o be old?"

"Now you ask me a question, Golden Bells, and I'll give you an answer.
Besides, it's part of my duties to teach you wisdom. Now, it is not a
terrible thing, at all, at all, to be old. I see the young folk start
out in life, and before them, there's the showers of April, there's
wind and heat and thunder and lightning. But I'm in warm, brown
October, and all of it's gone by me. And in a little while I'll sleep,
and 'tis I need it, God help me! The old don't sleep much, wee Golden
Bells, so 'tis a comfort to look forward to one's rest after the
hardness of the world. In a hundred or more years or five hundred,
just as the fancy takes me, I'll wake up for a while and wander down
the world to hear the people sing my songs, and then I'll go back to my
sleep."

And she was going to ask him another question when the Sanang came up.
The magician was a thick man with merry eyes and a cruel mouth.

"Golden Bells," he says, "there's rare entertainment in the crystal
glass."

"What is it, Sanang!"

"The warlocks of the Gobi have a young lad down, and they're waiting
until the soul comes out of his body. Come, I'll show you."

And in the crystal glass he showed her Marco Polo, and the knees going
from under him in the roaring sands. She gave a quick cry of pity.

"Oh, the poor lad!"

Sanang chuckled. "He started out with a big caravan to preach what he
thought was a truth to China. I've been watching him all along, and
it's been rare sport. I knew it would come to this."

"Couldn't you save him, Sanang?" she cried. "O, Sanang, he's so young,
and he set out to come to us. Couldn't you save him?"

"Well, I might." Sanang was not pleased. "It'll be a while before the
shadow comes out of him. But it would be rare sport to watch and see
the warlocks and the ghouls and the goblins set on it the way terriers
do be setting on an otter."

"Oh, save him, Sanang! Save him!"

"Now, Golden Bells, I might be able to save him, and again I mightn't."

"Save him, Sanang!" Li Po broke in. "Save him the way the wee one
wants. For if you don't, Sanang, I'll write a song about you that'll
be remembered for generations, and they'll point out your grandchildren
and your grandchildren's grandchildren, and they'll laugh and sing Li
Po's song:

"'There was a fat worm who considered himself a serpent--'"

"Oh, now, Li Po, for God's sake, let you not be composing poems on me,
for 'tis you have the bitter tongue