rts of quarters that before I wrote the tale I had
heard something. The most decorative of these legends is also the most
precise: "I know for a fact that the whole thing was given him in
typescript by a lady-in-waiting." This was not the case; and all
vaguer reports to the effect that I had heard some rumours or hints of
rumours are equally void of any trace of truth.

Again I apologise for entering so pompously into the minutiae of my bit
of a story, as if it were the lost poems of Sappho; but it appears
that the subject interests the public, and I comply with my
instructions. I take it, then, that the origins of "The Bowmen" were
composite. First of all, all ages and nations have cherished the
thought that spiritual hosts may come to the help of earthly arms,
that gods and heroes and saints have descended from their high
immortal places to fight for their worshippers and clients. Then
Kipling's story of the ghostly Indian regiment got in my head and got
mixed with the mediaevalism that is always there; and so "The Bowmen"
was written. I was heartily disappointed with it, I remember, and
thought it--as I still think it--an indifferent piece of work.
However, I have tried to write for these thirty-five long years, and
if I have not become practised in letters, I am at least a past master
in the Lodge of Disappointment. Such as it was, "The Bowmen" appeared
in _The Evening News_ of September 29th, 1914.

Now the journalist does not, as a rule, dwell much on the prospect of
fame; and if he be an evening journalist, his anticipations of
immortality are bounded by twelve o'clock at night at the latest; and
it may well be that those insects which begin to live in the morning
and are dead by sunset deem themselves immortal. Having written my
story, having groaned and growled over it and printed it, I certainly
never thought to hear another word of it. My colleague "The Londoner"
praised it warmly to my face, as his kindly fashion is; entering, very
properly, a technical caveat as to the language of the battle-cries of
the bowmen. "Why should English archers use French terms?" he said. I
replied that the only reason was this--that a "Monseigneur" here and
there struck me as picturesque; and I reminded him that, as a matter
of cold historical fact, most of the archers of Agincourt were
mercenaries from Gwent, my native country, who would appeal to
Mihangel and to saints not known to the Saxons--Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi,
Cadwaladyr