APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/marktwain/conneticut/CHAP30_44

Text File | 1994-09-11 | 223.6 KB | 5,582 lines

CHAPTER XXX.
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 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 the 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."

"Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all."

"True. But man or beast, it will 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 will 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 dig-
nity aside and followed. I did not want to think of
what was happening in the hut -- I couldn't bear it; I
wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into
the first subject that lay under that one in my mind:

"I have had the disease those people died of, and
so have nothing to fear; but if you have not had it
also --"

He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and
it was his conscience that was troubling him:

"These young men have got free, they say -- but
HOW? It is not likely that their lord hath set them
free."

"Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped."

"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so,
and your suspicion doth confirm it, you having the
same fear.

"I should not call it by that name though. I do
suspect that they escaped, but if they did, I am not
sorry, certainly."

"I am not sorry, I THINK -- but --"

"What is it? What is there for one to be troubled
about?"

"IF they did escape, then are we bound in duty to
lay hands upon them and deliver them again to their
lord; for it is not seemly that one of his quality 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 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 countenanced 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 get-
ting a good deal of an insurance business started, and
was also training some horses and building some steam
fire-engines, with an eye to a paid fire department by
and by. The priests opposed both my fire and life in-
surance, 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 in-
dustries more or less, but I got even on my Accident
business. As a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some
times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty poor
arguments when they come glibly from a supersti-
tion-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 awhile, in the thick darkness and
stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance,
and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away
murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night. Some-
times 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 grewsome sight. Straightway there was an ear-
splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of
heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge.
No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the
chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn't
we? The lightning came quick and sharp now, and
the place was alternately 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, belike they had the right -- let him hang."

"But --"

"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And
for yet another reason. When the lightning cometh
again -- there, look abroad."

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

"It is not 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. Pres-
ently another case of the kind occurred, and then an-
other 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 every-
where 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 storm 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 hospitality at the hut of a charcoal
burner, and got what was to be had. A woman was
up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw
shake-down, on the clay floor. The woman seemed
uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had
lost our way and been wandering in the woods all
night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we
had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house
of Abblasoure. 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 im-
mensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of
course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to
run across a person of the king's humble appearance
who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a
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 quan-
tity. And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions,
salt, and the national black breadÑmade out of horse-
feed. The woman told us about the affair of the even-
ing before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody
was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames. The
country-side 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 yeomen 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 copse 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 peculiar 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 butch-
ered, and two yeomen 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 to reason that the bolts were fast; where-
fore 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."

"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and
ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their
track, for these murthered 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 some-
how changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' con-
tinued 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 it 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 the 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
condition 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 de-
test 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
favoring circumstances, was something -- in fact, it
was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a
man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside.

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just
the twin of the Southern "poor white" of the far
future. The king presently showed impatience, and
said:

"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will mis-
carry. Think ye the criminals will abide in their
father's house? They are fleeing, they are not wait-
ing. 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 resisters of the gabelle 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 gait, but there was
no eagerness in it. By and by I said:

"What relation were these men to you -- cousins?"

He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let
him, and stopped, trembling.

"Ah, my God, how know ye that?"

"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess."

"Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they
were, too."

"Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?"

He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said,
hesitatingly:

"Ye-s."

"Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!"

It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.

"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye
mean that ye would not betray me an I failed of my
duty."

"Duty? There is 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 ap-
prehension 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 caste, I take it. You would not tell any-
body 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 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 rejoice to-
day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly
sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in
that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the
words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in
my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient.
Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I
am ready."

There it was, you 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 mis-
take is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good
enough material for a republic in the most degraded
people that ever existed -- even the Russians; plenty
of manhood in them -- even in the Germans -- if one
could but force it out of its timid and suspicious
privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any
throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever
supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us
hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till
Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the
throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound
out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted,
and the whole government placed in the hands of the
men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes,
there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while.


CHAPTER XXXI.
MARCO

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 Abblasoure and put justice on the track of
those murderers and get back home again. And mean-
time I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled
yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in
Arthur's kingdom: the behavior -- born of nice and
exact subdivisions of caste -- of chance passers-by
toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who
trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat
washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply
reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the
small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and
gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a counte-
nance 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 them-
selves that we couldn't make out what the matter was.
However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying 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 acquaintance-
ships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as
many questions as I wanted to. A thing which natur-
ally 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 sum 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 cen-
tury. In the North a carpenter got three dollars a
day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty -- pay-
able in Confederate shinplasters 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 milrays, lots of
mills, lots of cents, 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 goldsmith's. 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 informa-
tion 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
moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many
dollars or cents or mills or milrays 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 black-
smith, Dowley. He was a live man and a brisk talker,
and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was
doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich,
hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was
very proud of having such a man for a friend. He
had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big
establishment which bought so much of his charcoal,
but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar
terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I
fraternized at once; I had had just such picked men,
splendid fellows, under me in the Colt Arms Factory.
I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to
come out to Marco's Sunday, and dine with us.
Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and 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 mo-
ment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when
he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the
boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out
there, too, the 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. Ye 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 bailiff, it is true; but I am
not poor, nevertheless. I have been very fortunate
this year -- you would be astonished to know how I
have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say
I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like
this and never care THAT for the expense!" and I
snapped my fingers. I could see myself rise a foot 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 remark-
ing upon it to-day, just before you came back from
the village; for although he wouldn't be likely to say
such a thing to you -- because Jones isn't a talker, and
is diffident in society -- he has a good heart and a
grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is
well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very
hospitable toward us --"

"Ah, brother, 'tis 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 spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single
week I spend -- but never mind about that -- you'd
never believe it anyway."

