Now it was just about this time that there fell upon the whole of that country an enormous calamity far worse than any war or pestilence. It was a kind which we have very few chances of experiencing nowadays; though in the other matter of wars and diseases our opportunities are still wide and varied. There had appeared in the wilderness to the north of that country, a monster of huge size and horrible habits and disposition; a monster who might have been called, for the sake of simplicity, a dragon, only he had feet like an elephant, but a hundred times bigger, with which he used to stamp and crush everything to a flat and fine paste before he licked it up with a tongue as long and large as the Great Sea Serpent; and his great jaws opened wide like a whale’s, only that they could have swallowed a shoal of whales as if they were whitebait. No weapons or missiles seemed to be of any avail against him; for his skin was plated with iron of incredible thickness. Indeed, some declared that he was entirely composed of iron, and that he had been made out of that material by a magician who lived beyond the wilderness, where such crafts and spells were more seriously studied. Indeed, it was hinted by some that the land of the magicians was in every way in advance of their own, and well worthy of emulation; and that if anyone objected that this marvellous machinery had no apparent effect except in killing people and destroying beautiful things, he should be rebuked as one lacking in enterprise and a larger outlook upon the future. But those who said this, commonly said it before they had actually met the new animal, and it was noticed that after meeting him they seldom uttered these thoughts, or, indeed, any other.

  The monster may have been made of iron, and his nerves and muscles may have been, as some said, made like an arrangement of wheels and wires, but he was most unmistakably alive; and proved it by having a hearty appetite and an evident enjoyment of life. He trampled and devoured first, all the fortifications of the frontier, and then the castles and the larger towns of the interior; and by the time that he was marching towards the capital, the King and his courtiers were all climbing to the tops of towers, and everybody else to the tops of trees. These precautions proved inadequate in practical experience; in very practical experience. So long as the monster could be seen twenty miles away like a marching mountain, already fantastic in outline, but still blue or purple with distance, and there was no other sign of him except a slight shaking of the houses as in a mild earthquake, these conjectures and expedients could be debated copiously, if not always calmly. But when the creature came near enough for his habits to be closely studied, it was clear that he could tread down trees like grass, and flatten out castles like houses of cards. It became more and more the fashion to seek out less showy and more secluded country resorts; the whole population, led by magistrates, merchants, and all its natural leaders, fleeing with startling rapidity to the mountains and concealing themselves in holes and caverns, which they blocked behind them with big rocks. Even this was not very successful; the monster proceeded to scale the mountains with the gaiety of a goat, to kick the rocky barricades to pieces, letting in daylight on the cowering company within; and many of them were able to recognize the familiar shape of the long and curling tongue of the intelligent creature, exploring their retreat and coiling and twisting and darting about in a very playful and sportive manner. Those who had not found any hole to crawl into, and who were clinging in crowds to the crags higher up the hill, were at this moment, however, surprised with a sight that almost took their thoughts for an instant off the universal peril. On the highest crag of all, above their heads, had appeared suddenly the figure of Sir Laverok with his old spear in his hand, with his sword girt around his ragged armour, and the wind waving about his wild hair that was the colour of flame. In all that huddling crowd it was only the man in hiding who stood out conspicuous; and only the man fleeing from justice who did not flee.

  “I am not afraid,” he said in answer to their wild cries. “You know I have a trick of finding my way to places of safety. And as it happens, I know a castle to which I shall retreat, and to which the dragon can never come.”

  “But, my good Sir,” said the Chancellor, pausing in the act of trying to creep into a rabbit-burrow, “the dragon can grind castles to powder with his heel. I regret to say that he showed not the least embarrassment even in approaching the Law Courts.”

  “I know of a castle which he cannot reach,” said Sir Laverok.

  “The offensive animal,” said the Lord Chamberlain, poking his head for a moment out of a hole in the ground, “actually entered the King’s private chamber without knocking.”

  “I know of a private chamber that he cannot enter,” replied the outlaw knight.

  “It is very doubtful,” came the muffled voice of the Lord High Admiral from somewhere underground, “whether we shall even be safe in any of the caverns.”

  “I know a cavern where I shall be safe,” said Sir Laverok.

  At the foot of the steep slope to which they clung spread a large plateau like a plain; and over this bare tableland, at the moment, the monster was prowling up and down like a polar bear; considering what he would destroy next. Every time he turned his head towards them, the crowds clambered a little higher up the hill; but they soon saw, to their astonishment, that Sir Laverok was not climbing up, but climbing down. He dropped from the last overhanging rock, and rushed out upon the plain against the monster; when he came within a short distance, the knight gave one wild leap and threw his spear like a thunderbolt.

