d so the inheriting owners had considered them of no
value, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:

"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"

The question was a puzzler. She didn't know _why_ she hadn't, the
thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting
the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If,
without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with her
training, those inherited prisoners were merely property--nothing
more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property, it does not
occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it.

When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world
and the glare of the afternoon sun--previously blindfolding them,
in charity for eyes so long untortured by light--they were a
spectacle to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic
frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy
by the Grace of God and the Established Church. I muttered absently:

"I _wish_ I could photograph them!"

You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they
don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they
are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't
shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and
was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She
hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden
comprehension, and she said she would do it for me.

I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography?
But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she
was moving on the procession with an axe!

Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have
seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them
all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode
was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph
a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try
to do it with an axe.

CHAPTER XIX

KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE

Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early.
It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious
barrels-ful of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned,
woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two
days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable
old buzzard-roost! I mean, for me: of course the place was all