"Well, that is not surprising, for you know she is only the second woman he ever saw and he has forgotten the first. You would scarcely believe how much he has forgotten her. Why, if the king were to tell him at this moment that a woman slept under a shield, guarded by fire, that a young man came through the fire, cut open her armor, kissed her, awakened her, and vowed that he would love her forever, he would not remember that he had ever known of anything of the kind or had ever heard of such a young man. For him there is no woman in the world now but the princess.

"The king does tell him a little of this story, when the hero asks him, still thinking of the princess, whether he has a wife as well a sister. 'No,' the king answers, 'I have no wife. The woman I want for my wife I fear I never can win; she is far away upon a mountain and a fire burns all around her. He who could pass through the fire and come to her might win her, but I could never do it.'

"It is just as I told you. This absurd young man does not know that he ever heard of a woman in the middle of a fire before; he does not know that he ever learned to fear, so he says: 'I am not afraid of a little fire; I will go and get your bride for you if you will give me your sister for mine.'

"'I will give you my sister gladly,' says the king; 'but how is my bride to be made to think that it is I who come to her and win her, instead of you?'

"'That is easy,' says the half-brother; 'with that helmet which he wears he can take any form he will, and he can make himself look exactly like you. He shall bring the woman away through the fire and then he shall leave her to you, and she will never know that it was not you who came to her rock.'

"Now, the hero, you know, never knew what could be done with that helmet. He only took it with him from the dragon's cave because the little bird told him it was good for something. Now that he has learned its use everything that he and the king want to do seems simple enough, and they set off in the little boat for the rock with the fire around it. The half-brother stays on the shore and looks after them, with his pale face and his wicked eyes. The woman far away on that rock has the magic ring. When the king brings her here as his bride he will find some way to get the ring, and then what will he care for kings or brides, for princesses or heroes? He and the wicked dwarf, his father, will rule the world.

"The fire burns up high and clear again and within its circle sits the Daughter of the God. She does not sleep now; she sits and gazes at the ring her hero gave her, thinking nothing of the curse upon it, and wonders when he will come back to her. Ah, when will her hero come back to her? Do you remember how once on this very rock the daughters of the god met to ride together to his castle, and how they came each riding on her flying horse, racing with the driving wind and the hurrying clouds? With just such a leap and a flash of a sudden flame up into the smoke I can see one of them riding now. So quickly she gallops through the sky that I can scarcely see what she is till she reaches the rock, springs from her horse, and stands before her sister. Her sister runs to meet her and to ask if their father is still angry with her.

"The war goddess has sad things to tell of their father. He sits in his castle with the gods and his heroes around him. They do not go out to fight and kill each other, and to be made alive and well again at sunset any more. The Father of the Gods only sits there and looks at his broken spear, and the rest, full of dread, look only at him. He is weary of ruling the world, weary of all the trouble that has come from the wrong that he did in not giving that treasure back to the river nymphs. He is not sorry that his spear is broken and he would gladly hasten the end of all. He has made his heroes cut down the great ash tree from which his spear was made, the tree that spread its branches over all his castle, and they have piled the wood high around the walls. When the end comes it will help the castle to burn. And now the Father of the Gods says that, if the woman who has the magic ring whose curse has been so heavy would but give it back to the river nymphs, all his great sorrows would be over.

"This his daughter, the war goddess, heard, and hastened here to tell it to his daughter, the woman. Will she give up the ring? Will she help the gods to find the rest that they long for? Ah, but a war goddess knows as little of women as she does of men. No, no, the woman loves the man who gave her the ring and she would not lose it for a moment to gain ages of peace for the gods whose homes she shares no more. She cares nothing for weary gods; she has a hero. The war goddess cannot understand her sister. She leaves her and is away again, toward the castle of the gods, riding on her flying horse, galloping against the driving wind and the hurrying clouds.

"A horn sounds down in the valley. There is only one horn in the world like that, and the woman springs joyfully up to meet her hero. He comes and walks through the fire as he did before, but oh! how different he is from what he was before! Then his face was young and fresh and noble and his form was graceful and light; now his face and his form are those of the king. Is this the promise that the Father of the Gods made to his daughter? He said that none should ever come to her or win her but the bravest of heroes. Yes, this is indeed the promise and this the hero, but how sadly for her the promise is kept! When he saw her before he gently lifted off her helmet and kissed her and learned to fear before her; now he thinks only of the princess, away there by the river, and he tells the Daughter of the God that he is the king and that she must come with him and be his bride.

"She resists him, and he seizes her to force her. She holds out her hand to him with the ring and bids him beware its power, which will protect her from him; he seizes her hand and pulls the ring from her finger. She is helpless; she faints in his grasp; he carries her through the fire and down the mountain to where the real king is. He leaves them together and goes back alone to the hall by the river and to the princess.

"Very glad is the princess, you may be sure, to see him come back so quickly and so safely, and glad too is the half-brother, but for a different reason, for he sees the ring on his finger. Now they call all the people together to greet the king and his bride as they come in their boat on the river. There are shouts and cheers, and men with waving banners and women who scatter flowers; the king smiles upon his people and thanks them for their greeting, and there is only one who is not merry and glad. And whom do you think the king's new bride sees in all this happy crowd? Only her hero, in his own form again, and, if her heart was wounded and sad before, it dies within her now, when she sees him leading the princess out to meet them and knows that he thinks no longer of her. She turns pale and faint at first and then angry and fierce. She cries out that this man was her lover, that he has betrayed her for the princess and that he has betrayed the king too.

"Of course, nobody can understand that at all—nobody but the half- brother—but you can think how everybody must be shocked and astonished, and how everybody tries to make out what she means, and fails. To be sure, she understands it herself as little as the rest. She knows nothing about the magic drink that made her lover forget her; she knows only that he swore always to love her and that now he loves the princess. The king does not know that the hero ever saw his bride till he went to her mountain to bring her for him, so he supposes that, if he ever told her that he loved her, it must have been then; that would be betraying the king, his friend, in a most cruel way, of course. The princess knows only just what the king knows, and if the king has been deceived and betrayed, she must have been deceived and betrayed a great deal more. As for the poor hero himself, he does not remember that he ever saw this woman before, he does not know how he can have done any wrong, and he is more puzzled than any of the rest. Only the half-brother knows all about it, that nobody is to blame at all except himself, and it is he whom nobody thinks of suspecting. The hero lays his hand on the half-brother's spear and swears that he has never wronged anyone here; if he has, he says, may this very spear slay him.

"Now is the time for the half-brother to work the hero's ruin and to try to get the ring that he wears. When all have gone but him and the king and his bride, he whispers to her that he will help her, and will kill the hero to revenge the wrong that he has done her. 'You kill him!' she cries. 'If he once looked at you, you would not dare come near him.'

"'Yet,' he says, 'there must be some way that I could do it; tell me what it is and you will be revenged.'

"'I cast a spell upon him,' she says, 'so that he could not be wounded in battle, but I knew that he would never turn his back upon an enemy, so I set no spell there; you may strike him in the back.'

"Now, he tells the king that nothing but the hero's death can restore the honor that he has lost. 'To-morrow,' he says, 'we will go hunting; I will kill him with my spear, and we will tell the princess that it was a wild boar that did it.'

"'It shall be so,' they all cry; 'he must die.'

"And whom do you think I see now? The river nymphs again. Not before the king's house, where we have been so long, but in another part of the river, all shut in by wild woods and rocks. They are swimming and playing on the water, just as they did under it when we saw them first, and they seem just as careless and happy as they did then, but they are still mourning for their lost treasure and longing to get it back again. If they could only get the ring it would do as well as the whole treasure, for the ring is the magic part of it. And now to this very spot comes the hero, who wears the ring on his finger. He has wandered away from the king and his men, who were hunting with him, and as soon as the nymphs see him they beg him to give them back their ring.

"He says that he will not, at first; it was too much trouble for him to win it from the dragon. But he really does not care so very much about it, and I think he would let them have it in the end if it were not for a great mistake that they make in asking for it. They tell him about the curse of the ring, and that if he keeps it he will be killed this very day. Now, you can see easily enough that that is the very worst thing they could say if they hoped to get the ring from him, for he is not in the least afraid of being killed, and he will not have anybody believe that he is afraid. They shall not have it, he says, happen what will. They will have it, they call back to him, and this very day; and so they dive down under the water and leave him.

"Now come the rest of the huntsmen and sit about in a circle to rest here in the shade and to talk. The king is gloomy, thinking still of the wrongs that have been done him. His half-brother asks the hero if it is true that he knows what the birds say. 'I listen to them no more,' he answers; 'but to cheer the king I will tell you some stories of the things that I have seen and the things that I have done.'

"He tells them of the dwarf who kept him and brought him up that he might fight the dragon; he tells how he mended the magic sword, how he killed the dragon with it, and took the helmet and the ring from the cave. A bird then sang to him, he says, and told him that the dwarf would try to kill him, but he killed the dwarf instead. Here he stops, for he cannot remember anything about the mountain top with the fire around it, or the Daughter of the God, or even what the bird sang to him next. But the king's half-brother squeezes something into his wine and tells him to drink it and it will make him remember better.

