of a friend. Well, the King might have gone on still happy and unsuspecting to the end of his days but for one of your modern improvements, the Stockboard. When you left, three miles of the London, Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stock market. It was Wildcat and everybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a giveaway. What does Sir Lancelot do? But yes, I know. He quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song. Then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call. And he was about to call when I left. Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't deliver. Oh, he had them. And he just settled his grip and squeezed them. They were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to him at fifteen and sixteen and along there that wasn't worth ten. Well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, they rested up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. That was when they compromised with the Invincible at two hundred and eighty three. Good land! He skinned them alive and they deserved it. Anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. Well, among the flade were Sir Agrivene and Sir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act second, seen first, an apartment in Carlyle Castle where the court had gone for a few days hunting. Person's present, the whole tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agrivene proposed to call the guile as Arthur's attention to Gwynevere and Sir Lancelot. Sir Gwywayne, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaharis will have nothing to do with it. A dispute ensues with loud talk. In the midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agrivene spring their devastating tale upon him. Tableau. A trap is laid for Lancelot by the king's command and Sir Lancelot walks into it. He made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses to it, Mordred, Agrivene, and twelve knights of Lesser Rank, for he killed every one of them but Mordred. But, of course, that couldn't straighten matters between Lancelot and the king, and didn't. Oh, dear! Only one thing could result, I see that. War! And the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a Sir Lancelot's party. Yes, that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire. And Lancelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of yours in mind. In fact, some of the best we ever had, to it Sir Bellius Leorgolus, Sir Seguaredus, Sir Gryfflé Le Fice de Dieu, Sir Brandolus, Sir Aglival. Oh, you tear out my heartstrings. Wait, I'm not done yet. Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer, the very best man in my subordinate nine, what a handy right-fielder he was. Sir Reynolds, three brothers, Sir Daimus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay, the stranger. My peerless shortstop. I've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in his teeth. Come, I can't stand this. Sir Adrien, Sir Lambagus, Sir Hermendy, Sir Perthelope, Sir Perimonus, and whom do you think? Rush, go on. Sir Geharus and Sir Gareth, both. Oh, incredible! Their love for Lancelot was indestructible. Well, it was an accident. They were simply onlookers. They were unarmed, and were merely there to witness the Queen's punishment. Sir Lancelot smoked down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were. Here is an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle. It's for sale on every newsstand. There, the figures nearest the Queen are Sir Lancelot, with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his last breath. You can catch the agony in the Queen's face through the curling smoke. It's a rattling battle-picture. Indeed it is. We must take good care of it. Its historical value is incalculable. Go on. Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Lancelot retreated to his town and castle of joyous guard, and gathered there a great following of knights. The King, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast iron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur and Lancelot, and the Queen, and everybody—everybody but Sir Gawain. He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers Gareth and Gareth, and would not be appeased. He notified Lancelot to get him thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. So Lancelot sailed to his duchy of Guyane with his following, and Gawain soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go with him. Arthur left the Kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands until you should return. Ah, a King's customary wisdom. Yes, Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent. He was going to marry Guinevere as a first move, but she fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London. Mordred attacked. The Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the interdict. The King returned. Mordred fought him at Dover, at Canterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peace and a composition. Terms? Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during Arthur's life, and the whole Kingdom afterward. Well, upon my word. My dream of a Republic to be a dream, and so remain. Yes, the two armies lay near Salisbury. Gawain—Gawain's head is at Dover Castle. He fell in the fight there. Gawain appeared to Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on, for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar order to his people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel. The knight forgot all about the order and made a slash at the adder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash. They butchered away all day. Then the king—however, we have started something fresh since you left. Our paper has— No. What is that? War correspondence. Why, that's good. Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. I had war correspondence with both armies. I will finish that battle by reading you what one of the boys says. Then the king looked about him, and then was he aware of all his hosts and all of his good knights, were left no more on live but two knights, that was Sir Lucan de Butler and his brother Sir Bedivere, and they were full sore wounded. Ye zoom, mercy, said the king, where are all my noble knights becoming? Alas, that ever I should see this doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am coming to my end, but would to God I wished where were that traitor and Sir Mordred that had cost all this mischief. Then was King Arthur where, where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. Now give me my spear, said Arthur unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have aspired the traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy. If he pass this unhappy day, he shall be right well revenged upon him. Good Lord, remember ye of your knight's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawain told you this night, yet God of his great goodness hath preserved you hitherto. Therefore, for God's sake, my Lord, leave off by this. For blessed be God ye have won the field, for here we be three on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live. And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past. Tide me death, betide me life, said the king. Now I see him yonder alone. He shall never escape mine hands, for at a better veil shall I never have him. God speed ye well, said Sir Bedivere. Then the king got his spear in both his hands, and ran towards Sir Mordred, crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foine of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death wound, he thrust himself with the might that he had up to the butt of King Arthur's spear. And right so he smote his father Arthur with his sword holding in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain pan, and there with also Mordred fell stark dead to the earth, and the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned off times. That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence. You are a first-rate newspaper man. Well, is the king all right? Did he get well? Poor soul, no, he is dead. I was utterly stunned. It had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him. And the queen, Clarence. She is a nun in Omsbury. What changes? In such a short while. It is inconceivable. What next, I wonder? I can tell you what next. Well, stake our lives and stand by them. What do you mean by that? The church is master now. The interdict included you with Mordred. It is not to be removed while you remain alive. The clans are gathering. The church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business on our hands. Stuff. With our deadly scientific war material, with our hosts of trained, save your breath we haven't sixty faithful left. What are you saying? Our schools? Our colleges? Our vast workshops? When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy. Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people? I certainly did think it. Well, then you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily until the interdict. Since then they merely put on a bold outside. At heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it when the armies come the mask will fall. It's hard news. We are lost. They will turn our own science against us. No they won't. Why? Because I and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game. I'll tell you what I've done and what moved me to it. Smart as you are the church was smarter. It was the church that sent you cruising through her servants the doctors. Clarence! It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship was the church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew. Oh, come! It is just as I tell you. I did not find out these things at once, but I found them out finally. Did you send me verbal information by the commander of the ship to the effect that upon his return to you, with supplies, you were going to leave Cadiz? Cadiz? I haven't been at Cadiz at all. Going to leave Cadiz and crews in distances indefinitely for the health of your family? Did you send me that word? Of course not. I would have written, wouldn't I? Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commander sailed again I managed to ship a spy with him. I have never heard a vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hear from you in. Then I resolved to send a ship to Cadiz. There was a reason why I didn't. Why was that? Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased. The men all deserted. Polls were cut down. The church laid a ban upon the electric light. I had to be up and doing and straight off. Your life was safe. Nobody in these kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back. I had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming. I felt safe myself. Nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various works I selected all the men, boys I mean, whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them together secretly and gave them their instructions. There are fifty-two of them, none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old. Why did you select boys? Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. It is in their blood and bones. We imagined we had educated it out of them. They thought so, too. The interdict woke them up like a thunder clap. It revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too. With boys it was different. Such as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the church's terrors, and it was among these that I found my fifty-two. As a next move I paid a private visit to that old cave of Merlin's, not the small one, the big one. Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant when I was projecting a miracle. Just so. And as that miracle hadn't become necessary then, I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. I've provisioned the cave for a siege. A good idea, first rate idea. I think so. I placed four of my boys there as a guard, inside and out of sight. Nobody was to be hurt, while outside, but any attempt to enter. Well, we said just let anybody try it. Then I went out into the hills, and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite deposits, under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc., and about midnight I and my boys turned out and connected that wire with the cave. And nobody but you and I suspects where the other end of it goes to. We laid it underground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We shan't have to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization. It was the right move and the natural one, military necessity, and the changed condition of things. Well, what changes have come? We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but however, go on. Next we built a wire fence. Wire fence? Yes, you dropped the hint of it yourself two or three years ago. Oh, I remember, the time the church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a hopefuler season. Well, how have you arranged the fence? I start twelve immensely strong wires, naked, not insulated, from a big dynamo in the cave, dynamo with no brushes except a positive and a negative one. Yes, that's right. The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter. They make twelve independent fences, ten feet apart, that is to say, twelve circles within circles, and their ends come into the cave again. Right. Go on. The fences are fastened to heavy, oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground. That is good and strong. Yes, the wires have no ground connection outside the cave. They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo. There is a ground connection through the negative brush, the other ends of the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently. No, no, that won't do. Why? It's too expensive, uses up force for nothing. You don't want any ground connection except the one through the negative brush. The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently, and without any ground connection. Now then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence. You are using no power. You are spending no money. For there is only one ground connection till those horses come against the wire. The moment they touch it they form a connection with a negative brush through the ground and drop dead. Don't you see? You are using no energy until it is needed. Your lightning is there and ready like the load in a gun, but it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. Oh yes, the single ground connection. Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not only cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wires break or get tangled, no harm is done. No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire. Well, go on, the gatlings. Yes, that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle on a spacious platform six feet high I've grouped a battery of thirteen gatling guns and provided plenty of ammunition. That's it. They command every approach, and when the church's knights arrive there's going to be music. The brow of the precipice over the cave. I've got a wire fence there and a gatling. They won't drop any rocks down on us. Well, and the glass cylinder dynamite torpedoes? That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was ever planted. It's a belt forty feet wide and goes around the outer fence. Distance between it and the fence one hundred yards. Kind of neutral ground that space is. There isn't a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid them on the surface of the ground and sprinkled a layer of sand over them. It's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start in to hoe it once, and you'll see. You tested the torpedoes? Well, I was going to, but—but what? Why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a test? Yes, I know. But they're all right. I laid a few in the public road beyond our lines, and they've been tested. Oh, that alters the case. Who did it? A church committee? How kind. Yes, they came to command us to make submission. You see, they didn't really come to test the torpedoes. That was merely an incident. Did the committee make a report? Yes, they made one. You could have heard it a mile. Unanimous? That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs for the protection of future committees, and we've had no intruders since. Clarence, you've done a world of work and done it perfectly. We had plenty of time for it. There wasn't any occasion for hurry. We sat silent a while, thinking. Then my mind was made up, and I said, Yes, everything is ready. Everything is ship-shape. No detail is wanting. I know what to do now. So do I. Sit down and wait. No, sir. Rise up and strike. Do you mean it? Yes, indeed. The D-fensive isn't in my line, and the off-fensive is. That is, when I hold a fair hand, two-thirds as good a hand as the enemy, oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike. That's our game. A hundred one, you are right. When does the performance begin? Now we'll proclaim the Republic. Well, that will precipitate things, sure enough. It will make them buzz, I tell you. England will be a hornet's nest before noon tomorrow, if the church's hand hasn't lost its cunning, and we know it hasn't. Now you write, and I'll dictate thus. Proclamation. Be it known unto all, whereas the king, having died and left no air, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me, until a government shall have been created and set in motion. The monarchy has lapsed. It no longer exists. By consequence all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation. With the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also. Wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an established church. All men are become exactly equal. They are upon one common level, and religion is free. A republic is hereby proclaimed, as being the natural estate of a nation when other authority has ceased. It is the duty of the British people to meet together immediately and by their votes elect representatives and deliver into their hands the government. I signed it, the boss, and dated it from Merlin's Cave. Clarence said, Why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away. That is the idea. We strike, by the proclamation. Then it's their innings. Now have the thing set up and printed and posted, right off. That is, give the order. Then, if you've got a couple of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, hold for Merlin's Cave. I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is going to be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work. It's a pleasant old palace this is. I wonder if we shall ever again—but never mind about that. CHAPTER XIV In Merlin's Cave, Clarence and I, and fifty-two fresh, bright, well-educated, clean-minded young British boys. At dawn I sent an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop operations and remove all life to a safe distance as everything was going to be blown up by secret minds, and no telling at what moment therefore vacate at once. These people knew me and had confidence in my word. They would clear out without waiting to part their hair, and I could take my own time about dating the explosion. You couldn't hire one of them to go back during the century if the explosion was still impending. We had a week of waiting. It was not dull for me because I was writing all the time. During the first three days I finished turning my old diary into this narrative form. It only required a chapter or so to bring it down to date. The rest of the week I took up in writing letters to my wife. It was always my habit to write to Sandy every day whenever we were separate, and now I kept up the habit for love of it and of her, though I couldn't do anything with the letters, of course, after I had written them. But it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking. It was almost as if I was saying, Sandy, if you and Hello Central were here in the cave instead of only your photographs, what good times we could have. And then, you know, I could imagine the baby goo-gooing something out in reply, with its fists in its mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, and she laughing and admiring and worshipping, and now and then tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe throwing in a word of answer to me herself, and so on and so on. Well, don't you know I could sit there in the cave with my pen and keep it up that way by the hour with them. Why, it was almost like having us all together again. I had spies out every night, of course, to get news. Every report made things look more and more