er, too, to be unblushing knaves for these nine centuries!
Now, I suppose, you will be denying the affair of the squirrel also?"

"Oh, be off with your nonsense!" says Manuel, "for I have not yet had
twenty-two years of living, and I never saw you before, and I hope never
to see you again."

But they all set upon him with cutlasses, so there was nothing remaining
save to have out his sword and fight. And when each of these one-eyed
persons had vanished curiously under his death-wound, Manuel told Niafer
it was a comfort to find that the month of years had left him a fair
swordsman for all that his youth was gone; and that he thought they had
better be leaving this part of the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, wherein
unaccountable things took place, and all persons behaved unreasonably.

"Were these wood-spirits unreasonable," asks Niafer, "in saying that the
countenance and the body you have given me are ugly?"

"My dear," replied Manuel, "it was their saying that which made me try
to avoid the conflict, because it does not look well, not even in
dealing with demons, to injure the insane."

"Manuel, and can it be you who are considering appearances?"

Dom Manuel said gravely: "My dealings with Misery and with Misery's
kindred have taught me many things which I shall never forget nor very
willingly talk about. One of these teachings, though, is that in most
affairs there is a middle road on which there is little traffic and
comparatively easy going. I must tell you that the company I have been
in required a great deal of humoring, for of course it is not safe to
trifle with any evil principle. No, no, one need not absolutely and
openly defy convention, I perceive, in order to follow after one's own
thinking," says Manuel, shrewdly, and waggling a gray beard.

"I am so glad you have learned that at last! At least, I suppose, I am
glad," said Niafer, a little wistfully, as she recalled young Manuel of
the high head.

"But, as I was saying, I now estimate that these tattered persons who
would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red fellow that would
have hindered my entering, this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest, were spiritual intruders into Misery's domain whom Misery had
driven out of their wits. No, Niafer, I voice no criticism, because with
us two this Misery of earth, whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina,
has dealt very handsomely. It troubles me to suspect that he was also
called Mimir; but of t