"He drinks, and it does make him remember better. He tells of the lovely woman who slept with the fire all around her, and how he kissed her and awoke her. Then suddenly the king understands it all; he remembers the drink of forgetfulness that they gave the hero, and he knows that nobody has done any wrong but his wicked half-brother; he it was who told him of the woman in the fire who should be his wife, he who said that the hero should bring her to him, he who bade them give him the drink to make him forget, he who first said that the hero must die. The king would gladly save the hero now, but it is too late.

"It is too late, for of a sudden two ravens fly up from beside the river and away over the heads of them all. They are the ravens that fly all over the world and then to the Father of the Gods, to tell him all that they see and all that they hear. They are going now to tell him that the end of the gods, the end that he longs for, is near. The hero starts up to hear what they say. He turns his back to the others, and the half-brother, before the king can stop him, thrusts his spear into his back. The hero turns for an instant to rush against the murderer, but his strength is gone, and he falls helpless upon the ground. All the rest cry out in horror, and the half-brother turns from them and strides away.

"And what now of the hero? He speaks no word to those who stand about him as he lies here dying on the ground. Where are his thoughts now? He is thinking of the only time he ever feared. He is back again upon the rock, with the flames curling and whirling all around him. Before him once more lies the Daughter of the God. Again he kisses her lips. She awakes. He sees again those deep, blue, wonderful eyes. He does not see the rocks, or the trees, or the sunlight—only her. Again for one last moment he knows that in all the world there cannot be another woman such as this. They look each into the other's eyes and into the other's heart. He is dead.

"They lay him on his shield and lift it upon their shoulders, and so they bear him back to the king's house by the river. The half-brother is there before them and tells the princess that her lover has been killed by a wild boar. She does not believe him, and when the others come she calls the king and all the rest his murderers. The king indeed wished his death once, but he is sorry enough for it now, and says that it was his half-brother alone who did it. 'Well, then,' cries the murderer, 'it was I, and now I will have my reward; I will take the ring.'

"The king cries out that he shall not have it, and draws his sword. The half-brother draws his own and rushes upon him, and before the men can run between them the king too lies dead upon the ground. Then again the murderer turns toward the body of the hero to take the ring, but, as he comes near it, the hand that wears the ring rises of itself, as if it were not dead and would ward him off. He falls back in terror, and so do all the rest.

"But now comes the Daughter of the God. She bids them all stand back from her hero. 'He was mine, not yours,' she says to the princess; 'he loved me and I loved him before you ever saw him.'

"'Then it was all the fault of this wicked man who has murdered him,' the princess answers; 'he gave me the drink for him that made him forget you.'

"She turns away from the hero and bends over the king, her brother. The Daughter of the God understands now; he was never faithless to her of himself. She tells the men to build a funeral pyre. They pile up the wood and the women scatter flowers upon it. Then she takes the ring from her hero's hand. While they lay his body on the pyre she bids them bring his horse, the horse that once was hers, that flew with her through the clouds when she was a goddess, and slept on the mountain top with the fire around it where she slept. With a torch she lights the pyre. See how the flames leap up and catch at the wood and stream and grow. Once more the ravens fly up from the river bank and away into the sky. Now the end for the gods comes indeed.

"The Daughter of the God springs upon the horse and with one bound they leap into the middle of the flames. Yet, as soon as they are there, they are gone, nor can I see the hero there any more. The pyre all falls together; but in the middle of its hot, red embers I see something brighter than all the rest. It is the ring. The water of the river rises and rises till it flows over the fire and puts it out. Then on the surface, swimming and playing about as always, I see the river nymphs. They have found the ring, and their treasure is their own again. But the wicked half-brother of the king, the son of that dwarf who stole it at first long ago, tries one last time to gain it. He plunges into the river to seize it from the nymphs, but one of them holds it up high in her hand and swims away from him, and the others twine their arms around him and draw him down and down under the water and he is seen no more. The river sinks back to its old bed. The treasure that was stolen is restored. All the evil and the punishment that came from the curse of the ring is done."



A big stick that had been burning brightly and steadily for a long time suddenly fell in two and the quick flames and the sparks sprang high up into the chimney. "See, it is the castle of the gods itself that is burning and lighting up all the sky. The wrong that they have done and the sorrow that they have suffered are past, and their end has come. But the fire burns fiercer still. It seizes upon everything, in the sky and on the earth. Perhaps it is better that it should. The world that we have seen in our fire here grew so selfish and cruel and bad after the gold was stolen from the river that it may be best for it to end in these flames. They will last for only a moment. Even now they are not so fierce. I can see the sky again. There is a beautiful brightness in it, like the coming of the morning; yet it is more than that, for it streams and flashes like the northern lights. I can see the earth again too, but it is not as it was before. It is a new world. It has all the beautiful things that the old one had, the green pastures and plains, the silver rivers, the blue mountains. Some of the gods have come back, but not those who did such wrong and made the old world so wicked. The God of Summer, who died long ago when the evil began, has come again; and if he and all who were good and beautiful before are to be here still, I am sure that the Daughter of the God and the hero who knew no fear must find their way here somehow. A new world that is to be all unselfish and brave and true needs such a woman and such a hero."



THE KNIGHT OF THE SWAN

The little girl was lying on the rug before the fire, one elbow buried in the long fur, and one cheek resting on her hand. She was gazing into the fire, studying the bright, flickering flames and the red embers. I had not noticed that she was there till her mother said, "You will ruin that child's eyes with your stories about the things in the fire. She would watch it half the day if I would let her; it is too bright and too hot to look at so long and so near. Come away, dear, and don't look at the fire again to-day."

"But why can't I see such things as you see?" the child said to me, with a little sigh, as she got up slowly from the rug and came toward me.

"Just because you have not quite learned how yet," I said; "now suppose you give up trying for a little while, because you might hurt your eyes, as your mother says, and let me look into the fire for you again. Sit here in the big chair with me; turn your face right away from the fire and lay it against my shoulder. Now shut your eyes. Some people can see a great deal better with their eyes shut, especially such things as we are trying to see, because when their eyes are open they see the every-day things all around them, and it confuses them and prevents their seeing what they want to see or what they ought to see. They are people who have not learned to look right through the every- day things and see others, in spite of them, that are much better and more beautiful, as you will learn to do some time. But just now keep your eyes shut.

"I see then, first, a splendid company of knights and people. The shining of the fire is like the light of the sun, that glances from the polished armor, the gleaming weapons, the standards, and the banners of bright-colored silk and gold. It is all so fine that it looks like a holiday time; but it is not that, for the crowds of people seem bent on something more important than dancing and playing games. They are all looking toward the King, who stands under a great tree and seems to have something to say to them. The heralds are blowing their trumpets and calling to the people to come and hear what the King has to say, though they are all there already and are only too anxious to hear, and so the King speaks. He says that far away at the other end of the country there is danger. Enemies are coming against him and his people, and he calls upon all the men here about him to help him to guard the land.

"Then they all shout and wave their banners and their arms, as I can see in the flickering of the bright little flames, and they all cry that they will fight for their King and their country. But this does not satisfy the King, for he says that since he has come here he finds everything going wrong and everybody quarrelling, and he asks what it all means. Now there comes forward a man who has all this while been standing silent beside his wife; and it may be as well to say just here that this man's wife is a wicked witch and that the man himself is none too good. So a part of what he tells the King is true and another good large part is not true at all. When he tells what the King knew before, he tells the truth; and when he tells anything that the King did not know before, it is generally a lie.

"So he tells the King that he was left the guardian of the two children of the Duke who ruled in this part of the country, and who died a few years ago. One of the children was a girl and the other was a boy, and he tells the King, too, how he took care of them as they grew up. All this is true and the King knew all about it before. But now he goes on to say that one day, when the brother and the sister had gone away from their castle together, the sister came back alone, trembling and crying and saying that she had lost her brother. Probably this is true enough too, but when he says that the poor sister was not really sorry at all, because she had killed her brother herself, he is telling a dreadful, cruel lie. Still perhaps it is not so much his fault, for his wife, the witch, who you must remember is a good deal more wicked than himself, knows much more about it all than it would do for her to tell, and she may have deceived him as well as other people.

"Of course the King is shocked at such a dreadful story as this, and he wants to know how the sister could ever have done anything so wicked. Well, of course the man who accuses her so boldly has a reason to give for what he says she did, or he never would have dared mention it at all. So he explains that the sister was to be married to him and that she refused him, and then he married the witch instead, only he does not call her a witch. He thinks that the sister must have had some other lover, and she must have thought that if her brother, who ought to be Duke as soon as he should be old enough, were only dead, she could be married to her lover, and then he would be the Duke. And now he says that he thinks he himself ought to be Duke, since there is nobody who deserves to be one better than he, and he asks the King to make him so. Now, of course anybody as bright as you are can see at once that the whole reason for all these wicked stories is just that he wants to be Duke; but kings and knights and crowds of people are not always very bright, though they may look so there in the fire, and they do not feel so sure about it as you or I would. So the quarrel lies between a rich and powerful man who is a soldier and once saved the King's life, with a wife who is a witch and knows all about magic, and one poor girl who knows nothing about magic and who has no friends who would dare to help her. For these people here about the King are a peculiar sort of people who shout very loud about justice and their own rights and others' rights, but seldom do anything unless they feel sure that they are on the side that is going to win. There are no such people nowadays, of course; but there were once.