  What happened in the flash of that thunderbolt nobody in the crowd seemed to know. Those who knew them best were of the opinion that they all shut their eyes tight, and most probably fell flat on their faces. Others say that the monster stamped his foot upon his enemy with so stunning a shock that a cloud of dust rolled up to the clouds of heaven, and for a moment hid the whole scene. Others, again, explained that the vast immeasurable bulk of the monster had come between them and the victim. Anyhow, it is certain that when that vast bulk turned once more and began swaying and lurching backwards and forwards on its lonely prowl, no sign of the victim could be seen. Probably he had been stamped to mire as everything else had been.

  But if it were conceivable that he had indeed escaped, as he had boasted, it was hard to say where; as there did not seem to be anywhere for him to escape to. And the authorities in the holes and caves could not but regret that they had not condemned him to be burned as a wizard instead of hanged as a rebel, whenever they should have put the final touch to the sentence by carrying it into effect. They comforted themselves in the cave by the reflection that at least no hasty capture or premature execution had yet put it out of their power to rectify the mistake; but for the moment it seemed clear that their chances either of hanging or burning the gentleman were further off than ever.

  Just at that moment, however, there was a new interruption. It so happened that the King’s third daughter was standing in the crowd on the slope; for all the elder members of the royal family were enjoying a temporary and semi-official retirement from the cares of state at the bottom of a dry well on the other side of the mountain range. But she had been unable or unwilling to travel with the extreme rapidity which they had had the presence of mind to exhibit; for she was rather an absent-minded person, wholly without aptitude for practical politics. She was called the Princess Philomel, and was a dreamy sort of person, with long hair and blue eyes that were like the blue of distant horizons, and she was commonly very silent; but she had watched the adventure of the vanishing outlaw with more interest than she commonly showed in anything; and she startled everybody at this stage by breaking her silence and calling out in a clear voice:

  “Yes; he has found his fairy castle where no dragon can come.”

  The more dignified Councillors of State were just venturing to put their noses above ground in order to remonstrate respectfully against the breach of etiquette, when everybody’s attention was again distracted to the monster, who was behaving in an even more extraordinary way than usual. Instead of pacing backwards and forwards with a certain pomposity as he had done before, he was bounding to and fro, taking totally unnecessary leaps into the air and clawing in a most uncomfortable and inconsequent fashion.

  “What is the matter with him now?” enquired the Master of the Buckhounds, who was something of a student of animal life, and would, under other circumstances, have been much interested in the phenomenon.

  “The monster is angry,” replied the Princess Philomel in the same absolute if abstracted fashion. “He is angry because the knight has reached the magic chamber and cannot be found.”

  If the monster was indeed exhibiting anger, it would seem that his anger had an element of self-reproach. For he was evidently clawing and scratching at himself rather in the manner of a dog hunting a flea, but much more savagely.

  “Can he be killing himself?” asked the Lord Chancellor hopefully. “I am the keeper of the King’s conscience, and not, of course, the keeper of the dragon’s. But it seems possible that his conscience, if once aroused, would find in retrospect some legitimate ground for remorse.”

  “Nonsense,” said the Chamberlain, “why should he kill himself?”

  “If it comes to that,” answered the other, “why should he fight himself, as he seems to be doing?”

  “Because,” answered the Princess, “Sir Laverok has at last reached the cavern where he is safe.”

  But even as she spoke, a further and final change seemed to pass over the monster. For a moment it looked as if he had turned into two or three different monsters, for the different parts of him were behaving in different ways. One hind leg rested as calmly on the earth as the column of a temple, while the other was kicking wildly up behind and thrashing the air like the sail of a windmill. One eye was standing out of the head in hideous prominence, and rolling round and round like a catherine-wheel of fury, while the other was already closed with the placid expression of a cow who had gone to sleep. Then the next moment both eyes were closed, and both feet stationary, and the whole monster, with a deprecating expression, turned his back and began to retreat towards the plains at an amiable and ambling trot.

  Thus began the last phase of the celebrated Dragon of the Wilderness, which was more of a mystery than his wildest massacres and deeds of destruction. He interfered with nobody; he stood politely on one side for people to pass; he even succeeded, with some signs of reluctance, in becoming a vegetarian and subsisting entirely upon grass. But when the ultimate goal of his pilgrimage was discovered, the surprise was even more general. The wondering and still doubt- fill crowds that followed him across that country became gradually convinced of the incredible idea that he intended to go to church. Moreover, he approached the sacred edifice in a far more tactful and unobtrusive and respectful way than Sir Laverok had done in the old days, when he broke windows and tore up pavements in his in- discriminating excess of punctuality. Finally, the monster surprised them most of all by kneeling down and opening his mouth very wide with an ingratiating expression; and the Princess surprised them still more by walking inside.

