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most fantastic thing I ever saw.  Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes.  And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port.  At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that.  These people were no easier to please than other nines.  The umpire’s first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter.  When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular.  So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him.

Here are the names of the nines:

BESSEMERS ULSTERS   KING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS.
KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS.
KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.
KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE.
KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL.
KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.
KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE.   KING MELIODAS OF LIONES.
KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE.
KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.   Umpire—CLARENCE.

The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.







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CHAPTER XLI







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THE INTERDICT

However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious.  We couldn’t bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, day in and day out.  Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple, and genuine, and good she was!  She was a flawless wife and mother; and yet I had married her for no other particular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some knight should win her from me in the field.  She had hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way and as of right.  I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later.  She couldn’t see how, but I cut argument short and we had a wedding.

Now I didn’t know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw.  Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was.  People talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex.  What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same?  There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.

In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world.  Many a time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. It touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me:

“The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears.  Now thou’lt kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child.”

But I didn’t know it, all the same.  I hadn’t an idea in the world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game; so I never let on, but said:

“Yes, I know, sweetheart—how dear and good it is of you, too! But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine,

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