Twilight Land by Howard Pyle (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📖

“Very well,” said the young king, “so be it. I will approve the truth of my words. Bring me hither some beggar from the town whom Fate has made poor, and I will make him rich. So I will show you that his life shall be as I will, and not as Fate wills.”

Now, in that town there was a poor beggar-man who used to sit every day beside the town gate, begging for something for charity’s sake. Sometimes people gave him a penny or two, but it was little or nothing that he got, for Fate was against him.

The same day that the king and the chief councillor had had their talk together, as the beggar sat holding up his wooden bowl and asking charity of those who passed by, there suddenly came three men who, without saying a word, clapped hold of him and marched him off.

It was in vain that the beggar talked and questioned—in vain that he begged and besought them to let him go. Not a word did they say to him, either of good or bad. At last they came to a gate that led through a high wall and into a garden, and there the three stopped, and one of them knocked upon the gate. In answer to his knocking it flew open. He thrust the beggar into the garden neck and crop, and then the gate was banged to again.

But what a sight it was the beggar saw before his eyes!—flowers, and fruit-trees, and marble walks, and a great fountain that shot up a jet of water as white as snow. But he had not long to stand gaping and staring around him, for in the garden were a great number of people, who came hurrying to him, and who, without speaking a word to him or answering a single question, or as much as giving him time to think, led him to a marble bath of tepid water. There he was stripped of his tattered clothes and washed as clean as snow. Then, as some of the attendants dried him with fine linen towels, others came carrying clothes fit for a prince to wear, and clad the beggar in them from head to foot. After that, still without saying a word, they let him out from the bath again, and there he found still other attendants waiting for him—two of them holding a milk-white horse, saddled and bridled, and fit for an emperor to ride. These helped him to mount, and then, leaping into their own saddles, rode away with the beggar in their midst.

They rode of the garden and into the streets, and on and on they went until they came to the king’s palace, and there they stopped. Courtiers and noblemen and great lords were waiting for their coming, some of whom helped him to dismount from the horse, for by this time the beggar was so overcome with wonder that he stared like one moon-struck, and as though his wits were addled. Then, leading the way up the palace steps, they conducted him from room to room, until at last they came to one more grand and splendid than all the rest, and there sat the king himself waiting for the beggar’s coming.

The beggar would have flung himself at the king’s feet, but the king would not let him; for he came down from the throne where he sat, and, taking the beggar by the hand, led him up and sat him alongside of him. Then the king gave orders to the attendants who stood about, and a feast was served in plates of solid gold upon a table-cloth of silver—a feast such as the beggar had never dreamed of, and the poor man ate as he had never eaten in his life before.

All the while that the king and the beggar were eating, musicians played sweet music and dancers danced and singers sang.

Then when the feast was over there came ten young men, bringing flasks and flagons of all kinds, full of the best wine in the world; and the beggar drank as he had never drank in his life before, and until his head spun like a top.

So the king and the beggar feasted and made merry, until at last the clock struck twelve and the king arose from his seat. “My friend,” said he to the beggar, “all these things have been done to show you that Luck and Fate, which have been against you for all these years, are now for you. Hereafter, instead of being poor you shall be the richest of the rich, for I will give you the greatest thing that I have in my treasury,” Then he called the chief treasurer, who came forward with a golden tray in his hand. Upon the tray was a purse of silk. “See,” said the king, “here is a purse, and in the purse are one hundred pieces of gold money. But though that much may seem great to you, it is but little of the true value of the purse. Its virtue lies in this: that however much you may take from it, there will always be one hundred pieces of gold money left in it. Now go; and while you are enjoying the riches which I give you, I have only to ask you to remember these are not the gifts of Fate, but of a mortal man.”

But all the while he was talking the beggar’s head was spinning and spinning, and buzzing and buzzing, so that he hardly heard a word of what the king said.

Then when the king had ended his speech, the lords and gentlemen who had brought the beggar in led him forth again. Out they went through room after room—out through the courtyard, out through the gate.

Bang!—it was shut to behind him, and he found himself standing in the darkness of midnight, with the splendid clothes upon his back, and the magic purse with its hundred pieces of gold money in his pocket.

He stood looking about himself for a while, and then off he started homeward, staggering and stumbling and shuffling, for the wine that he had drank made him so light-headed that all the world spun topsy-turvy around him.

His way led along by the river, and on he went stumbling and staggering. All of a sudden—plump! splash!—he was in the water over head and ears. Up he came, spitting out the water and shouting for help, splashing and sputtering, and kicking and swimming, knowing no more where he was than the man in the moon. Sometimes his head was under water and sometimes it was up again.

At last, just as his strength was failing him, his feet struck the bottom, and he crawled up on the shore more dead than alive. Then, through fear and cold and wet, he swooned away, and lay for a long time for all the world as though he were dead.

Now, it chanced that two fisherman were out with their nets that night, and Luck or Fate led them by the way where the beggar lay on the shore. “Halloa!” said one of the fishermen, “here is a poor body drowned!” They turned him over, and then they saw what rich clothes he wore, and felt that he had a purse in his pocket.

“Come,” said the second fisherman, “he is dead, whoever he is. His fine clothes and his purse of money can do him no good now, and we might as well have them as anybody else.” So between them both they stripped the beggar of all that the king had given him, and left him lying on the beach.

At daybreak the beggar awoke from the swoon, and there he found himself lying without a stitch to his back, and half dead with the cold and the