ce. He did not carry it in his pockets, for the simple reason that
he had had no pockets. He kept no safe nor secret panel nor any private
drawer in his mansion that the most observant among his retainers could
espy. Yet that there was a secret key, and that it was inserted in a
lock, anybody could see for himself, even at a distance of fifty yards,
twice a day at the well. It was as if at that moment the key came into
his hand out of the air and again vanished into air when the proper
business was over. Indeed, there were people of even those remote and
enlightened days who attributed some wizardy to the Keeper of the Key.
It added to the awe in which he was held and to the sense of security
which the proceedings of his whole life inspired in his fellow-citizens.
Nevertheless had the Keeper of the Key his enemies. A man of distinction
and power can no more tread the paths of his ambitions without stirring
up rivalries and hostilities than can the winds howl across the earth
and leave the dust on the roads undisturbed. The man who assumes power
will always, sooner or later, have his power to hold put to the test. So
it was with the Keeper of the Key. There were people who nursed the
ambition of laying hands on the secret key. That secured, they would be
lords of the town of the Seven Sisters. The reign of the great Keeper
would be over. His instinct told him that these dangers were always
about. He was on the alert. He had discovered treachery even within the
moat of his own keep. His servants and guards had been tampered with.
But all the attempts upon his key and his power had been in vain. He
kept to the grand unbroken simplicity of his masterly routine. He had
crushed his enemies whenever they had arisen. "One who has survived the
passions of Ireland's poets," he would say--for the poets had all been
Ankleites--"is not likely to bow the knee before snivelling little
thieves." A deputation which had come to him proposing that the well
should be managed by a constitutional committee of the citizens was
flogged by the guards across the drawbridge. The leader of this
deputation was a deformed tailor, who soon after planned an audacious
attack on the mansion of the Keeper of the Key. The Keeper, his guards,
servants and retainers were all one night secretly drugged and for
several hours of the night lay unconscious in the mansion. Into it
swarmed the little tailor and his constitutional committee; they pulled
the whole int