"But the King himself is a good king, and he means to be quite fair and just, and he calls for the sister to come before him and tell her own story. So the heralds blow their trumpets again and call for her, and she comes. She is dressed all in white, and she looks so beautiful and pale and sad that nobody who was not wicked himself could ever suspect her of doing anything wicked, and all the men about mutter that the one who says that she killed her brother will have to prove it. They have just heard the King say something of the kind, so they feel very righteous and very bold about it. The King, then, asks her if she can say anything about this dreadful accusation, and she tells him how often she has prayed for help, how, after she has prayed, she has fallen into a sweet sleep and has seen a knight in bright armor, leaning on his sword, and how he has comforted her. This knight, she says, shall be the one to fight for her and to protect her.

"Now, of course, this is all very pretty, but it does not seem to have much to do with the question of whether she killed her poor little brother or not. Yet it does have something to do with it, and I will tell you how. A long time ago, hundreds of years, when people had quarrels, they did not hire lawyers to argue and plead and plot and contrive for them, but they just stood up together, if they were both strong men, and fought till one of them killed the other or showed that he could if he wanted to. And everybody who looked on felt perfectly sure that the one who was right could not possibly lose such a fight and the one who was wrong could not possibly win it. If one of the two who had the quarrel was a woman, some friend who trusted her enough to think that she was right would fight for her."

"But what made the man who was wrong ever fight at all," the little girl asked, "if everybody believed that he was sure to get beaten?"

"I have thought of that myself," I admitted, "and I think that it must have been for one of two reasons: either the bad people did not believe that the right was sure to win, or else the people who were wrong usually thought that they were really right. I believe that was the true reason, and it shows that bad people are not always quite so bad as we think, for they usually contrive in some way, I am sure, to make themselves believe they are right. And now, though all these things that I am telling you are things that I see right here in the fire, yet they are like things that must have happened long, long ago, and this very way of settling disagreements by a good hard fight is the way that the question of this poor girl's guilt or innocence must be settled. She probably knows this just as well as anybody, and that is what she means when she says that the knight she saw in her dream shall be the one to fight for her. But the accuser turns everything against her, as usual, and says: 'You see it is just as I said; she is talking about this lover of hers who she hopes will marry her and be Duke instead of her brother. Yet he says he is quite ready to fight anybody who wants to try it with him, and he invites any of the men standing about to come forward and fight for the poor, helpless girl, if he wants to. But they all say no, they should be very sorry to have to kill such a great man and so brave a soldier. The truth is, you see, they are all afraid that if they should fight they might get hurt, and why should they trouble themselves about this girl's rights or wrongs?

"Still she says that the knight whom she saw in her dream shall be her champion, and if he will come now and help her in this need she will be his bride if he will take her, and he shall have all her father's lands and his crown, since her brother is dead. But nobody comes, and the people all begin to think that she must be guilty after all, and that, instead of the accuser having to prove that she is, she will have to prove that she is not, if she wants any sympathy from them, though why she should want it I hardly know. But the King still means to give her every chance, and he orders the heralds to blow their trumpets toward the north and the east and the south and the west, and to call upon anybody who will defend her straightway to appear. And the heralds blow their loud trumpets and the people gaze anxiously in all directions, but nobody comes to help her. And then she tells the King that her knight dwells far off and does not hear, and she begs him to call upon him again, and the heralds blow once more, and she prays that her knight may be sent to her, and now suddenly all the eyes of the crowd are turned one way, and all the people shout and point and gaze at something which they see away in the distance.

"I can see it too, for there in the fire, back on the hearth, is a bed of bright embers that shines and glitters like a broad river under the sun of noon, and at the very farthest place is one little spot brighter than all the rest, and it seems to come nearer and nearer, and as it comes I begin to make out its wonderful shape. There is a little boat, and in it stands a knight, all in silver armor, and it is his armor that shines so. But the strangest thing of all is that a beautiful white swan, its wings almost as bright as the knight's armor, is drawing the boat along by a silver chain wound about its neck. It is this that makes the people gaze and point, and, while the swan and the boat are coming nearer, I will tell you more about the knight than he will be willing to tell about himself. Did you ever hear of the Holy Grail? It was the crystal cup, the old stories say, out of which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper, and afterward His blood was caught in it, as He hung upon the cross. Hundreds of years later it was kept in a beautiful temple which nobody ever knew how to find, except a few chosen knights, who guarded the Grail and did its bidding, for this cup seemed still to have the life of that blood in it, and it had ways of telling its knights what they must do. And so they were sometimes sent far away to fight for the right or to punish wrong, but wherever they went they never knew hunger or thirst or weariness, and they could never be killed or overcome in battle; but no one must ever ask one of these knights his name or his dwelling place, and, if anyone having the right should ask these questions, the knight must return to the temple of the Holy Grail. Now, seven days ago a bell in the temple rang, all of itself, meaning that help was needed somewhere. One of the knights put on his armor and called for his horse, and stood ready, but he knew not where he was to go or what he was to do, till a swan drawing a little boat came sailing along upon the river, and the knight said: 'Take back the horse; I will go with the swan,' and so here is he come to see what help is wanted of him.

"And now I see him step on shore, and the girl whom he has come to rescue knows him as the knight of her dream, and everybody is glad of his coming except the accuser and his wife, the witch, and she, strangely enough, seems a good deal more frightened at the sight of the swan than at that of the knight. Now the knight asks the young girl whether, if he will fight her battle and win it, she will promise never to ask him whence he comes or what he is, and she swears that she will always love him and trust him, and will do whatever he commands. So now the two knights, with all the people looking on and holding their breaths with anxiety, and the king watching that all may be done fairly and in order, draw their swords and stand against each other. But I see only one or two little flashes of the flames as the gleaming swords are whirled above their heads, and then the wicked accuser falls and the Knight of the Swan spares his life, while all the people shout and lift the knight above their heads on his shield, just as if they had known all along that the girl was innocent, and just as if they would not have shouted just as loud if the battle had gone the other way.



"The fire is going down a little and everything looks darker. It is night now. Here on one side is a church, all dark, and on the other side, where the light still shines, I can see the bright windows of the palace, where they are making preparations for a grand wedding tomorrow, and you can guess who are to be married. On the steps of the church, looking up at the palace windows and the lights that shine in them, are the witch and her husband. He is bemoaning his disgrace and accusing his wife of causing it all by telling him that the good sister had killed her brother. And this shows me, more than anything he has done before, how bad he is, and what a coward he is, because, when a man has tried to gain things that he knows are not his by ways that he knows are not right, he ought to take all the consequences, if he fails, like a man, and not snivel and say that a woman made him do it. But the witch says that there is a chance yet for them to be revenged, for, if only the Knight of the Swan can be made to tell who he is, he will have to go away as he came and be lost, and she believes she can find some way to tempt his bride to ask him the forbidden questions, and then he will have to answer.

"Now the bride that is to be to-morrow comes out upon a balcony of the palace, and the witch, sending her husband away, calls to her and tells her how sorry they both are for all that they have done. No doubt they are very sorry indeed, as they ought to be. But the bride is so happy and so kind that she cannot bear to see anybody unhappy, so she says that she forgives them, and if she has injured them in any way she asks that they forgive her. That is absurd, of course. Then she lets the witch talk to her till the wicked woman says that she hopes the knight who came to her in such a strange way, that nobody can account for, will never deceive her, and that she will always live happily with him; and by this she means, of course, that she thinks that he will deceive her and that she will not be happy. But the bride says that she trusts her knight wholly, and she asks the witch to come in with her and rest for the night. And that is just the one thing she ought not to do, for here is what I hope you will see and remember more than anything else in all this: be as kind and as helpful and as compassionate as you can, always, but never help, never listen to, never allow to be near you a man or a woman who says one word against anyone you love. Put no trust in anyone till you know that trust is safe, and, when you once know, never hear of one breath of doubt again.

