that are but
a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that
are whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift,
do you think?"

"Oh, the last, most surely!"

"True. Does Merlin possess it?"

"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and future
kingship that were twenty years away."

"Has he ever gone beyond that?"

"He would not claim more, I think."

"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit
of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years."

"These are few, I ween."

"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four
hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed
even seven hundred and twenty."

"Gramercy, it is marvelous!"

"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing."

"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch
of time as--"

"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle
does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this
world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!"

My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open,
and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! That
settled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his
facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. It
never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement.

"Now, then," I continued, "I _could_ work both kinds of prophecy
--the long and the short--if I chose to take the trouble to keep
in practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because
the other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort
--stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course,
I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not
often--hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there was
great talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about my
having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival,
two or three days beforehand."

"Indeed, yes, I mind it now."

"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and
piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had
been five hundred years away instead of two or three days."

"How amazing that it should be so!"

"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five
hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five
hundred seconds off."

"And yet in reason it should clearly be the o