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here
and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shop-
keepers 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 coarse tow-linen and linsey-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 hand's-breadth 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 Dame Phyllis and let him pay for them with-
out 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 --"

"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 edgeways, you talk so much. You
ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good form, you
know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff
-- and don't forget to remember to not let on to Jones
that you know he had anything to do with it. You
can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is.
He's a farmer -- pretty fairly well-to-do farmer -- an
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 Sheol of a
farmer; thinks he's old Grayback from Wayback; 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 acci-
dents; 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 drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck
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 wheelwright, which left the field free to
me. For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way;
it's got to be theatrical or I don't take any interest in
it. I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to
corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down
a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to
see if he could read it. He could, and was proud to
show that he could. He said he had been educated by
a priest, and could both read and write. He ran it
through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a
pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little
concern like that. I was not only providing a swell
dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. I ordered
that the things be carted out and delivered at the
dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday
evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday.
He said I could depend upon his promptness and exacti-
tude, it was the rule of the house. He also observed
that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the
Marcos 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 merest 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.


CHAPTER XXXII.
DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION

WELL, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Sat-
urday 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 addi-
tion to the dinner-materials, which called for a suffi-
ciently 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 sizeable 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 in-
spiring that the sight of it paid me well for the inter-
ruptions 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 and 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 thing 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 onto 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 first 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 tow-linens
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 neighbors wend-
ing I had mayhap 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 is 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 even true," said the wheelwright, with bated
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," added 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, ye shall say yourselves what
mine equipment is. " He waved his hand in fine
gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom
of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved;
speak as ye would speak; an I were not here."

"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workman-
ship 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 cat and drink from withal," said
the mason, impressively. "And I say it as knowing
God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, 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 conde-
scension, "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;
wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not
these matters but is willing to receive any he as his
fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body,
be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token
of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth
we are equals -- equals "-- and he smiled around on
the company with the satisfaction of a god who is
doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite
well aware of it.

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised
reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets
go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was
mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was
being called upon by greatness.

The dame brought out the table now, and set it
under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it
being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. But
the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a
body oozing easy indifference at every pore, 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 black-
smith'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 -- whew! 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
awed 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 pomps 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 "Oh's"
and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes.
She fetched crockery -- new, and plenty of it; new
wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer,
fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton,
a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white
wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid
everything far and away in the shade that ever that
crowd had seen before. And while they sat there just
simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved
my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son
emerged from space and said he had come to collect.

"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is
the amount? give us the items."

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed
men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled
over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admira-
tion surged over Marco's:

   2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   200
   8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . .   800
   3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700
   2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   100
   3 hens  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
   1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
   3 dozen eggs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   150
   1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . .   450
   1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
   1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   800
   1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500
   2 crockery dinner sets  . . . . . . . . . 6,000
   2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800
   1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
     and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600
   8 wooden goblets  . . . . . . . . . . . .   800
   Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000
   1 deal table  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
   8 stools  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
   2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000

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 the most per-
fect calmness.

"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light mo-
ment are placed together under a head hight sundries.
If it would like you, I will sepa --"

"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 mil-
rays!"

The wheelwright 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 chargeth 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 to the table. Ah, you should have seen them stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked
me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he
could go to town and -- I interrupted:

"What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense!
Take the whole. Keep the change."

There was an amazed murmur to this effect:

"Verily this being is MADE of money! He throweth
it 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" -- hand-
ing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no conse-
quence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in
solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces
with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others
and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is.
Come, fall to."

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 69.2.6 (sixty-nine
cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden
here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four
dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but
acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums.
Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up
and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon
that's been stepped on by a cow.


CHAPTER XXXIII.
SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY

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 had had some
little gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but
any commoner's 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 -- Gutenburg,
Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, 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. Marco 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 -- busi-
ness 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 air,
and began to put questions which he considered pretty
awkward ones for me, and they did have something of
that look:

"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a
master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swine-
herd?"

"Twenty-five milrays 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, dauber, mason,
painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?"

"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day."

"Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred!
With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day!
I count out 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
milrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen my-
self, within the week. 'Rah for protection -- to Sheol
with free-trade!"

And his face shone upon the company like a sun-
burst. 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:

"What do you pay a pound for salt?"

"A hundred milrays."

"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and
mutton -- when you buy it?" That was a neat hit; it
made the color come.

"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say
75 milrays the pound."

"WE pay 33. What do you pay for eggs?"

"Fifty milrays the dozen."

"We pay 20. What do you pay for beer?"

"It costeth us 8 1/2 milrays the pint."

"We get it for 4; 25 bottles for a cent. What do
you pay for wheat?"

"At the rate of 900 milrays the bushel."

"We pay 400. What do you pay for a man's tow-
linen suit?"

"Thirteen cents."

"We pay 6. What do you pay for a stuff gown
for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?"

"We pay 8.4.0."

"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents
and four mills, we pay only four cents." I prepared
now to sock it to him. l said: "Look here, dear
friend, WHAT'S BECOME OF YOUR HIGH WAGES YOU WERE
BRAGGING SO ABOUT A FEW MINUTES AGO?" -- and I looked
around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I
had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand
and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he
was being tied at all. "What's become of those noble
high wages of yours? -- I seem to have knocked the
stuffing all out of them, it appears to me."

But if you will believe me, he merely looked sur-
prised, 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, from
sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling in-
tellect he fetched this out:

"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is PROVED
that our wages be double thine; how then may it be
that thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing? -- an
miscall 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 -- ye have con-
fessed 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 -- ye're confessing it again, ye're confess-
ing it again!"

"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you!
What I say is this. With us HALF a dollar buys more
than a DOLLAR buys with you -- and THEREFORE it stands
to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense,
that our wages are HIGHER than yours."

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:

"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours
are the higher, and with the same breath ye 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 8.4.0, 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 ye're conf --"

"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple;
this time you'll understand it. For instance, it takes
your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a
day -- 7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in forty
days -- two days SHORT of 7 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. Dowley spoke at last -- and be-
trayed 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 -- ye 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 jour-
neymen goes out and buys the following articles:

  "1 pound of salt;
   1 dozen eggs;
   1 dozen pints of beer;
   1 bushel of wheat;
   1 tow-linen suit;
   5 pounds of beef;
   5 pounds of mutton.

"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32
working days to earn the money -- 5 weeks and 2
days. Let him come to us and work 32 days at HALF
the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade
under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29
days' work, and he will have about 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; it 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
gulled 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
30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100;
and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had ad-
vanced 40 per cent. 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. Un-
deserved 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 un-
crowned head that had moved through the clouds of
any political firmament for centuries, sitting here ap-
parently defeated in argument by an ignorant country
blacksmith! And I could see that those others were
sorry for me -- which made me blush till I could smell
my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place;
feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt -- wouldn't
YOU have struck below the belt to get even? Yes, you
would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what
I did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm only saying
that I was mad, and ANYBODY would have done it.

Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I
don't plan out a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as
long as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm going to hit
him a lifter. And I don't jump at him all of a sudden,
and risk making a blundering half-way 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 com-
fortable, 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 un-
written 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 to-day. 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, goodman, 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 3 cents a day,
and mechanics 6."

"I would't I might die now and live then!" inter-
rupted 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 mechanic's
wages will be --  mind you, this is law, not guesswork;
a mechanic's wages will then be TWENTY cents a day!"

There was a general gasp of awed astonishment,
Dickon 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 ex-
citement.

"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 mechanic's average wage will be
TWO HUNDRED cents a day!"

It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of
them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes.
Then the coal-burner said prayerfully:

"Might I but live to see it!"

"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug.

"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye 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 -- mf! it's the income of an
angel!"

"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as re-
gards wages. In that remote day, that man will earn,
with ONE week's work, that bill of goods which it takes
you upwards of FIFTY weeks to earn now. Some other
pretty surprising things are going to happen, too.
Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every
spring, what the particular wage of each kind of
mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?"

"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town coun-
cil; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye 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?"

"Hm! That WERE an idea! The master that's to
pay him the money is the one that's rightly concerned
in that matter, ye 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, to coin a 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.
Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong
and humiliation to settle."

"Do ye believe -- "

"That he actually will help to fix his own wages?
Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then."

"Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered
the prosperous smith.

"Oh, -- 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 in-
stitution. 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 punish-
ment 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 clodding him; and they laugh
themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod
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, gan-
grened, presently cut off? -- or an eye knocked out,
maybe both eyes?"

"It is true, God knoweth 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?"

Dowley 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 abol-
ished. 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
Dowley, "for you MUST inform. So saith 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 1 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 who-
ever knows he did it and doesn't inform, they also shall
be fined and pilloried. Now it seems to me unfair,
Dowley, 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 Dowley so
nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected any-
thing 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 pro-
duced, 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 treat-
ment from any but their own families and very closest
intimates. Appeal to ME to be gentle, to be fair, to
be generous? Of course, they wanted to, but they
couldn't dare.


CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES

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 machin-
ery; you see, they were totally unused to it. The
miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of tough-
ened 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 milrays, 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 that 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 cen-
tury, yet none would suspect how and when it origi-
nated.

The king joined us, about this time, mightily re-
freshed 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 com-
placent 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; confound it, why
must he go and choose such a time as this?

I was right. He began, straight off, in the most
innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly 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 fifing
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 line of battle,
a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom
of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance:

"-- were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not
to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this
point, some contending that the onion is but an un-
wholesome 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.