"The fire burns higher and brighter, and the morning is coming. The square grows light and fills with people. Now come the heralds again, and they sound their trumpets and proclaim that the Knight of the Swan is to have the crown of his bride's father, and is to be called Guardian instead of Duke, that the accuser of his bride is an outcast and must be shunned by all men, and finally that everybody to-day is to come to the marriage, but that to-morrow all the men must go to the defence of the King and the country. And now, with all its sparkle and glitter, comes the procession, leading the bride to the church, when, just as she is at the door, right before her stands the witch, full of anger and pride, and cries aloud that it is her place to go before this woman, and no one shall keep her from the place that is hers, and she taunts the bride with not knowing who or what her knight is; and so a great clamor arises among the people, and in the midst of it come the King and the Knight of the Swan and their train. The witch's wicked husband comes, too, and calls out that the knight beat him yesterday by magic and not by honest fighting, and he demands that the King ask the knight who he is. But he and his wife are put aside, and the procession goes into the church, and as I look into the church itself now the whole of the fire is a blaze of candles on the altar. Now turn your face away from the fire as it was before and shut your eyes again. There is no more to be seen in this wedding than there was in the battle of the two knights, and all that there is I will tell you.

"The light of the candles on the altar changes to a blaze of wedding torches, and the King and the knights and the ladies are leading the bride and the bridegroom to their chamber. Slowly and solemnly, yet joyfully, they march along, and it is all so clear to me that I can even hear the music that they chant as they come. Soft and low it is at first, and then it swells out fuller and stronger and clearer but always so noble and pure and stately in its melody and its rhythm that nobody who had once heard it could ever forget how grand and beautiful it was. I have heard it many times, and you will hear it often, too, and once, I hope—I almost know—you will hear it at one of the sweetest moments of your life, and whenever you hear it I think it will be more full of meaning for you if you will think of the Knight of the Swan and his bride. But do not think of what comes to them afterward, for that need never come to you or to anyone who remembers what I told you a little while ago; and if ever you feel tempted to forget for one moment, then think of this true and lovely music—you will know it well and can think of it when you like by that time—and I am sure you will feel truer and better again at once.

"But the torches pass away and out of sight, and the knight and his bride are left alone; and now comes the sad part, for the poor bride has listened too much to those who spoke evil of her husband, or something evil has come into her own mind and made her forget her promise, for she tells him that she loves him so much that she wishes she might know what he is whom she loves. Now this may be very natural and might be very right if she had not promised never to ask; but though he begs her not to demand of him this one thing, yet she implores him more and more to tell her, till at last she speaks very cruelly to him, and as much as tells him that he does not love her at all. You would never think that she was the same poor girl who knelt by the river and prayed that her knight might be sent to help her in her danger. And suddenly, as he is about to tell her all she asks, her old accuser breaks into the room with his men, and rushes with his sword drawn to kill the knight, and now indeed his bride does seize his sword and hold it out to him, while he draws it from the sheath; then there is one little flash of a flame as he swings it high above his head, and his enemy lies at last dead before him. He tells the men to take him away and to lead his bride before the King, where he will come and tell her everything.

"It is morning again on the banks of the river, and the knights and the people are coming in crowds as I saw them in the beginning. The King comes, and the poor bride, sadder now even than she was at first. The Knight of the Swan comes too, and he asks the King if he did right to kill his wicked enemy, who was trying to kill him unprepared. The King answers that he did right. Then he says that he cannot go with the King to his wars, because his bride has forgotten her promise to him, and has asked him whence he came, and now, by the law which he obeys, as soon as he has answered her, he must leave her and all the rest forever. Then, while they all listen in sorrow, he tells them that he is a Knight of the Holy Grail, and must go back to the temple which he left to come here and help his bride. And while she weeps at the thought of losing him, suddenly I see the swan again on the river, drawing the little boat as before, ready to take the knight away, and then he tells his bride that if she could but have trusted him and never questioned him for a year, her brother would have come back to her.

"And now for one last time the witch stands up, more proud and revengeful then ever, and cries out that she has beaten them all, for the swan is really the brother, and that it was she who wound the chain about his neck that enchanted him and made him a swan. But while she exults in her triumph, there flies down over the heads of all of them a beautiful white dove. It is the dove that comes once a year to the temple and strengthens the power of the Holy Grail, and as the knight sees it he kneels and prays and then rises and unwinds the silver chain from the swan's neck, and at the very instant the swan is changed into a beautiful boy, the lost brother, and he runs to his sister and they clasp each other in their arms, while the witch falls down upon the ground, overcome at last and powerless, and the knight steps into the boat, the dove lifts the silver chain, and they glide away upon the river, farther and farther, and the little spot where they were, that was the brightest in the fire, grows dimmer and fainter and goes out and is dark."

"And won't the knight come back at all?" asked the little girl.

"No," I answered, "the brother and the sister are close in each other's arms and they are gazing away upon the river as far as they can see, but the Knight of the Swan will never come back."



THE PRIZE OF A SONG

The fire was almost out. It was so late in the spring that none at all was needed, but we liked it to look at. As for the little girl and me, we should hardly have known how to get on without it, and the little girl's mother chose to humor us, so we wasted a great deal of wood, as ignorant people would think, and were just as comfortable with the sky smiling and the trees budding all around us as if we had been in the midst of snow-drifts and howling storms. This afternoon the sun had been shining right in upon the fire, as if he would like to know what it was doing there at all, when he was making the weather quite warm enough, in the house as well as out. A fire never burns well when the sun shines on it, and besides, nobody had taken much care of ours, so that after the sun had gone it looked very low and discouraged.

"Do you think anybody could see anything in a fire like that?" the little girl asked, with a doubtful gaze into it and a meaning, clearly enough, that, if I thought it at all possible for anybody to see anything, she wished that I myself would try.

"We will put on another stick," I said, "and have a better fire. It will not be a very hot fire even then, and with all this soft spring air about us, I don't think we can see any more gods and giants and knights and dragons in it. But we may see some simpler people, with bright young hearts that begin to stir and move and to beat quicker and harder in the spring, as young hearts ought to do, not only in the spring of the year, but in their own spring, and we may perhaps see some people with older hearts, which stirred and beat too in their time, and we shall see by them that those which move freest and grow warmest in their spring are the fullest and the richest in their autumn and can never be hurt in the winter, just as the tree in which the sap flows best in the spring spreads out the broadest shade in the fierce heat of the summer, bears the finest fruit in the autumn, and lives the strongest till the next spring comes. If you ever tell any very learned people what we see here in this fire they may tell you, perhaps, that it all happened on Midsummer Day and not in the spring at all, and they will be quite right, in their own poor way of being right, but Midsummer Day is not in the middle of the summer, you know, but just at the beginning of it, when the spring has been gone only a few days. It is then that the lovely touch of the spring has done all that it can for the world, when the sun climbs his very highest in the heavens to look at all the sweetness and beauty that have been spread over the earth, when the summer is young and happy and kind and has not begun to burn and wither everything that would like to love its brightness and its power. So if you would see all the joy and the light that the spring can bring, you must look for them not far from Midsummer Day.

"We shall not begin to see all this till our new stick begins to burn better, but in the meantime we may see some things that are pleasant enough, if they are not quite so radiant, and while the fire is still rather dark, just burning quietly in a few little places, we seem to me to be in a dim, old church. The service is just ending. In one of the pews sits a pretty girl who is behaving herself in a most unbecoming way, for she is constantly sending shy glances toward a young man who leans against a pillar not far off and looks at her in his turn in a way that really ought to shock her, instead of pleasing her, as it seems to do."

"Is he a knight?" asked the little girl, instinctively knowing him for the hero of the story.

"Do you want him to be a knight?"

"Oh, yes; let's have just one knight, if we can't have any giants or dragons."

"I believe you are beginning to see the pictures in the fire yourself. Well, he shall be a knight, but he shall not wear any armor and he shall not fight, and all the rest of the people we see shall be quite common people, mere tradesmen, a goldsmith and a tailor and a toy-maker and a cobbler and the like. But whether the young man is a knight or not, he and the pretty girl ought to know better than to look at each other in that way in church, with looks that seem to mean so much and yet to have no connection with the service at all. The service is over now and the people all leave the church, except a few, but the young knight and the pretty girl stay behind, and he does not lose a minute in telling her that he loves her and that he is dreadfully anxious to know if she can love him. Now, of course, as she has done nothing all through the service but steal glances at him and probably could not even tell what hymns were sung, or whether there was a sermon or not, and has been thinking all the time how handsome he was, and knows very well that he was looking at her all the time, and knows very well, too, being a pretty girl, that he was thinking how pretty she was, of course, you see, she could not tell at all whether she could love him or not, and such a question naturally throws her into the greatest confusion.

"But while the young man is saying all the pretty things that the time allows, and the young woman is trying to think what she shall answer, her maid, who has been running about all this time, looking for things she has lost, bustles up, hears a part of what the young man says, and tells him that her mistress is already betrothed; and the mistress quickly says yes, but that nobody yet knows to whom. This is such a surprising state of things that it needs an explanation; so the maid tells the young knight that her mistress is to be given as bride for a prize to-morrow, which will be Midsummer Day, to the man who shall sing the best song. He asks if the bride herself is to judge whose song is best; and at that she makes up her mind at last, and says that she will choose nobody but him. But there is something else, for nobody can even try for the prize unless he belongs to a certain company or society of poets and singers here in the town, and the knight, though he has a pretty good opinion of the song he could make if he should try, is quite a stranger here. And now, as if for the very purpose of helping the knight, comes another young man, who turns out to be a prentice, and he begins arranging benches and chairs in some queer sort of way, while the looks that he casts at the maid and the looks she throws back at him show that they are not total strangers; and he tells them that these very poets and singers are to meet here in a few minutes, and that if anybody wants to join them he will have a chance to sing to them and to prove whether he is worthy.

