A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court | Page 4

fellow.
"Will I which?"

"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for--"
"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus, or I'll report you."
Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come
rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's
neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up the
tree when he arrived.
He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. There was argument on his
side--and the bulk of the advantage-- so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an
agreement whereby I was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. I came down, and we
started away, I walking by the side of his horse. We marched comfortably along, through
glades and over brooks which I could not remember to have seen before--which puzzled
me and made me wonder--and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a circus. So I
gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to
an asylum--so I was up a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from
Hartford. He said he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a lie, but allowed it
to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a
winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the
first I had ever seen out of a picture.
"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing.
"Camelot," said he.
My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught himself nodding, now, and
smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his, and said:
"I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got it all written out, and you can read it if
you like."
In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal; then by and by, after years, I took the
journal and turned it into a book. How long ago that was!"
He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where I should begin:
"Begin here--I've already told you what goes before." He was steeped in drowsiness by
this time. As I went out at his door I heard him murmur sleepily: "Give you good den,
fair sir."
I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part of it--the great bulk of
it--was parchment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a
palimpsest. Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of a
penmanship which was older and dimmer still--Latin words and sentences: fragments
from old monkish legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated by my stranger and
began to read-- as follows:

THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND





CHAPTER I
CAMELOT
"Camelot--Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before.
Name of the asylum, likely."
It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as
Sunday. The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the
twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing
going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a
faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass--wheels that apparently had a tire as broad
as one's hand.
Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming
down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red
poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked
indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face. The circus
man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her. And she--she was no more
startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life. She
was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she
happened to notice me, then there was a change! Up went her hands, and she was turned
to stone; her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was the
picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. And there she stood gazing, in