"-- whileas others do yet maintain, with much show
of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instanc-
ing 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 espe-
cially when one doth assuage the asperities of their
nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the
wayward cabbage --"

The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's
eyes, and one of them muttered, "These be errors,
every one -- God hath surely smitten the mind of this
farmer." I was in miserable apprehension; I sat upon
thorns.

"-- and further instancing the known truth that in
the case of animals, the young, which may be called
the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all con-
fessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and
sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in con-
nection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome
appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious
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. "St. George for Britain!" and he
downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but I
laid him out like nothing. The three gathered them-
selves 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, hammer-
ing away with what might was left in them. Ham-
mering each other -- for we stepped aside and looked
on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and
pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention
to business of so many bulldogs. We looked on with-
out 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 sud-
denly 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 gait, and soon left the
sounds far behind and modified to a murmur. We
struck a stream and darted into it. We waded swiftly
down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three
hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a
great bough sticking out over the water. We climbed
up on this bough, 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 cur-
tained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was
doubtful. I believed we could crawl along a branch
and get into the next tree, and I judged it worth while
to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though
the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing
to connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satis-
factory 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, 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 reason that we were advantaged by no par-
lous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no
mighty way from where we took the water."

"Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I
was hoping better things."

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van
was drifting under us, on both sides of the water. A
voice called a halt from the other bank, and said:

"An they were so minded, they could get to yon
tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch
ground. Ye 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 be-
fore; 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 near-sighted, 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 comer's 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 prison-
ers. Another man started up; the bridging bough
was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that
furnished the bridge. The king ordered me to play
Horatius and keep the bridge. For a while the enemy
came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of
each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him
as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirits 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 the tree against
the whole country-side.

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 pos-
sibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't
very likely; we were well protected by boughs 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
boughs 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 recog-
nized 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-clamors. I got enough breath to
say:

"Proceed, my liege; after you is 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 powwow and racket
were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and con-
fusion and thick-falling blows. Suddenly some horse-
men tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice
shouted:

"Hold -- or ye 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 coun-
tenance, with complexion and features marred by dis-
sipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many
spaniels. The gentleman inspected us critically, then
said sharply to the peasants:

"What are ye 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 honored 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 purposed
no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and
protection these people would have killed us. As you
have divined, 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 led-horses and mount these people."

"Yes, my lord."

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants.
We traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein 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 breakfasted and made ready to start.

My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that
moment with indolent grace, and said:

"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road,
which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord,
the earl Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain
the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with
ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet,
whenso 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 gait, and in con-
versation learned that my lord Grip was a very great
personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey
beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that
it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered
the market square of the town. We dismounted, and
left our thanks once more for my lord, and then ap-
proached 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 con-
trast, 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 a fury,
and said:

"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?"

My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:

"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 nought 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'rt insane, man. It were better, and more
in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that
we are NOT freemen."

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people
so often know the laws; by words, not by effects.
They take a MEANING, and get to be very vivid, when
you come to apply them to yourself.

All hands shook their heads and looked disap-
pointed; some turned away, no longer interested. The
orator said -- and this time in the tones of business,
not of sentiment:

"An 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 may 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
requireth you to prove ye are not."

I said:

"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; 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 unwarrantably inconveni-
ence your master --"

"MASTER, idiot!" stormed the king. "I have no
master, I myself am the m--"

"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 in-
fernal law had existed in our own South in my own
time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and
under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that
they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery
without the circumstance making any particular im-
pression upon me; but the minute law and the auction
block came into my personal experience, a thing
which had been merely improper before became sud-
denly 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 dull 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
onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear
of his procession. We took up our line of march and
passed out of Cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me
unaccountably strange and odd that the King of Eng-
land 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.
A PITIFUL INCIDENT

IT'S a world of surprises. The king brooded; this
was natural. 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 or the baldest conceit; I
wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for
me to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argu-
ment 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 the 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, for 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 me a look which said
plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now,
with this kind of folk, you would see a different re-
sult." 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's 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? -- why, 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 Englishman
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
it prudent to meddle in the 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 I 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 as sure 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 some-
thing.

Now and then we had an adventure. One night we
were overtaken by a snow-storm 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 mat-
ters worse, for they drove us further from the road and
from likelihood of succor. 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 past moving and threat-
ened with death. Our master was nearly beside him-
self. He stirred up the living, and made us 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 see-
ing 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 commer-
cial value by the same fire which took away the inno-
cent life of that poor harmless mother. That was the
sort of master we had. I took HIS number. That
snow-storm 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 riffraff
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, knead-
ing 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, shouting profane and ribald
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 under-sheriff 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 mete 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 fel-
lows 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 mite
to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a treacher-
ous law, instant destruction fell upon this 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 cent, 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 per-
mission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her
mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when
she was overborne 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 disposi-
tion 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; add
his murder to this that is to be now done here; and
charge them both where they belong -- to the rulers
and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is 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 need it 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 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 that 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.