"So the young man of course determines that he will try, and it is clear that he expects nothing in the world but that he will carry everything before him; and while the young women hurry away, the prentice tells him something about the singers, who are always called masters, and the queer rules that they have for making all their songs. Queer enough they are, too, and so many that if you were to hear them all you would think that they were quite enough to prevent anybody's ever making a song at all; but the most important thing that the knight learns is that, while he is singing, the judge will make a mark with chalk every time he breaks a rule, and, if more than seven chalk marks are scored against him, he cannot be a master, and so cannot try for the prize that he wants so much to win to-morrow.

"Now the masters begin to gather for their meeting, coming in one by one and two by two. First comes a goldsmith, the father of the pretty girl we have just seen. With him is a queer-looking, awkward, self- conceited man, who, anybody can see in a minute, must be a town clerk. From what he is saying to the goldsmith it is clear that he means to try for the prize of his daughter's hand to-morrow. He is in no doubt that he can sing better than anybody else, but is not sure that the goldsmith's daughter will think so. That is a very unlucky thing that happens to singers sometimes; they themselves know perfectly well that they can sing better than anybody else anywhere about, but all the other people are so stupid that they will not understand it.

"The young knight, who knows the goldsmith, tells him now that he wants to join this company of singers, and be a master too; and the goldsmith says that he shall be glad to help all he can. But the town clerk overhears them, and he sees at once that what the knight wants is to sing for the prize to-morrow. Now, the rule is, you remember, that nobody but a master may even try for the prize; so the jealous town clerk resolves that he will keep the young man from becoming a master. And it happens, by good luck for him and bad luck for the knight, that it is his turn to-day to take the chalk and mark the mistakes that are made in singing by anybody who tries to prove himself worthy to be a master.

"When the masters are all met, the goldsmith makes a little speech, and tells them how the prize is to be given to-morrow. They are to decide who wins, but his daughter is to judge too. She may choose none without their voice, but she may refuse any. That is no more than fair, of course. No girl would like to be married to a man just because the lines of his poetry came out right when somebody else counted them. Yet the masters all argue and dispute and suggest about the rules; but in the end they agree to do just what the goldsmith says, since they cannot do anything else.

"Now comes the trial of the young knight who wants to be a master. The town clerk goes behind a curtain, with his slate and his chalk, and you may be sure he does not forget his promise to himself that the knight shall fail. Then the young man stands up in the midst of them all and sings his song. A happy, free, beautiful song it is. It tells first how the spring came into the forest and awakened the trees and brought the flowers. Then it tells how the spring came into the young man's own heart, as you know I told you it ought to do, and how it made him sing of love; and that is quite right too, though perhaps I forgot to say so before.

"But happy and beautiful as the song is, it is scarcely begun before the most dreadful scratching of the chalk is heard behind the curtain. All the masters begin to shake their heads, too, for this knight is bold enough to make his own song in his own way, and he knows and cares no more about the rules and measures of these masters for making songs than you know or care about the game laws of Scotland. So by the time the song is half over, out rushes the town clerk with his slate, not with the eight marks on it that would end the singer's hopes of being a master, but with nearer eighty. He vows the case is hopeless, and as he shows the slate to the other masters they all seem to agree with him, though they are not all quite so jealous as he is.

"All but one; for there is one old shoemaker who says that he thinks the song was very good. It did not follow the rules, but it had rules of its own, and he liked it. Then there is trouble indeed. For any man to say in this old church and this old town that a song can be good when it has one line too many or one rhyme too few is almost as bad as for him to say that the King is bald-headed and that the oldest princess has freckles. All the masters say that to let such a song pass is out of the question, and that the shoemaker is quite absurd to think of such a thing. At this the shoemaker declares that the town clerk is not a fair judge, because he is jealous. At that again the town clerk says that the shoemaker had better not talk so much about poetry, but go home and finish the shoes he has ordered. Now, the shoemaker is really the only one of all the masters who knows anything at all about poetry; but now and then, years ago, a man who knew a great deal had to stand aside and let others, who knew very little but could talk louder, do what they liked in their own way. That is what the shoemaker has to do now, and for this time the knight has failed.

"What a bad fire we have, to be sure! It is getting lower and lower, and even our new stick will not burn. While everything is as dark as this we shall have to think that it is night. Never mind, we can see a little still, and the little that I can see is the street of the old town, with its queer old houses and peaked roofs and sharp steeples. Here, on one side, where there is a bit of light shining like a glow in a window, is the shop of our old cobbler; and over there, with no light at all, the fire is so bad, is the goldsmith's house. The cobbler is sitting outside his door, trying to work; but the light is as bad for him as it is for us, and, besides, he cannot think of his work, much less do it. He is thinking, I know, of the young knight and his song, and is wishing that he might win the prize to-morrow, master or no master. His heart had its spring-time once, you may be sure, and its glowing summer, and they have brought it a rich, peaceful autumn, such as they alone can bring. That was why he knew all the meaning of the song and liked it, though it broke every one of his own rules. And so, like the good old fellow that he is, he wishes the man who sang the song all joy and good luck—and the prize.

"While he is thinking of all this, comes the goldsmith's daughter, for she has heard that the young man has failed, and she is sad, and wants to talk to some one. Perhaps, too, she wants to know something. They talk about to-morrow, of course, and the shoemaker tells her that the town clerk means to sing for the prize. At that the prize herself gets quite alarmed, for she likes the town clerk no better than you or I do. 'But why should he not win?' the shoemaker says; 'there will not be many bachelors there to try.'

"'And might not a widower try?' she asks slyly.

"Now, the shoemaker knows that she means himself, but he says no, he is too old. And then the absurd girl actually urges him to try, though she does not want him the least bit, and does not want anybody except the young knight, who makes such beautiful songs that are all out of shape. When you get to be a woman, perhaps you will know why she does this; but I confess I do not. Perhaps she thinks that the shoemaker would not be half so bad as the town clerk, or perhaps she only wants to find out if the shoemaker really does mean to sing, so that she may know whether he is the knight's friend or his enemy. At any rate, he pretends to be not half so much the friend of the young people as I know he really is, and when she is beginning to get quite angry with him her maid comes and tries to lead her into the house. But just at this moment the knight himself is seen coming down the street, and not a step toward the house does she go after that.

"The shoemaker has gone into his shop now, and the lovers are alone. He tells her how he sang his very best, that he might be a master, because that was the only way to win her, and it was of no use. But she does not care whether he failed or not. She declares that he is a poet, that she will give the prize herself and to nobody but him; so now what do you suppose it matters to him if all the masters in the world said that his songs were wrong? He will not sing for them, and they need not listen.

"There is just one way now, as anybody can see, for him to make sure of the prize, and that is to take it while he has it. And that is just what he is about to do. But I am sorry to see that the cobbler, behind the door of his shop, has been impolite enough to listen to all this important talk about poets and songs; and he sees that if he lets these two run away together now, there will be no prize and no singing for to-morrow. So he sets a lamp in his window, right there where the fire is kind enough to burn for us a little at last, and sends the light streaming out across the street, and the lovers know that if they try to pass they will be seen. And while they are helping each other think what they can do, somebody else comes slowly down the street, walking in the shadows and looking around to see if he is watched, like a burglar. It is the town clerk, and he has come here just to sing under the window of the goldsmith's daughter the song that he means to sing to-morrow, to see if she will like it and if she will probably give it the prize. Oh, he is a good, honest poet and faithful lover, and he means to leave nothing untried that can help him. One does not get a chance to marry a goldsmith's daughter every day.

"All this is annoying enough, but there is nothing for the lovers to do but to wait for the town clerk to sing and go away; so they get into the deepest shadow, and then they put their arms around each other so that they can stand closer and not be seen so easily. It is a good plan for another reason, too, because some people can wait much more patiently in that position than in any other. But things are getting worse and worse, for the shoe-maker seems bound to have his part of the fun too; and just as the town clerk is about to sing he begins to work again and to hammer on his last. This is the most impolite shoemaker, I suppose, that this polite old town ever saw, if he is a poet. Think of a man who will hammer on a shoe when a town clerk is going to sing, and a song that he made himself, too. Something must be done, of course; so the town clerk comes and talks with the cobbler, and pretends that he is very anxious to get his opinion of the song he is going to sing. That seems natural enough, because everybody knows that the cobbler is the best poet in town. So they agree that whenever the town clerk breaks a rule in his song the cobbler shall strike one blow on his last, just as if he were marking the mistakes on the slate, the way the town clerk himself did with the knight.