impressive. The hosts were gathering, gathering. Down all the roads and paths of England the knights were riding, and priests rode with them to hearten these original crusaders, this being the church's war. All the nobilities, big and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. This was all as was expected. We should thin out this sort of folk to such a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step to the front with their Republic, and ah, what a donkey I was! Toward the end of the week I began to get this large and disenchanting fact through my head that the mass of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the Republic for about one day, and there an end. The church, the nobles, and the gentry then turned one grand, all disapproving frown upon them and shriveled them into sheep. From that moment the sheep had begun to gather to the fold, that is to say the camps, and offer their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the righteous cause. Why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were in the righteous cause, and glorifying it, praying for it, sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. Imagine such human muck as this! Conceive of this folly! Yes, it was now death to the Republic everywhere, not a descending voice. All England was marching against us. Truly this was more than I had bargained for. I watched my fifty-two boys narrowly, watched their faces, their walk, their unconscious attitudes. For all these are a language, a language given us purposely, that it may betray us in times of emergency when we have secrets which we want to keep. I knew that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again in their minds and hearts, all England is marching against us, and evermore strenuously imploring attention with each repetition, even more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until even in their sleep they would find no rest from it. But hear the vague and flitting creatures of the dream say, all England, all England is marching against you. I knew all this would happen. I knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great that it would compel utterance. Therefore I must be ready with an answer at that time, an answer well chosen and tranquilizing. I was right. The time came. They had to speak. Poor lads, it was pitiful to see they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. At first their spokesmen could hardly find voice or words. But he presently got both. This is what he said, and he put it in the neat modern English taught him in my schools. We have tried to forget what we are, English boys. We have tried to put reason before sentiment, duty before love. Our minds approve, but our hearts reproach us. While apparently it was only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one mind and undisturbed by any troubling doubt. Each and every one of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you said, They have chosen. It is their affair. But think, the matter is altered. All England is marching against us. Oh, sir, consider. Reflect. These people are our people. They are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We love them. Do not ask us to destroy our nation. Well, it shows the value of looking ahead and being ready for a thing when it happens. If I hadn't foreseen this thing and been fixed, that boy would have had me. I couldn't have said a word. But I was fixed. I said, My boys, your hearts are in the right place. You have thought the worthy thought. You have done the worthy thing. You are English boys. You will remain English boys, and you will keep that name unsmerched. Give yourselves no further concern. Let your minds be at ease. Consider this. While all England is marching against us, who is in the van? Who, by the commonest rules of war, will march in the front? Answer me. The mounted host of mailed knights. True. They are thirty thousand strong. Acres deep they will march. Now observe. None but they will ever strike the sand-belt. Then there will be an episode. Immediately after the civilian multitude in the rear will retire to meet business engagements elsewhere. None but nobles and gentry are knights, and none but these will remain to dance to our music after that episode. It is absolutely true that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousand knights. Now speak, and it shall be as you decide. Shall we avoid the battle? Retire from the field? No! The shout was unanimous and hearty. Are you? Are you? Well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights. That joke brought out a good laugh. The boys' troubles vanished away, and they went gaily to their posts. Ah, they were a darling fifty-two. As pretty as girls, too. I was ready for the enemy now. Let the approaching big day come along. It would find us on deck. The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry on watch and the corral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass under the horizon and a faint sound which he thought to be military music. Breakfast was just ready. We sat down and ate. This over I made the boys a little speech, and then sent out a detail to man the battery with Clarence in command of it. The sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over the land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us with a steady drift and a lined front of a wave of the sea. Nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposing became its aspect. Yes, all England was there, apparently. Soon we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun struck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. Yes, it was a fine sight. I hadn't ever seen anything to beat it. At last we could make out details. All the front ranks, no telling how many acres deep, were horsemen, plumed knights in armor. Suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets, the slow walk burst into a gallop, and then, well, it was wonderful to see. Down swept that vast horseshoe wave, it approached the sand-belt, my breath stood still. Nearer, nearer, the strip of green turf beyond the yellow belt grew narrow, narrower still, became a mere ribbon in front of the horses, then disappeared under their hoofs. Great Scott! Why, the whole front of that host shot into the air with a thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments, and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was left of the multitude from our sight. Time for the second step in the plan of campaign. I touched a button, and shook the bones of England loose from her spine. In that explosion all our noble civilization factories went up in the air and disappeared from the earth. It was a pity, but it was necessary. We could not afford to let the enemy turn our own weapons against us. Now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours I had ever endured. We waited in a silent