"

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_]

CHAPTER XXIII

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 f