"Oh, but he must be a good town clerk, he knows so many tricks, and can always arrange everything so well to make it go his way. The town is lucky to have such a clerk. Yet, strange to say, the minute he begins to sing, he makes more mistakes than even the poor young knight did, and it is really a question whether his song or the shoemaker's pounding makes the more noise. Mind, I say noise, not music; if it were a question of music the shoemaker would be far ahead. Well, between them, they wake up the shoemaker's prentice, and he comes to the window of the shop, to see what is the matter. He is the same prentice whom we saw in the church, who looked at the goldsmith's daughter's maid in such a strange way, you remember. And now, as he looks across at the house opposite, he sees the goldsmith's daughter's maid again, standing at the window. She is standing there in one of her mistress's gowns, to make the town clerk think that the mistress herself is listening to his song; and he does think so, but the poor prentice knows who she is very well indeed. And since he knows who she is, of course he makes up his mind at once that the town clerk is singing to her, that he loves her, and that just as likely as not she loves him. No doubt you think he might know better; and perhaps he might, if he were not so much in love with the goldsmith's daughter's maid; but when a man is in love he is always ready to believe anything that it is particularly uncomfortable for him to believe.

"So, what does the shoemaker's prentice do but jump right out of the window, fetch the good town clerk one blow under the chin, that shuts his mouth and stops his singing, and begin just as lively a fight with him as any we ever saw among our knights and giants and dragons. They make so much noise that more people wake up, and come out of their houses into the street; and, since the old town is usually a bit dull and quiet, they find this just the sort of thing they like, and they all begin fighting, too, with a jolly good will. Of course, not one of them has the slightest notion of what he is fighting about; but that makes no difference to any good, honest fighter, and there is a fine breaking of heads and kicking of shins. Just as everything is in the most delightful confusion possible, the knight and the goldsmith's daughter try to make their way through the crowd and escape; but the troublesome old shoemaker, who has been watching them from the very beginning, runs quickly out, pushes the girl to her own door, where her father stands to receive her, drags the knight into his shop, seizes his prentice too, and shuts his door behind him. Somebody cries that the watchman is coming; the people scatter right and left, and, by the time that little flame there under the andiron has burned up and shown itself to me as the old watchman's lantern, it shines on nothing but the quiet, empty street.

"But there is more light than the watchman's lantern, for our new stick is beginning to burn now. The night must be past, and, if the night is past, it is Midsummer Day. It is not so bright yet as it might be. Let us put on still another stick, and have all the Midsummer weather we can. I see a room now, not very handsome or rich, but very comfortable and cheerful, with flowers in the window and more flowers scattered about. It is the old shoemaker's shop, and the old shoemaker himself sits at the window, pretending to read, but really thinking, as usual, about the young knight who sings to please himself and not to obey other people's rules, and about the goldsmith's daughter; and he is trying, also as usual, to plan some way to make the prize go as he wants it to go. He does not quite see how it is to be done, but he has a comfortable feeling that it will all come out right; and while he is studying over it, the knight himself comes put of the room where he has slept to say good-morning.

"He tells the shoemaker that he has had a beautiful dream, and the shoemaker asks him what it was, saying that it is the true business of a poet to have dreams and to tell them, so that everybody may know them. So the knight tells his dream, making it into a song as he goes along, and now and then the shoemaker stops him quietly to tell him what are the rules of the masters for making such songs as this. The knight always asks why such rules should be, and the shoemaker gives him some pretty reason for each one, and he shows that the rules are not so bad after all, if only one knows how to use them and to make the most of them. The dream was about a beautiful garden with a tree that bore fruit of gold, and as the dreamer looked at it there came a lovely maiden, who you may be sure was the goldsmith's daughter, and she embraced him and then pointed to the fruit of the tree, and when she pointed to it, it was golden fruit no longer, but stars, and the tree itself was a laurel-tree.

"You may guess that the poor old masters never heard such a song as this. As the knight sings it the shoemaker writes it down on a bit of paper and tells the knight to remember the melody, and then they go away together. Scarcely have they gone when the door opens softly and in a treacherous-looking sort of way that must be strange to the shoemaker's door, and in comes the town clerk. Ridiculous enough he looks in his gorgeous holiday clothes, and limping along, because of the beating that the prentice gave him last night. And angry enough he is, too, with the shoemaker and the prentice and the knight and the world in general, except himself, with whom it might be reasonable for him to be angry. You can see a wicked red glow, right there in the middle of the fire, where he stands. But he has not forgotten about the prize—oh, not in the least. He is still plotting and contriving how he can best make sure of it, and so it does not take long for his sharp little eyes to find the song lying on the table, where the shoemaker left it when he went out.

"Now, there is one peculiar thing about these people who can see through mill-stones, and that is, that they sometimes think they are seeing through one when there is really no mill-stone there at all; just as you and I might think we were looking through a glass window when it was only an empty sash. Just see, for instance, how much cleverer the town clerk is than there is any sort of need for him to be. He sees that this song is a song; well, anybody could see that. He sees that it is in the shoemaker's handwriting; anybody who knew the shoemaker's handwriting could see that. But now he takes the liberty of guessing that the shoemaker made this song himself, and that he is going to sing it himself for the prize. So he gets more angry still, for he knows that the shoemaker is the best poet in all this dear old town, where anybody can be a poet by learning the rules, and he knows that if the shoemaker tries to win the prize he will probably do so. But he hears the shoemaker coming back and he has just time to hide the song in his pocket.

"Now he boldly accuses the shoemaker of meaning to sing for the prize. It may seem to you that it is no affair of his whether the shoemaker means to sing or not, and it may seem so to me too, but we are not town clerks. Yet the shoemaker assures him that he does not mean to sing, accuses him in turn of stealing the song, and then, to prove his own words, gives it to him. With that the town clerk is altogether delighted, for he is one of those shallow people who think that when one man has done a good thing, another man can do just as well as he by doing the same thing. He feels sure that if he sings one of the shoemaker's songs he cannot fail to win the prize, and he makes the shoemaker promise that, whatever happens, he will not claim the song as his. The shoemaker is quite ready to promise anything, because he is a wise old soul and he knows that it is not altogether what one does, but pretty largely how one does it, as a cobbler or as a town clerk or as a singer, that wins him fame and honor—and Midsummer Day prizes.

"The town clerk hobbles away, and now who should come in but the goldsmith's daughter herself? Well, no one could wonder at her lover's having pleasant dreams, for she is as pretty a prize as ever a poet sang a song for, or to, or about. With her best gown and her flowers and her jewels, and especially with herself, I don't think you could find any prize that a poet would rather have, even in a town twice as big as this. It seems there is something wrong about the shoe that the cobbler has made for her to wear to-day, and she has come to get him to mend it. I wonder, by the way, if she knows that the knight was the shoemaker's guest last night. She says that when she wants to standstill the shoe insists on walking, and when she wants to walk the shoe makes up its mind to stand still. You see yourself what a remarkable and improper way this is for a shoe to behave. It is so strange that I am inclined to doubt if it is the fault of the shoe at all, or if she really knows whether she wants to walk or stand still. You see it is not easy for us to tell just how a girl would feel at being put up for a prize.

"While the cobbler is at work on the shoe, the knight too appears, and the cobbler hints that he should like to hear the rest of the dream that the young man began to tell him before. So he sings more of his song and tells how the stars among the branches of the laurel-tree formed a crown for the lovely maiden's head, how her eyes, as he looked into her face, were to him brighter than all of them, and how then she twined with her own hand, about his head, the wreath of the star-fruit of the laurel-tree, and still and always he saw her eyes brighter than the stars.

"After he has sung this they all seem to understand one another better. The goldsmith's daughter's maid comes in to look for her mistress, the prentice tumbles in to look for the maid, or for something else, and away they all start for the fields outside the town, where all who will—that is, if they are masters and may—are to sing for the prize.

"At last the fire is burning as it ought, and we can see all the life and light that we care to enjoy. Those flames that stream up so far must mean that the sun has mounted his very highest to mark the noon of Midsummer Day, and the floods of merry sparks that pour up the chimney are not brighter or merrier than the throngs of people, men and women, boys and girls, that walk and run, and caper and dance, and tumble out of the city gates and into the meadows where the singing is to be. But there is more gravity all at once when the masters come. They are mighty and important persons at any time, and above all they are so to-day, when they are to decide who is to have this wonderful prize. They have a higher place to sit than the rest of the meadow, and the common people of the town, who do not pretend to be poets at all, can stand wherever they can find room. The goldsmith and his daughter have the highest seats of all, and the shoemaker is next to them, for he is supposed to know a good song when he hears it. All the other masters have good places too, including the town clerk. The knight is somewhere in the crowd of people who know nothing about poetry.



"When everything is ready the town clerk is the first to sing his song for the prize, because he is the oldest of those who are to try, and indeed he seems to be about the only one, with the knight quite out of the race, because he did so badly in the church yesterday. So the town clerk stands forth, and after a little opening plink-plunk on his guitar, he tries to sing the knight's own song, which the shoemaker gave him, knowing well that he would get into trouble with it. And indeed, the dream that he tells about must have been a nightmare, though nobody who hears him knows what it is about, and the poor town clerk seems to know least of all. He has the song under his coat and tries to look at it now and then, but he reads it wrong and sings nonsense, and in a moment all the people are laughing at him, even those who do not know a good song when they hear it, for they seem to know a bad song very well when they hear it.