solitude, enclosed by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. We couldn't see over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. But at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another quarter-hour the land was clear, and our curiosity was enabled to satisfy itself. No living creature was in sight. We now perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. The dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide all around us, and cast up an embarkment some twenty-five feet high on both borders of it. As to destruction of life, it was amazing. Moreover, it was beyond estimate. Of course, we could not count the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogenous protoplasm with alloys of iron and buttons. No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some wounded in the rear ranks who were carried off the field under cover of the wall of smoke. There would be sickness among the others—there always is, after an episode like that. But there would be no reinforcements. This was the last stand of the chivalry of England. It was all that was left of the order after the recent annihilating wars. So I felt quite safe in believing that the utmost force that could for the future be brought against us would be but small—that is, of knights. I therefore issued a congratulatory proclamation to my army in these words. Soldiers, champions of human liberty and equality, your general congratulates you. In the pride of his strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant enemy came against you. You were ready. The conflict was brief, on your side glorious. This mighty victory, having been achieved utterly without loss, stands without example in history. So long as the planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the battle of the sand-belt will not perish out of the memories of men. The boss. I read it well, and the applause I got was very gratifying to me. I then wound up with these remarks. The war with the English nation, as a nation, is at an end. The nation has retired from the field and the war. Before it can be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign is the only one that is going to be fought. It will be brief, the briefest in history. Also the most destructive to life, considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to numbers engaged, we are done with the nation. Henceforth we deal only with the knights. English knights can be killed, but they cannot be conquered. We know what is before us. While one of these men remains alive, our task is not finished. The war is not ended. We will kill them all. Loud and long continued applause. I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by the dynamite explosion, merely a lookout of a couple of boys to announce the enemy when he should appear again. Next I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond our lines on the south to turn a mountain brook that was there and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging it in such a way that I could make instant use of it in an emergency. The forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each and were to relieve each other every two hours. In ten hours the work was accomplished. It was nightfall now and I withdrew my pickets. The one who had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight but visible with a glass only. He also reported that a few knights had been feeling their way toward us and had driven some cattle across our lines but that the knights themselves had not come very near. That was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, you see. They wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror on them again. They would grow bolder in the night perhaps. I believed I knew what project they would attempt because it was plainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their places and as ignorant as they were. I mentioned it to Clarence. I think you are right, said he. It is the obvious thing for them to try. Well then, I said, if they do it they are doomed. Certainly. They won't have the slightest show in the world. Of course they won't. It's dreadful, Clarence. It seems an awful pity. The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind for thinking of it and worrying over it. So at last, to quiet my conscience, I framed this message to the knights. To the honourable, the commander of the insurgent chivalry of England. You fight in vain. We know your strength, if one may call it by that name. We know that at the utmost you cannot bring against us above five and twenty thousand knights. Therefore you have no chance, none whatever. Reflect. We are well equipped, well fortified. We number fifty-four. Fifty-four what? Men? No. Mines. The capableest in the world. A force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of England. Be advised. We offer you your lives. For the sake of your families, do not reject the gift. We offer you this chance, and it is the last. Throw down your arms. Surrender unconditionally to the Republic, and all will be forgiven. Signed the boss. I read it to Clarence and said I proposed to send it by a flag of truce. He laughed, the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said, Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what these nobilities are. Now let us save a little time in trouble. Consider me the commander of the knights, yonder. Now then, you are the flag of truce. Approach and deliver me your message, and I will give you your answer. I humoured the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard of the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. For answer Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up a scornful lip, and said with lofty disdain, Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the base-born nave who sent him. Other answer have I none. How empty is theory and presence of fact. And this was just fact and nothing else. It was the thing that would have happened. There was no getting around that. I tore up the paper and granted my mistimed sentimentalities of permanent rest. Then to business. I tested the electric signals from the gotling platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right. I tested and retested those which commanded the fences. These were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the brook connection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it, three revolver shots in quick succession. Century duty was discarded for the night, and the corral left empty of life. I ordered that quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned down to a glimmer. As soon as it was good and dark I shut off the current from all the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering our side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of it, and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it was