they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment;
and if you could not come, then was the messenger
to fetch Merlin, and he is there these three days
now, and saith he will fetch that water though he
burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish
it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call
upon his hellions to hie them hither and help, but
not a whiff of moisture hath he started yet, even
so much as might qualify as mist upon a copper mirror
an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth betwixt
sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if
ye—”
Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over
I showed to Sir Ozana these words which I had written
on the inside of his hat: “Chemical Department,
Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two
of first size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together
with the proper complementary details—and
two of my trained assistants.” And I said:
“Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly,
brave knight, and show the writing to Clarence, and
tell him to have these required matters in the Valley
of Holiness with all possible dispatch.”
“I will well, Sir Boss,” and he was off.
THE HOLY FOUNTAIN
The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they
would have acted differently. They had come
a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey
was nearly finished, and they learned that the main
thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn’t
do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably
have done—turn back and get at something
profitable—no, anxious as they had before
been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much
as forty times as anxious now to see the place where
it had used to be. There is no accounting for
human beings.
We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset
we stood upon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness,
and our eyes swept it from end to end and noted its
features. That is, its large features.
These were the three masses of buildings. They
were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to
toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed
a desert—and was. Such a scene is
always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks
so steeped in death. But there was a sound here
which interrupted the stillness only to add to its
mournfulness; this was the faint far sound of tolling
bells which floated fitfully to us on the passing
breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew
whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.
We reached the monastery before dark, and there the
males were given lodging, but the women were sent
over to the nunnery. The bells were close at
hand now, and their solemn booming smote upon the
ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despair
possessed the heart of every monk and published itself
in his ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed,
soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted
about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures
of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.