"At that he gets angry, stops singing, and says that the song is not his at all but the shoemaker's, and he is to blame. Here is a fine state of things, for the shoemaker is supposed, as I said before, to know more about songs than any of the other people in town, and indeed he knows more about most things than all of them put together. He says that the song is not his, but that it is good enough, if only it could be sung right, and he asks if there is anybody here who knows how to sing it.

"This is the time for the young knight, and he comes forward from the crowd and says that he will try. But first, the shoemaker makes all the masters promise that if he sings the song well and if it is a good song he shall have all the honor just as if he were a master. Now the young man takes his place and everybody is still. He looks straight at the goldsmith's daughter; he does not know that there are any others around him; and now he sings. And what a glorious song it is, full of hope and happiness and victory and joy! He did not sing like this to the masters in the church yesterday; not even to the shoemaker this morning did he sing like this. It is not hard to see the reason. Yesterday he tried to be a master, and when he sang he was wondering how these fussy old fellows would measure his song with their rhyme-gauges and their foot- rules. How could anybody sing when he was thinking of that? Even then it was not a bad song and the goldsmith's daughter would have known it if she had been the judge. The shoemaker, with his warm old spring-time heart, knew it as it was, but the masters were too learned ever to know anything. But now the goldsmith's daughter is the judge and the young poet sings only to her, only for her, only about her. If one smile curves her pretty lips as he sings, it is more to him than the shouts of all the people. That is the way to sing, and that is why, when he is done, all the people do shout, and do clap their hands and wave their hats, and do cry out that he must have the prize.

"And he does have the prize. She crowns his head with a wreath of laurel, which he cares for only because she sets it there, and the goldsmith himself brings him the gold chain that makes him a master. This the young man would put aside, but the wise old shoemaker bids him take this too, and to honor the masters and their art; for, he says, though the Holy Roman Empire should vanish in smoke, yet art will remain. And I think he means by this that all the kingdoms of the earth may be lost and may fall into dust and ashes, as our fire here will do when we leave it to-night, but that the happy young people, with their stirring hearts of spring, and the kindly old people, with their ripe hearts of autumn, will still sing songs and still tell stories."



THE BLOOD-RED SAIL

The fire had been out for weeks. Somebody who came from the country had almost filled the fireplace with a huge bouquet of wild roses. They made it look very pretty for a few days, but now the roses had all faded and fallen to pieces too, and nobody cared enough even to sweep up the dry, dead leaves and throw them out. It all looked forsaken and desolate enough. But it was no more desolate than I. We were lonely and unhappy for the same reason, the poor fireplace and I, because the little girl had gone away with her mother down to the sea and would not be back for more weeks and weeks yet. The city was so hot and dull and stupid! It made me feel dull and stupid to stay in it, except when it made me angry. Yet perhaps the fireplace was even a little worse off than I, though it was not more forsaken and alone, for it had no work to do, while I had plenty. Then again the fireplace, in spite of all the wonderful and beautiful things we had seen in it sometimes, had never been anywhere except just where it was now, and it knew nothing about the sea. But I had been in several other places; and even in the city, with the heat pouring down from the sky and quivering up from the pavements, one can dream of "waters, winds, and rocks," and dreams are good things to have for those who can have nothing else.

And I had the dreams and something else. For the little girl and her mother had said that I might come down to the sea too, whenever I thought the city could get on without me. What surprised me was that the city got on at all, but all the time I thought more and more that I was of no use to it, and it was of no use to me, and finally I left all my work in it to take care of itself and fled away to the sea. Oh, how lovely it was! That first long unbroken sight of the line where the sky and the water met made me feel, as I always feel at such times, that it was worth half the year's worry and care just to see this ocean and this heaven, to breathe this free, salt air, to smell the flowers by the roadside, and to gaze and gaze again at the two great tracts of peaceful blue. How wonderful is this calm rest of a thing that can rage and destroy when it will! The peace of a field of daisies is pretty and sweet; the peace of the ocean is like that of God.

The little girl and I had a long walk along the beaches, over the rocks, and through the tall, salt grass. We hunted among the smooth, round pebbles for the smoothest and the roundest; we studied the jelly- fish that was borne up the beach by the wave and then glided swiftly back again with it, as if it had forgotten something, till one wave, higher than the others, would leave it lying on the sand at our feet, where we could study it as much as we liked; we wondered if the jelly- fish ever did forget anything and if he had remembered it now, so that he did not want to go back any more. We caught little crabs and made them run races, laying huge wagers on our favorites; I filled my pocket, and the little girl filled her handkerchief with the tiny, pointed shells that can be strung into such pretty necklaces. Then we found a great, bright, curly ribbon of seaweed, as wide as two hands, so long that when the little girl held it by the middle she could scarcely lift the ends off the sand, and rich and beautiful in color like dark-red tortoise-shell. The little girl looped one end of it around her head and wound the rest about her body, so that she looked a true little sea princess.

All day a fresh, cool breeze came up from the sea, so different from the air of the dreadful city. Toward evening it grew cooler yet. The wind blew more, and little shreds and patches of fog, and then larger clouds of it, hurried along over the fields. We could see them coming, away off over the water, then they reached the shore and hid the walls and the pastures, then they wrapped us up within themselves and passed us, and we saw them flying off again as if they were trying to carry a chill from the sea as far into the land as they could. And it was chilly after the sun was quite gone—not very cold, but just cool enough so that everybody thought it would be pleasant to have a bit of fire on the hearth. And when we thought a fire would be pleasant we always had it.

Of course down there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here is a little piece of smooth board, with a bit of cornice fastened to the end. It must be from the wall of a cabin. Did the captain's daughter and the young mate sit under it and whisper stories to each other in the calm evenings of the voyage? There is a piece of barrel-stave. Perhaps it once held rum for the sailors' grog; it burns as if it did. There again is a float from a fisherman's net. Was the net torn when it broke away, and did the fisherman lose some fish? And because of that did his sweetheart perhaps lose a ribbon or a trinket? Then here is a broken fragment of a lobster pot. Even this might be some loss to a poor man. And not only are all these things and a hundred times as many more to be thought of, but all this wood has been soaked in the salts of the sea, and when it burns the flames are of all sorts of strange and beautiful and ghostly colors— white and red and green and blue and yellow and violet.

Everybody feels the charm of a driftwood fire. The little girl surely could not help feeling it, and she came and sat on the stool at my feet, leaned her head against my knee, and gazed at the flames without saying a word. But I answered her thought. "Yes," I said, "we may see almost anything in that fire. Look at that strip of cocoanut husk. Does it not tell of green palm-groves and sunny skies and warm breezes? Yet as it lies there on its curved side, with the two ends lifted from the hearth, has it not the shape of a galley, like those in which the rude old pirates of the North used to sweep over the sea, bringing terror to all who came in their way? It is all burnt and blackened, and right over it rises a tall flame of bright red. It is a black ship, with sails all of the color of blood. The strangest of ships it is, and it has the strangest of stories.

"Long, long years ago, in a fearful storm, the captain tried to sail this ship around the cape. The captain of another ship hailed him and asked him if he did not mean to find a harbor for the night. But he swore a terrible oath that he would sail around the cape in spite of Davy Jones, if it took till doomsday. At this Davy Jones was angry, and swore on his part that it should take till doomsday, that the captain should sail in the storm till then and should never get around the cape. Do you know who Davy Jones is? He is the wicked spirit of the sea. When the winds and the waves rage and tear away the sails of the ships, or sink the ships or drive them upon the reefs, it is his work; when it is all smooth and calm and sparkling, as we saw it to-day, then the good fairies of the sea are there and are making everything about it calm and happy.

"But the fairies never came near this ship. She was always driven about, and there was a storm wherever she went. Never could her captain bring her into any port and never could he round the cape. Only for years and years he sailed and sailed in the storm, and found no harbor and no rest. At first he was bold and tried to sail on and gain his port; then he was angry and raged again, and swore that he would not be beaten; then he was in despair; and at last he grew so weary with the storm and the sea and the clouds and again the wind and the sky and the ocean and yet the rain and the waves and the fog, that he longed only to die and to be at peace.

"But he did not die, and no one of his crew died. The sailors all grew old, and their hair and their beards were white, and they looked like ghosts, and their ship was like the ghost of a ship; but they were not ghosts; they were real men and they sailed in a real ship. Sometimes the crews of other ships saw them. Sometimes they hailed the crews of the other ships and begged them to take letters to their friends at home. They said that their almanac had been blown away and they did not know how long they had been from home. They would lower a boat and row to the ship they had hailed, in a sea that would swamp any other boat in half a minute, and so they would bring their letters on deck. Those who knew their story refused to take the letters, and then the sailors would nail them to the mast or lay them on the deck, with a heavy weight to keep them from blowing away, and go back to their own ship. So the letters sometimes reached their homes, for it was said to bring bad luck either to take their letters willingly or to throw them away when they were left on the ship.

"But oh, what of those to whom the letters were sent? Once a captain brought a packet of them to the port from which the strange ship had sailed. Not one of those to whom they were directed could be found, and he opened some of them, hoping that the letters themselves might tell him some way of finding the sailors' friends. One of the sailors had written to his father that after this voyage he meant to live on the land with him and never to go to sea again. When the captain took this letter to its address, he found a man of the right name, but the man said: 'No, no, the letter is not for me; no son of mine is a sailor. None of our family ever went to sea except one, for there is an old story that my great-grandfather's brother once went away in a ship and that the ship was never heard of again. For years his old father used to dream about him and to declare that his ship still floated, and he died believing that his boy was yet alive. No, that is my name on the letter, but it is not for me' One sailor had sent a bank-note to his sister, but where her house stood there was a church, and it had been there for a hundred years. Another in his letter sent a pressed tropical flower to his sweetheart. It was of the color that looked pretty in her hair, but the poor fellow forgot that pressing it would spoil it for that. The captain, despairing of delivering the letters, went into the church, and there, on one of the stones of the floor, he read the sweetheart's name. It said that she was ninety years old when she died, and the words were almost worn away by the feet that had crossed them. The captain dropped the flower upon the stone, and the next morning it was swept away.

"So the sailors grew so old that it seemed they could not grow any older. Then slowly they began to know what they had always refused to believe, that they had been sailing for years and for hundreds of years, and that all who ever knew them and loved them had been long, long dead. Then their eyes grew more hollow, and their hair and their long beards thinner, and their faces more wrinkled and withered, and it was as if all the blood had dried out of their hearts. Perhaps it was when the blood went out of their hearts that it stained the sails that dreadful red. So much for the crew, but it was different with the captain. Davy Jones was preparing something worse yet for him, or thought he was. He was tired of seeing him simply wander hopelessly on the ocean; he wanted to plague him more. He could do this, he thought, by giving him now and then a little hope and then shattering it and sinking it to the bottom of the sea, and dragging the man's heart to the bottom of the sea, too, with a leaden load of despair.

"The captain had never grown to look old, and now, to carry out his wicked plan, Davy Jones promised that once in every seven years he might enter a port and go on shore, and if ever he should find a good woman who would love him and give her life for him, he might rest and never sail again; but when he failed to find such a woman he must go on board his ship again and sail through the storm and the wind and the waves for seven years more. Now, Davy Jones would never have promised this if he had thought that there could be such a good and loving woman, but being only a wicked spirit of the sea he did not know much about good women.

"And for a long time his plan did succeed and the poor captain was more wretched than ever. Once in seven years he would go on shore to seek that true woman, and as often he would return to his ship and sail away. Good women he found many, but none of them would love him. Then his heart would fill with bitterness, for he saw them loving and giving their lives to men who, he could not but know, were less brave and patient and worthy of them than he; faithless men who forgot them, cruel men who misused them, dull men who knew not their own blessings. Why should they love such men as these and never him? Now, you and I, who are so wise, know, of course, that such thoughts were selfish and wicked. For what was he to any woman that she should give her life, or even an hour of it, for him? Was his life or his peace better than another's, that another's should be given for his? Why should any woman love him when there were so many others for her to love?

"But he never thought of these things, so he would rage against all women and he would steer his ship into the most awful waves and whirlpools, hoping that she would be wrecked and sunk, but his ship was never harmed; and he would steer toward pirates, hoping that they would kill him for the chests of gold he had, but even the pirates, when they saw his blood-red sails, would cross themselves and flee from him. Then the seven years would pass and he would go on shore, and now, perhaps, a woman would say that she loved him; yet when the time came she would not give her life for him, and he would throw himself down upon his face on the deck of his ship and steer nowhere, but still drive on through the wind, the black waves, the black storm, and his own blacker despair."

"Oh, my!" said the little girl, "that's awfully nice and ghosty, but I thought this was the best fire we ever had, and now you don't see anything in it at all."

"Oh, yes, I do," I replied, "I have seen the ship all the time, that black ship with its sail of red flame. I have seen it tossing upon the sea, sweeping up till the flame of its sail almost touched the clouds, and then plunging down into the black water, but always, always rushing on with the storm around it and with never any rest. And I have seen the angry clouds tearing across the sky; you can see them yourself when the smoke flies up the chimney, and then when the white flames are flickering and flashing up and then dying down, you can think that you see the lightning. Yes, and you cannot help hearing the wind, whistling up there around the top of the chimney as it would whistle through the rigging of a ship.

"The seven years have passed again, and now the ship has come to land, that the captain may try the little chance once more that has failed him so often. The red flame has dropped down, for the sails are furled, and the wind has stopped for a minute, too, while the ship is at anchor, and there is no need for the storm to pursue it. I see the captain walking on the shore and talking with the master of another ship that is anchored near by. The master tells him that he lives only a few miles away, and asks him if he will come and spend the night with him on shore. The captain replies that for a little rest at his house he will give the master untold treasures from his ship. He makes a sign to his men and they bring a big chest. He opens it and shows the master that it is full to the top of gold and pearls and rubies and emeralds, that flash and shine with all the colors that ever our driftwood fire can show us.



"Such a price for a night's or a year's lodging the master never dreamed of. He cannot believe that such wealth is all for him, and he asks what he can ever do for the captain to earn it. 'Have you not a daughter?' the captain asks. You see he knows how to go about his work without loss of time, even though he has never been very lucky in it.

"'Indeed I have,' the master answers, 'a good, true, lovely girl.'

"'Give her to me,' says the captain, 'for my wife; that is all I ask.'

"The master thinks that is a good deal to ask, but not too much, when he looks at the chest again, and he says, joyfully enough: 'You shall have her, indeed; I know such a man as you will make a good son-in-law; come home with me quickly.'

"So each goes on board his own ship. The master sails first to lead the way, and then the red flaming sail springs up again and the black ship is off the shore. And the storm howls again too; the waves rise, the clouds tear across the sky, and in a minute the ship has passed out of sight.

"Listen to the wind around the chimney. It was roaring and whistling a minute ago, but now it is not so loud. It grows fainter still, till its sound is no more a roar or a whistle, but only the lightest humming of a wind, and to me all the wind seems gone now and it is the hum of whirling spinning wheels that I hear. And what I see is a room where a dozen girls sit spinning and singing songs about their wheels and about their lovers. But one among them does not spin. She lets her wheel stand idle and only sits and looks at a picture that hangs on the wall. It is of a dark man with black hair, a black beard, and deep, piercing eyes; it is the captain whom we have seen so much already. The other girls laugh at her, say that she is in love with the picture, and ask her why she does not sing with them. She cannot sing their happy songs, she says. Then they ask her to sing by herself, and she sings them a song about the captain. It tells them his story, as we know it already, and as she sings they all stop their wheels and begin to gather around her, and in spite of all their merriment it moves them at last, as such a sad story ought to move anybody.

"And when she has finished they all say, 'Ah, poor fellow, if only some good woman would save him from his dreadful lot! But who would do it and give up her own life?'

"'I would do it,' she replies, 'and I hope that the winds may blow him here, so that I can tell him that I am ready to love him and to save him.'

"The others, who are very charming girls, no doubt, but just now not quite so noble and resolute as this one, are almost frightened to hear her talk so, and when somebody says that her father is coming they all slip away and leave her to meet him alone, while they chatter among themselves about what a strange girl she is to want to give her life for a man whose black hair and piercing eyes she has never even seen except in a picture. Her father is the shipmaster whom we saw, as you have guessed by this time, and he has brought the stranger captain home with him. 'This is my daughter,' he says; 'is she not all and more than all that I told you?'

"Then, having always found her, no doubt, a good and obedient child, he tells her at once that the captain is to stay with them, and that he expects her to be his wife. Some girls do not like to be ordered to marry even the men they love; but she is so true and simple and kind that she means to love the captain with all her heart, and even her father's wish that she shall do so cannot change her. The father thinks very wisely that they will get on better without him, so he leaves them, and they do get on better at once. First they gaze for a long time into each other's eyes, those deep, piercing, sad eyes of the captain, and those true, soft, young eyes of the master's daughter. Then he thinks that her face is not strange to him, as he remembers, dimly at first and then more clearly, that he has seen this face in dreams many times, when it was the face of an angel who was to save him from his long weariness. And the dreams were not far wrong, for she looks into his eyes with no thought for herself, but only: 'This is one who has suffered for many years and must suffer for many years more, unless I love him and save him.'

"He asks her if she can give herself wholly to him, and she answers that, whatever his fate may be and whatever hers, she will take it all and will be all his own forever. 'If you knew what it would cost you to be true to me,' he says, 'you would shrink away from me and try to save yourself.' 'Never,' she answers; 'let it cost what it will, I will be true to you till death.'