d not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming
their rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called
my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying and
difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. There was one
small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair
on her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a race
of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where
we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress.
I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing.
When I overtook Sandy she was horrified, and said it was in the
last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train.

We got the hogs home just at dark--most of them. The princess
Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting:
namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains,
the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star
in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a
slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side--a couple
of the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also among
the missing were several mere baronesses--and I wanted them to
stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so
servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills
to that end.

Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great
guns!--well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anything
like it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like an
insurrection in a gasometer.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PILGRIMS

When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching
out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious,
how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out of
the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing
of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium
come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts
were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's
curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom
could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like
a crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!
of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. I had
to put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not a
lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate ho