“Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized
by the Nobility. Patent applied for.”
There was more money in the business than one knew
what to do with. As it extended, I brought out
a line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thing
for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the
forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch
to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and
triced up with a half-turn in the standing rigging
forward of the weather-gaskets. Yes, it was a
daisy.
But about that time I noticed that the motive power
had taken to standing on one leg, and I found that
there was something the matter with the other one;
so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking Sir
Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain
of his friends; for the works stopped within a year,
and the good saint got him to his rest. But
he had earned it. I can say that for him.
When I saw him that first time—however,
his personal condition will not quite bear description
here. You can read it in the Lives of the Saints.*
[All the details concerning the hermits, in this
chapter, are from Lecky—but greatly modified.
This book not being a history but only a tale, the
majority of the historian’s frank details were
too strong for reproduction in it.—_Editor_]
RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN
Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while.
Merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing
the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever,
but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course he
had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.
Finally I said:
“How does the thing promise by this time, partner?”
“Behold, I am even now busied with trial of
the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of
the occult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail
me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish.”
He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the
region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for
the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled
down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog.
He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted
his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most
extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes
he dropped down panting, and about exhausted.
Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and
nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a
couple of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious
smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement.
The abbot inquired anxiously for results. Merlin
said:
“If any labor of mortal might break the spell
that binds these waters, this which I have but just
essayed had done it. It has failed; whereby
I do now know that that which I had feared is a truth
established; the sign of this failure is, that the
most potent spirit known to the magicians of the East,
and whose name none may utter and live, has laid his
spell upon this well. The mortal does not breathe,
nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret of that
spell, and without that secret none can break it.
The water will flow no more forever, good Father.
I have done what man could. Suffer me to go.”
