and I think it must be the 'Castle of Heart's Desire,' because
all up the craggy path that leads to it there are knights urging their
horses--"

"Good!" Max smiled with pleasure and pressed his arm. "Continue!
Continue!"

"Well, they're all sorts of knights, you know," Blake went on in the
dreamy, singsong voice--"fair knights and red knights and black knights,
every one of them in glittering armor, with long lances, and wonderful
devices on their shields--"

"Yes! Yes!"

"--wonderful devices on their shields, and spurs of gold and
silver, and waving plumes of many colors; and the flanks of their
horses--cream-colored and chestnut and black--shine in the light."

"Continue, _mon cher_! Continue! I can see them also!" Max, utterly
absorbed, charming as a child, bent forward, staring into the heart of
the fire.

"Well, they mount and mount and mount, and sometimes the great horses
refuse the craggy path and rear, and sometimes a knight is unseated and
the others look back and laugh at his discomfiture and ride on until
they themselves are proved unfit; and so, on and on, while the way gets
steeper and more perilous, and the company smaller and still smaller,
until the sun drops down behind the mountain and the gold flag flutters
as gray as a moth, and in all the windows of the castle torches spring
up to greet the knight who shall succeed."

"And which is he--the knight who shall succeed?"

"Don't you see him?"

"No! Where is he? Where?"

"Why, there--riding first, on the narrowest verge of the craggy path! A
very young knight with dark hair and a proud carriage and gray eyes
with flecks of gold in them."

For an instant Max gazed seriously into the flames, then turned,
blushing and laughing.

"Ah! But you are laughing at me! What a shame! For a punishment you
shall go straight back to work." He jumped up and handed Blake his
discarded hammer.

Blake looked reluctantly at the hammer, then looked back at the enticing
flame of the logs.

"Oh, very well! Have it your own way!" he said, getting slowly to his
feet. "But if I were you, I'd like to have heard what awaited the knight
in the tapestried chamber of the castle tower!"

CHAPTER XIII

To the zest of the amateur, Blake added knowledge of a practical kind in
the arrangement of household gods, and long ere the February dusk had
fallen, the fifth-floor _appartement_ had assumed a certain homeliness.
True, much of the 'old iron,' as he termed