too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The stillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night sounds of the country. They were of nightbirds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow, lowing of far-off kind. But these didn't seem to break the stillness. They only intensified it, and added a gruesome melancholy to it into the bargain. I presently gave up looking. The night shut down so black, but I kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for I judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed. However, I had to wait a long time. At last I caught what you may call indistinct glimpses of sound-dulled metallic sound. I pricked up my ears then, and held my breath, for this was the sort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound thickened and approached from toward the north. Presently I heard it at my own level, the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred feet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear along that ridge. Human heads? I couldn't tell. It mightn't be anything at all. You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heard that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. It augmented fast. It spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this fact. An armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes, these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. We could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier. I groped my way back to the corral now. I had seen enough. I went to the platform and signalled to turn the current on to the two inner fences. Then I went into the cave and found everything satisfactory there. Nobody awake but the working watch. I woke Clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, and that I believed all the nights were coming for us in a body. It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached, we could expect the ditch's ambuscated thousands to swarm up over the embankment and make an assault and be followed immediately by the rest of their army. Clarence said, They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make preliminary observations. Why not take the lightning off the outer fences and give them a chance? I've already done it, Clarence. Did you ever know me to be inhospitable? No, you are a good heart. I want to go and be a reception committee. I will go, too. We crossed the corral and laid down together between the two inside fences. Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself, and soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. We had had to feel our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence broke off and said, What is that? What is what? That thing yonder. What thing? Where? There, beyond you a little piece, dark something, a dull shape of some kind against the second fence. I gazed and he gazed. I said, Could it be a man, Clarence? No, I think not. If you notice it looks a lit. Why, it is a man leaning on the fence. I certainly believe it is. Let us go and see. We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close and then looked up. Yes, it was a man, a dim great figure in armor standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire, and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as a doornail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a statue, no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him or not, features too dim and shadowed. We heard muffled sounds approaching and we sank down to the ground where we were. We made out another night vaguely. He was coming very stealthily and feeling his way. He was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the first night, and startled slightly when he discovered him. He stood a moment, no doubt wondering why the other night didn't move on. Then he said in a low voice, Why, dreams thou here, good Sir Mark? And then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead man, you see. Killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something awful about it. These early birds came scattering along after each other about one every five minutes in our vicinity during half an hour. They brought no armor of offense but their swords. As a rule they carried the sword ready in the hand and put it forward and found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark when the night that caused it was so far away as to be invisible to us, but we knew what had happened all the same. Poor fellow he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected. We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron clad, and this sort of thing was going on right along and was very creepy there in the dark and lonesomeness. We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected to walk upright for convenience's sake. We argued that if discerned we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem to have any spears along. While it was a curious trip, everywhere dead men were lying outside the second fence not plainly visible but still visible, and we counted fifteen of those pathetic statues, dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire. One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated. Our current was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment we guessed what it was. It was a surprise and force coming. Whispered, Clarence to go and wake the army and notify it to wait in silence in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of detail, but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up beyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men. Our camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead, a bulwark, a breastwork of corpses, you may say. One terrible thing about this thing was the absence of human voices. There were no cheers, no war cries, being intent upon surprise these men moved as noiselessly as they could. And all was when the front rank was near enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get a shout ready. Of course they struck the fatal line and went down without testifying. I sent a current through the third fence now, and almost immediately through the fourth and fifth so quickly were the gaps filled up. I believed the time was come now for my climax. I believed that that whole army was in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to find out, so I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame on the top of our precipice. Land, what a sight! We were enclosed in three walls of dead men. All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, with astonishment. There was just one instant for me to utilize their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, in another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires would have gone down before it, but that lost instant lost them their opportunity for ever. While even that slight fragment of time was still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and struck the whole host dead in their tracks. There was a groan you could hear. It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. It swelled out on the night with awful pathos. A glance showed that the rest of the enemy, perhaps ten thousand strong, were between us and the encircling ditch and pressing forward to the assault. Consequently we had them all, and had them past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired the three appointed revolver shots, which meant turn on the water. There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep. Stand to your guns, men! Open fire! The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire. Then they broke, faced about, and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment. The three fourths reached it and plunged over to death by drowning. Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated. The campaign was ended. We fifty-four were masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while, say an hour, happened a thing by my own fault, which—but I have no heart to write that. Let the record end here. END OF CHAPTER 43 I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we too go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was strenuous against the project. I said that if there were many, we could do but little for them, and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them anyway. But he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed, so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first wounded maul who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. When the boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That night was Sir Malian Groves. As I found out by tearing off his helmet, he will not ask for help any more. We carried the boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days after the boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming and that she was starving. The boss had been getting along very well and had amused himself with finishing up his record. We were glad to have this woman, for we were short-handed. We were in a trap, you see, a trap of our own making. If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us. If we moved out of our defences, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered, in turn, we were conquered. The boss recognized this. We all recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy, yes, but the boss could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others. Tomorrow—tomorrow it is here, and with that the end. About midnight I awoke and saw that hag making curious passes in the air above the boss's head and face and wondered what it meant. Everybody but the dynamo watch lay steeped in sleep. There was no sound. The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery and started tiptoeing toward the door. I called out, Stop! What have you been doing? She halted and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction. Ye were conquerors, ye are conquered. These others are perishing, you also. Ye shall all die in this place, every one, except him. He sleepeth now, and shall sleep, thirteen centuries. I am Merlin. Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled about like a drunken man and presently fetched up against one of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet, apparently, he is still laughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse turns to dust. The boss has never stirred, sleeps like a stone. If he does not wake today we shall understand what kind of sleep it is, and his body will then be born to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for the rest of us, well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place he will write the fact here and loyally hide this manuscript with the boss, our dear good chief whose property it is, be he alive or dead. The End of the Manuscript Final PS by M. T. The dawn was come when I laid the manuscript aside. The rain had almost ceased. The world was gray and sad. The exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger's room and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I could hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still heard the voice. I peeped in. The man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings and ejaculations went on. I spoke, merely a word, to call his attention. His glassy eyes and his ashy face were a light in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome. Oh, Sandy! You are come at last! How I have longed for you! Sit by me! Do not leave me! Never leave me again, Sandy! Never again! Where is your hand? Give it me, dear! Let me hold it there. Now! All is well! All is peace, and I am happy again. We are happy again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim! So vague! You are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here! And that is blessedness sufficient. And I have your hand. Don't take it away. It is for only a little while. I shall not require it long. Was that the child? Hello, Central! She doesn't answer. A sleep, perhaps? Bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye. Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost myself a moment, and I thought you were gone. Have I been sick long? It must be so. It seems months to me, and such dreams. Such strange and awful dreams, Sandy. Dreams that were as real as reality. Delirium, of course, but so real. Why, I thought the king was dead. I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get home. I thought there was a revolution. In the fantastic frenzy of these dreams I thought that Clarence and I, and a handful of my cadets, fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England. But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that was as real as the rest. Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger, and forlorn, in that strange England with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you, between me and my home and my friends, between me and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living. It was awful, awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy, stay by me every moment. Don't let me go out of my mind again. Death is nothing. Let it come. But not with those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams. I cannot endure that again, Sandy. He lay muttering incoherently some little time, then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end was at hand, with the first suggestion of the death-rattle in his throat, he started up slightly, and seemed to listen. Then he said, A bugle? It is the king. The drawbridge there, man, the battlements, turn out the— He was getting up his last effect, but he never finished it. End of Chapter 44 and End of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain