to remain behind to see what would happen.

I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone,
became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks
that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before
they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive,
for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the new
thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her
conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was
a gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learned
something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come
along, now.

We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity
came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing
a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted
a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:

"Defend thee, lord!--peril of life is toward!"

And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood.
I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen
armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle
among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipe
was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in
thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore
to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging
anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head
of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of
those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about
--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair
play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush,
they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down,
plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was
a handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laid
my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron
wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of
white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen
the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight than
the other one.

But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and
this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came;
I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was going
to b