THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES
There never was such a country for wandering liars;
and they were of both sexes. Hardly a month
went by without one of these tramps arriving; and
generally loaded with a tale about some princess or
other wanting help to get her out of some far-away
castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless
scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think
that the first thing the king would do after listening
to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would
be to ask for credentials—yes, and a pointer
or two as to locality of castle, best route to it,
and so on. But nobody ever thought of so simple
and common-sense a thing at that. No, everybody
swallowed these people’s lies whole, and never
asked a question of any sort or about anything.
Well, one day when I was not around, one of these
people came along—it was a she one, this
time—and told a tale of the usual pattern.
Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle,
along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls,
pretty much all of them princesses; they had been
languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six
years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous
brothers, each with four arms and one eye—the
eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a
fruit. Sort of fruit not mentioned; their usual
slovenliness in statistics.
Would you believe it? The king and the whole
Round Table were in raptures over this preposterous
opportunity for adventure. Every knight of the
Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but
to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it
upon me, who had not asked for it at all.
By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence brought
me the news. But he—he could not contain
his. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude
in a steady discharge—delight in my good
fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark
of his favor for me. He could keep neither his
legs nor his body still, but pirouetted about the
place in an airy ecstasy of happiness.
On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that
conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my
vexation under the surface for policy’s sake,
and did what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed,
I said I was glad. And in a way it was
true; I was as glad as a person is when he is scalped.
Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste
time with useless fretting, but get down to business
and see what can be done. In all lies there
is wheat among the chaff; I must get at the wheat
in this case: so I sent for the girl and she came.
She was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest,
but, if signs went for anything, she didn’t
know as much as a lady’s watch. I said:
“My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?”
She said she hadn’t.
