at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouring
vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding
rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In
the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid
against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first
time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and
ready. So I said to the abbot:

"The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread name
and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and take
hold of something." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in
another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it.
If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water
gush from the chapel door!"

I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread
my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it
to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra
posturing and gesturing, and shouted:

"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain
to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still
remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence
to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread
name I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!"

Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of
dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a
hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels!
One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people
--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair
and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping
forth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the
chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me
in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.
And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really
no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel.

You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down
in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and
talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear
names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who
was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it was
pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before.

I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved