fling chance--of success."

"The conditions--"

"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the well
and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to
myself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobody
allowed to cross the ground but by my authority."

"Are these all?"

"Yes."

"And you have no fear to try?"

"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed.
One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?"

"These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandment
to that effect."

"Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye wit that he that
would break this spell must know that spirit's name?"

"Yes, I know his name."

"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye
must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha! Knew ye that?"

"Yes, I knew that, too."

"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye minded to utter
that name and die?"

"Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh."

"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur."

"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thing
for _you_ to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin."

It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst
weather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the
danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure,
and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats.
But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine
his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead
of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain
and enjoy it.

My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged,
for they had traveled double tides. They had pack-mules along,
and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead pipe,
Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire
sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--everything
necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got their
supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a
solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed
the required conditions. We took possession of the well and its
surroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from
the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical
instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in
ship-shape fashion, and the water began to