numerable were the suggestions, and great was
the deliberation. The general consent, however, was that as soon as
the priests should have expelled the demons, they would depose the
king, and attired in all his regal insignia, shut him in a cage for
public show; then choose governors, with the lord chancellor at their
head, whose first duty should be to remit every possible tax; and the
magistrates, by the mouth of the city marshal, required all able-bodied
citizens, in order to do their part toward the carrying out of these
and a multitude of other reforms, to be ready to take arms at the first
summons.

Things needful were prepared as speedily as possible, and a mighty
ceremony, in the temple, in the market place, and in front of the
palace, was performed for the expulsion of the demons. This over, the
leaders retired to arrange an attack upon the palace.

But that night events occurred which, proving the failure of their
first, induced the abandonment of their second, intent. Certain of the
prowling order of the community, whose numbers had of late been
steadily on the increase, reported frightful things. Demons of
indescribable ugliness had been espied careering through the midnight
streets and courts. A citizen--some said in the very act of
housebreaking, but no one cared to look into trifles at such a
crisis--had been seized from behind, he could not see by what, and
soused in the river. A well-known receiver of stolen goods had had his
shop broken open, and when he came down in the morning had found
everything in ruin on the pavement. The wooden image of justice over
the door of the city marshal had had the arm that held the sword bitten
off. The gluttonous magistrate had been pulled from his bed in the
dark, by beings of which he could see nothing but the flaming eyes, and
treated to a bath of the turtle soup that had been left simmering by
the side of the kitchen fire. Having poured it over him, they put him
again into his bed, where he soon learned how a mummy must feel in its
cerements.

Worst of all, in the market place was fixed up a paper, with the king's
own signature, to the effect that whoever henceforth should show
inhospitality to strangers, and should be convicted of the same, should
be instantly expelled the city; while a second, in the butchers'
quarter, ordained that any dog which henceforth should attack a
stranger should be immediately destroyed. It was plain, said the
butchers, tha