CHAPTER XXXVI.
AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK

LONDON -- to a slave -- was a sufficiently interest-
ing 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
counterfeiting pennies. It was the sight of a newsboy
-- and I couldn't get at him! Still, I had one com-
fort -- here was proof that Clarence was still alive and
banging away. I meant to be with him before long;
the thought 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 lock-pick. 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 hap-
pened 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 always
provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck
stubbornly to it -- twenty-two dollars. He wouldn't
bate a cent. The king was greatly admired, because
of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against
him, and he wasn't salable; 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 gar-
ment was fastened together in front. There were
three of them. He had disappointed me twice, be-
cause he did not come quite close enough to me to
make my project entirely safe; but this time I suc-
ceeded; 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
straightway a chance to be sad again. For when the
purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master sud-
denly spoke up and said what would be worded thus --
in modern English:

"I'll 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.

"An ye will keep the offer open --"

"'Tis open till the morrow 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. To-night 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 to-night. 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, proprietors
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; for 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
of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was
naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and pre-
pared to spring for my man the moment he should
bend over me.

But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed ab-
sently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently
thinking about something else; then set 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 tremen-
dous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of
our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sym-
pathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all direc-
tions; 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 de-
struction! 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, he was the wrong
man!


CHAPTER XXXVII.
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 over night, 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 the
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 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-master's. 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 conde-
scend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his ac-
count of the matter.

"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against
their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended."

"Yes. 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
'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the
locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured.
When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with
despair, and threw himself upon his people with his
heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in
other and divers 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."

"Marry, the trial is over."

"Over!"

"Would they be a week, think you -- and the
matter so simple? They were not the half of 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 par-
ticulars like to that. They condemned them in a body.
Wit 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?"

"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some
say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure
they may find the missing one meantime."

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 con-
fined?"

"The outside of it -- yes. The inside of it -- but
ye 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 con-
cealed 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 doth amaze me! How should such as you
know aught 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 gabbling. Call the palace."

He made the call.

"Now, then, call Clarence."

"Clarence WHO?"

"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clar-
ence; 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 cap-
tured 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 back:

"They don't know anything about the telegraph;
they haven't had any experience yet, the line to Lon-
don 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 facts. 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 Launcelot
in the lead; and send them on the jump. Let them
enter by the southwest 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'm
a friend of yours and a dead-head; 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 no snow or mud, they would
probably make a seven-mile gait; 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 scrape, with-
out 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 pard 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, be-
tween him and me; before he could break it down, I
should be far away and engaged in slipping into a suc-
cession of baffling disguises which would soon get me
into a sort of raiment which was a surer 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 re-
proached him for betraying me. He was more sur-
prised 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 thou'rt 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:

"Ye 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 to-morrow 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 -- ye say true. And free
likewise to go where ye will, so ye 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:

"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell
us, then, what you KNOW."

"That ye will all be hanged TO-DAY, at mid-after-
noon! Oho! that shot hit home! Lean upon me."

The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My
knights 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 to-day. Well, the missing slave was found.


CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE

NEARING four in the afternoon. The scene was
just outside the walls of London. A cool, com-
fortable, 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 hum-
ble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out
of the mouth of their master his Serene and Sacred
Raggedness!"

But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty
and sat under this rain of contempt and insult un-
moved. 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 the 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 plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed
from the endless procession of webby wheels!

I waved my right arm as Launcelot 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 an
effect. Well, it was noble to see Launcelot and the
boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave 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 gait and bear-
ing of a king, after all.

I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation
all around, 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."


CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE YANKEE'S 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 adver-
tising 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 illus-
   trious Kni8ht, SIR SAGRAMOR LE
   DESIROUS naving condescended to
   meet the King's Minister, Hank Mor-
    gan, the which is surnamed The Boss,
   for satisfgction 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 a l outrance, sith the said offence
   was of a deadly sort, admitting of no
   comPosition.

             DE PAR LE ROI


Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this
effect:

   It will be observed, by a gl7nce at our
   advertising columns, that the commu-
   nity is to be favored with a treat of un-
   usual interest in the tournament line.
   The n ames of the artists are warrant of
   good enterTemment. The box-office
   will be open at noon of the 13th; ad-
   mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro-
   ceeds to go to the hospital fund  The
   royal pair and all the Court will be pres-
   ent. With these exceptions, and the
   press and the clergy, the free list is strict-
   ly susPended. Parties are hereby warn-
   ed 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 begevolence stretches out its help-
   ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov-
   ing 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 stop-
   cock on its compassion, but says Here
   flows the stream, let ALL come and
   drink! Turn out, all hands! fetch along
   your dou3hnuts 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.
   N.B. This is the first tournament
   under the new law, whidh allow each
   combatant to use any weapon he may pre-
   fer. 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 Sagramor had found
the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was
not because the second (official) personage in the king-
dom was one of the duellists; 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 duel between
mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty
magicians; a duel 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 en-
chanters 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
duel 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
Sagramor'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 Sagramor, so
weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could
accomplish nothing; against him no known enchant-
ments could prevail. These facts were sure; regard-
ing 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 Sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his
enchanted mail 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 enter-
ing the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its
victim.

Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant
spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on
the morning of the 16th. The mammoth grand-stand
was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and
packed with several acres of small-fry 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-
colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-
standing sentinel at every door and a shining shield
hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight.
You see, every knight 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 Sagramor, 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 Sagramor, an im-
posing 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.

And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout.
There was a wondering and eloquent silence for a mo-
ment, 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 comfortablest
of gymnast costumes -- flesh-colored tights from neck
to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and
bareheaded. My horse was not above medium size,
but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watch-
springs, and just a greyhound to go. He was a beauty,
glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born,
except for bridle and ranger-saddle.

The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came
cumbrously 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 grand-stand and faced our king
and queen, to whom we made obeisance. The queen
exclaimed:

"Alack, Sir Boss, wilt 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 Sagramor which
turned him into Hamlet's ghost; the king made a
sign, the bugles blew, Sir Sagramor 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
favor 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 Sagramor lost his
temper, and at once changed his tactics and set him-
self 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 at 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
Sagramor out of the saddle! Great Scott, 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 every-
where, 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 knight-errantry hive was just humming now, and
my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. The
moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor 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 Sagramor, and
that couldn't take long where there were so many
hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight
off -- Sir Hervis de Revel.

BZZ! Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged:
he passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling
around his neck; a second or so later, FST! his 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 ironclads, and they
stopped and consulted together. As a result, they de-
cided that it was time to waive etiquette and send their
greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of
that little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and
after him Sir Galahad. 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 Launcelot himself!

A proud moment for me? I should think so.
Yonder was Arthur, King of Britain; yonder was
Guenever; yes, and whole tribes of little provincial
kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder,
renowned 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
wished 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 Launcelot
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 --
knight-errantry is dead." Now imagine my astonish-
ment -- and everybody else's, too -- to hear the peculiar
bugle-call which announces that another competitor is
about to enter the lists! There was a mystery here; I
couldn't account for this thing. Next, I noticed Mer-
lin 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
Sagramor riding again, with his dust brushed off and
is veil nicely re-arranged. I trotted up to meet him,
and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse's
hoofs. He said:

"Thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from
this!" and he touched the hilt of his great sword .
"An ye are not able to see it, because of the influence
of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous lance, but a
sword -- and I ween ye will not be able to avoid it."

His visor was up; 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, and 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 is he weaponless," said the king. "Sir
Sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow."

"And I will lend!" said Sir Launcelot, 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
Sagramor 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 erred, on his head be it."

"Knight!" said the king. "Thou'rt overwrought
with passion; it disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a
naked man?"

"An he do it, he shall answer it to me," said Sir
Launcelot.

"I will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted
Sir Sagramor hotly.

Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his
lowdownest smile of malicious gratification:

"'Tis well said, right well said! And 'tis enough
of parleying, let my lord the king deliver the battle
signal."

The king had to yield. The bugle made proclama-
tion, and we turned apart and rode to our stations.
There we stood, a hundred yards apart, facing each
other, rigid and motionless, like horsed 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 at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the
bugle followed, Sir Sagramor'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 murther!"

I never budged so much as an inch till that thunder-
ng 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 hap-
pened.

Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder
lay Sir Sagramor, 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 pro-
duces 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 aston-
ishment naturally. I was requested to come and ex-
plain 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 won, I do not wait for them to challenge
me, I challenge them."

"It is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well be-
seems 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 pro-
claim 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 revol-
vers from the holsters and began to measure distances
and calculate chances.

Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one.
Bang -- bang, and I bagged two. 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 is 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 broke and
fled.

The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed
institution. The march of civilization was begun.
How did I feel? Ah, you never could imagine it.

And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Some-
how, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclu-
sions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol
got left.


CHAPTER XL.
THREE YEARS LATER

WHEN I broke the back of knight-errantry 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 inspec-
tion 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 Dinadan the Humor-
ist 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.

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal
before the law; taxation had been equalized. The
telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the type-
writer, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand will-
ing 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 4.33 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, and so had to wink at: they
wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock
down" fare -- I mean rob the company.

There was hardly a knight 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 altogether the
most effective spreaders of civilization we had. They
went clothed 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 melodeon, 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 longed-for 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 believed 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 re-
sult 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 presi-
dent 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, with-
out 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 shin-
dies 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
monarch's. 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 royal butchers would presently begin to disappear;
their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings
from our own royal house; we should become a fac-
tory; 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
forever...... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow -- fzt! -- wow!"

Hang him, I supposed 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-CENTRAL!"

"Quick!" I shouted to Clarence; "telephone the
king's homeopath 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 situa-
tion almost at a glance -- membranous croup! I bent
down and whispered:

"Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central"

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 sulphur, I rousted 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-dews on its eye-
lashes when even its mother couldn't.

Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding
along the great hall now on his way to the stock-
board; he was president of the stock-board, and occu-
pied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought of Sir
Galahad; for the stock-board 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 Launcelot 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 Launcelot, 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 him,
he would come right in here and stand by 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 on the croup-kettle. By this time Sandy
had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and every-
thing was ready.

Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the
kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a
touch of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thing
up with water and inserted the steam-spout under the
canopy. Everything was ship-shape 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 willow-bark
and sumach-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 Launcelot 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 Guenever -- 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 heart-break 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 he
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 hardy 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 a sceptered 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; 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 chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore plate-
armor made of my new Bessemer steel. Their prac-
tice 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 his 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                   ULSTERS

   KING ARTHUR.                EMPEROR LUCIUS.
   KING LOT OF LOTHIAN.        KING LOGRIS.
   KING OF NORTHGALIS.         KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.
   KING MARSIL.                KING MORGANORE.
   KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN.     KING MARK OF CORNWALL.
   KING LABOR.                 KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.
   KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE.  KING MELIODAS OF LIONES.
   KING BAGDEMAGUS.            KING OF THE LAKE.
   KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES.    THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.

                  Umpire -- CLARENCE.

The first public game would certainly draw fifty
thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth
going around the world to see. Everything would be
favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather
now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.


CHAPTER XLI.
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 two 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 par-
ticular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry
she was my property until some knight 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 placidest way and as of right. I was a
New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partner-
ship 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 twelvemonth I be-
came her worshiper; 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 it
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 alway in our ears. Now thou'lt 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 it first -- then its music will
be perfect."

Pleased to the marrow, she murmured:

"HELLO-CENTRAL!"

I didn't laugh -- I am 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 had given
order for it: that henceforth and forever the tele-
phone must always be invoked with that reverent for-
mality, in perpetual honor 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 uncon-
scious 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-illumi-
nating 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 bodings 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 -- ah, 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 correct-
ness, 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 the
wide highway of salt water all to myself. There were
ships in the harbor, 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
belfry, 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 warily. 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 traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrass-
ment 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 at his heart.
The Tower showed recent war-scars. Verily, much
had been happening.

Of course, I meant to take the train for 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 differed 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 sun of anything you ever saw, it was be-
come 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 that 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
about 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.


CHAPTER XLII.
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 milrays 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 Guenever, it
wouldn't have come so early; but it would have come,
anyway. It would have come on your own account
by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the
queen's."

"AND Sir Launcelot's?"

"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 askance at the queen
and Sir Launcelot --"

"Yes, King Arthur's."

"-- and only one heart that was without suspicion --"

"Yes -- the king's; 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 stock-board.
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 give-away. What does Sir Launcelot 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 de-
liver. 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
15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10.
Well, when they had laughed long enough on that
side of their mouths, they rested-up that side by shift-
ing the laugh to the other side. That was when they
compromised with the Invincible at 283!"

"Good land!"

"He skinned them alive, and they deserved it --
anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced. Well, among
the flayed were Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred,
nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act
second, scene first, an apartment in Carlisle castle,
where the court had gone for a few days' hunting.
Persons present, the whole tribe of the king's nephews.
Mordred and Agravaine propose to call the guileless
Arthur's attention to Guenever and Sir Launcelot. Sir
Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will have nothing
to do with it. A dispute ensues, with loud talk; in
the midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agravaine
spring their devastating tale upon him. TABLEAU. A
trap is laid for Launcelot, by the king's command, and
Sir Launcelot walks into it. He made it sufficiently
uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses -- to wit,
Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank,
for he killed every one of them but Mordred; but of
course that couldn't straighten matters between Launce-
lot 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 Launcelot's party."

"Yes -- that was the way of it. The king sent the
queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire.
Launcelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it
slew certain good old friends of yours and mine -- in
fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, Sir Belias le
Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet le Fils de Dieu,
Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale --"

"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 Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir
Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger --"

"My peerless short-stop! I've seen him catch a
daisy-cutter in his teeth. Come, I can't stand this!"

"-- Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir
Pertilope, Sir Perimones, and -- whom do you think?"

"Rush! Go on."

"Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gareth -- both!"

"Oh, incredible! Their love for Launcelot was in-
destructible."

"Well, it was an accident. They were simply on-
lookers; they were unarmed, and were merely there to
witness the queen's punishment. Sir Launcelot smote
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 news-stand. There
-- the figures nearest the queen are Sir Launcelot with
his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his latest 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. Launcelot retreated to his town and castle of
Joyous Gard, 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 Launcelot and the queen and
everybody -- everybody but Sir Gawaine. He was
bitter about the slaying of his brothers, Gareth and
Gaheris, and would not be appeased. He notified
Launcelot to get him thence, and make swift prepara-
tion, and look to be soon attacked. So Launcelot
sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, and
Gawaine 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
Guenever, as a first move; but she fled and shut her-
self 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 composi-
tion. Terms, Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent
during Arthur's life, and the whole kingdom after-
ward."

"Well, upon my word! My dream of a republic to
BE a dream, and so remain."

"Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Ga-
waine -- Gawaine's head is at Dover Castle, he fell in
the fight there -- Gawaine appeared to Arthur in a
dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to re-
frain 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 correspondents 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
   ware of all his host and of all his good knights
   were left no more on live but two knights, that
   was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir
   Bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. Jesu
   mercy, said the king, where are all my noble
   knights becomen? Alas that ever I should see this
   doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am come to
   mine end. But would to God that I wist where were
   that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all
   this mischief. Then was King Arthur ware 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 espied the
   traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let
   him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy; and if
   ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well
   revenged upon him. Good lord, remember ye of your
   night's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawaine
   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,
   saith the king, now I see him yonder alone, he
   shall never escape mine hands, for at a better
   avail shall I never have him. God speed you well,
   said Sir Bedivere. Then the king gat his spear
   in both his hands, and ran toward 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 foin of his spear throughout the body more
   than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he
   had his death's 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 holden in both his hands,
   on the side of the head, that the sword pierced
   the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal
   Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And
   the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth,
   and there he swooned oft-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 Almesbury."

"What changes! and 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 in-
cluded 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 busi-
ness 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, our --"

"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 cruise in distant seas
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 of 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."

"What was that?"

"Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disap-
peared! Also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the
railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased,
the men all deserted, poles 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 thunderclap! 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, a 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 under ground, of
course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or
so. We sha'n'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, in the changed condition of things.
Well, what changes HAVE come! We expected to be
besieged in the palace some time or other, but -- how-
ever, 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 out-
side of 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."

"Nono, 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 con-
nection with the 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 pro-
vided 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 submis-
sion . 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 have 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 awhile, thinking. Then my mind was
made up, and I said:

"Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape,
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 DEfensive isn't in my line, and
the OFfensive 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 to 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 hornets' nest before noon to-morrow, 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 heir, 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 Proclama-
tion -- 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, ho 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 XLIII.
THE BATTLE OF THE SAND BELT

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 re-
move all life to a safe distance, as everything was
going to be blown up by secret mines, "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 a-laughing and admiring and worship-
ing, 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 im-
pressive. 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 slabber-
ing over it, just like all the other commoners. Im-
agine such human muck as this; conceive of this
folly!

Yes, it was now "Death to the Republic!" every-
where -- not a dissenting 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 ever more strenuously imploring atten-
tion with each repetition, ever 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 dreams say, ALL ENG-
LAND -- 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 tran-
quilizing.

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 spokesman 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 ENG-
LAND 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 fore-
seen 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 unsmirched.
Give yourselves no further concern, let your minds be
at peace. Consider this: while all England is march-
ing against us, who is in the van? Who, by the com-
monest rules of war, will march in the front? Answer
me."

"The mounted host of mailed knights."

"True. They are 30,000 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 epi-
sode. 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 approach-
ing big day come along -- it would find us on deck.

The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry
on watch in 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. Break-
fast was just ready; we sat down and ate it.

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 the steady drift and
aligned front of a wave of the sea. Nearer and nearer
it came, and more and more sublimely imposing be-
came its aspect; yes, all England was there, appar-
ently. 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 horse-
men -- 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 horse-shoe 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 sky with a thunder-crash, and be-
came 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 embankment 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 homogeneous 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 proclama-
tion 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 grati-
fying 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 con-
tinued applause.]

I picketed the great embankments thrown up around
our lines by the dynamite explosion -- merely a look-
out 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 the 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 be-
lieved 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 HONORABLE 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 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS -- the
   capablest 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 and 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 humored 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 scorn-
ful lip and said with lofty disdain:

"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a
basket to the base-born knave who sent him; other
answer have I none!"

How empty is theory in 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 a permanent rest.

Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from
the gatling 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. Sentry-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 -- the whir of night-
birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant
dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine -- but these
didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified
it, and added a grewsome 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 in
distinct glimpses of soundÑdulled 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 signaled 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 knights were
coming for us in a body. It was my notion that as
soon as dawn approached we could expect the ditch's
ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embank-
ment 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 lay 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 ad-
justed 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 conversa-
tion, 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 some-
thing -- 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 door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He
stood there like a statue -- no motion about him, ex-
cept 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 knight 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 knight -- and started slightly
when he discovered him. He stood a moment -- no
doubt wondering why the other one didn't move on;
then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou
here, good Sir Mar --" 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 knight that caused it was so far away
as to be invisible to us; but we knew what had hap-
pened, 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. Well, it was a
curious trip. Everywhere dead men were lying out-
side 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 in 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 breast-
work, 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
a surprise, these men moved as noiselessly as they
could; and always 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 work-
ing 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 forever; 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 -- per-
haps 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 embank-
ment; 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.


CHAPTER XLIV.
A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE

I, CLARENCE, must write it for him. He proposed
that we two 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 mall 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 knight was Sir Meliag-
raunce, 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 good-
wife. 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 defenses, 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.
To-morrow --

TO-MORROW. It is here. And with it the end.
About midnight I awoke, and saw that hag making
curious passes in the air about 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 fool-
ery, and started tip-toeing 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 to-day we shall understand what
kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne
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 P.S. 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 de-
lirium. 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 alight in an instant with pleasure, grati-
tude, 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.
Asleep, 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 hand-
ful 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 noth-
ing, 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.

                        THE END