  Something in the way in which she did it revealed to the more thoughtful among them the fact that Sir Laverok had been inside the animal all the time. It is unnecessary to repeat here the explanations which gradually enlightened them about the inner truth of the story of the inner machinery of the dragon. This exact and scientific narrative is also addressed only to the thoughtful. And these will have no difficulty in guessing that a magnificent marriage ceremony took place in the interior of the dragon, which was treated as a temporary chapel while within the precincts of the consecrated building. They may even form some notion of what was meant when the Princess, who was given to oracular remarks, said, “The whole world will behave differently when heroes find their hiding-place in the world.” But it must be confessed that those learned men, the Chancellor and the Chamberlain, could make very little of it.

  The Second Miracle

  The Missionary had wandered into a remote and savage land; around him was a wilderness of wild superstitions, of men demanding dreadful and barbaric things. Dark passions found expression in obscure rites and bewildering dances; the strange craving for erecting altars, dedicating priests and prophets, setting apart particular spaces for ceremonies connected with the supernatural, seeking divine aid in the form of a feast or a sacrifice — these and a hundred other human antics disturbed the land; and he felt an equal horror and repugnance for them all. By which it will be understood that the clergyman in question was a broad-minded clergyman, and that he belonged to the Liberal school.

  In the course of his wandering he came upon a particularly flagrant case of credulity. It was a legend concerned with the hero or holy man who was said to have founded the tribe. He had been the best of men and an example to all mankind; yet (strangely enough) he had been killed. And as a mark of contempt his body was cast forth into a barren and burnt-out place of ashes and dust and dry sand, where it was notorious that nothing could grow, not even the hardiest thorn or weed. But in spite of this, said the legend, there had sprung up out of his grave in that grey desert a great green tree bearing golden fruit and flowers of all the colours in the world. The tribe sheltered under it, worshipping as in a shrine; and declared that the spirit of the dead was present in the trunk and branches. Then came an evil time of invasion; and heathens laid waste the land and cut down the tree, so that when it was recaptured by the faithful it was in the form of a mere log or lopped trunk. But they still believed that the spirit of their god was in it; and they set the sacred timber upon an altar and worshipped it, and rejoiced and prospered as of old.

  The missionary really had great difficulty in explaining to these simple people their simple error. Taking a large magnifying-glass from his pocket, he examined the surface of the bark and found it to be of a ligneous nature. He had little doubt, he said, that if the timber were dissected, transverse sections and all other sections would exhibit the same tree-like formation. He even offered good-naturedly to draw up the diagrams beforehand; for he was an expert mathematician. In short, he showed that a thorough scientific analysis confirms the popular suspicion that wood is wooden. He was quite gratified with his reception; indeed, it was far better than he could have hoped. The simple savages seemed almost ready to worship him, prostrating themselves before him at a signal from the chief priest, who marched in front of him at the head of a triumphal procession, crying aloud strange words in an unknown tongue. For the Missionary did not know that the words, when translated from the hieratic tongue, were as follows: “Once more the gods are good to us! For centuries there has dwelt with us a man in the likeness of a lump of wood. And now, for a new miracle, we have a lump of wood in the likeness of a man.”

  The Conversion of an Anarchist

  Lady Joan Garnet had eyebrows long before she had any hair; and a cock of the eyebrow from which the wisest and oldest nurses in the family deduced that she would marry the wrong man. Perhaps she did; those who read this tale must decide the point for themselves. For (however that may be) some twenty-three years afterwards, when Lady Joan had plenty of hair, almost too much in fact, and of a heavy bronze tint, she still had the distinct and defiant eyebrow, darker in colour and, as it were, disconnected from the rest of her face. But though she ran to eyebrow, she did not look supercilious; only rather cross.

  She was indeed of a restless and enterprising temper, and in our modern, highly civilised society it did not take her long to find a man wrong enough to marry. The prophetic nurses, indeed, had no notion it would be as wrong as that. In the Smart Set in which she lived, men talking Socialism and Anarchism were common enough, of course, but men believing in them (or in anything else) were rare, and Andrew Home was a perfectly serious Anarchist. He was a young Scot who had worked his way up from a plough to a professorship, and been taken up by the aristocrats as aristocrats will take up anything curious — so long as it is not of ancient lineage. The rich gentleman shrinks from nobody, except the poor gentleman.