you all right."

CHAPTER XIV

"DEFEND THEE, LORD"

I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant
price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen
persons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, and
I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these
people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as
their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize
my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial
lift where the money would do so much more good than it would
in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not
stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a
burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days,
it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got the
proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long
a sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able to
absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of
dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just
twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from
Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid
these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that
would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted
the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents,
nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of
gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through
the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this
new blood freshen up its life.

The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset
my liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flint
and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy
and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke
shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke
for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground
with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching
dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other
professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people
to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that
this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none
but my enemies. And I promised, with my hand on my heart, that
if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass