right to their money. I am going to be President."

At this they all burst into shouts of laughter and rolled on the
grass. Even the Reformer chuckled a little.

While they were laughing, the ploughman came up with an axe and began
to chop at the bush.

"What are you doing to our bush?" cried the beggars.

"Chopping it down," said the ploughman.

"But why?" cried they.

"I must plough this field," said he.

So the beggars grabbed their spoils and scuttled away to other
countries, and I went on over the hill.

[Illustration]

STRONGHOLD

[Illustration]

It rose upon the rock like a growth of nature; secure, commanding,
imperturbable; mantled with ivy and crowned with towers; a castle of
the olden time, called Stronghold.

Below it, the houses of the town clung to the hillside, creeping up
close to the castle wall and clustering in its shadow as if to claim
protection. In truth, for many a day it had been their warden against
freebooter and foreign foe, gathering the habitations of the humble as
a hen gathers her chickens beneath her wings to defend them from the
wandering hawk.

But those times of disorder and danger were long past. The roaming
tribes had settled down in their conquered regions. The children of
the desert had learned to irrigate their dusty fields. The robber
chiefs had sobered into merchants and money-lenders. The old town by
the river had a season of peace, labouring and making merry and
sleeping and bringing forth children and burying its dead in
tranquillity, protected by forts far away and guarded by ships on
distant waters.

Yet Stronghold still throned upon the rock, proudly dominant; and the
houses full of manifold life were huddled at its foot; and the voices
of men and women and little children, talking or laughing or singing
or sobbing or cursing or praying, went up around it like smoke.

[Illustration: Stronghold.]

Now the late lord of the castle, in the last age of romance, had
carried off a beautiful peasant girl with dove's eyes, whom he married
on her death-bed where she gave birth to their son. The blood of his
father and of his mother met in the boy's body, and in his soul their
spirits were mingled, so that he was by times haughty and gentle, and
by turns fierce and tender, and he grew up a dreamer with sudden
impulses to strong action. To him, at his father's death, fell the
lordship of the castle; and he was both proud and thoughtful; and he
considere