anuel by the peculiarly perfumed obscurity.

As Manuel entered the gallery one of the magic-workers was chaunting
shrilly in the darkness below. "It is the unfinished Rune of the
Blackbirds," says Freydis, in a whisper.

Below them the troubled wailing continued:

"--Crammed and squeezed, so entombed (on some wager I hazard), in spite
of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion that lean-faced Rajah
dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta. Dared you break the crust
and bullyrag 'em--hot, fierce and angry, what wide beaks buzz plain
Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot! Yet, singing, they sing as no white
bird does (where none rears phoenix) as near perfection as nature gets,
or, if scowls bar platitude, notes for which there is no rejection in
banks whose coinage--oh, neat!--is gratitude."

Said, in the darkness, another enchanter:

"But far from their choiring the high King sat, in a gold-faced vest and
a gold-laced hat, counting heaped monies, and dreaming of more francs
and sequins and Louis d'or. Meanwhile the Queen on that fateful night,
though avowing her lack of all appetite, was still at table, where,
rumor said, she was smearing her seventh slice of bread (thus each
turgescible rumor thrives at court) with gold from the royal hives.
Through the slumberous pare, under arching trees, to her labors went
singing the maid Denise--"

A third broke in here, saying:

"And she sang of how subtle and bitter and bright was a beast brought
forth, that was clad with the splendor and light of the cold fair ends
of the north, like a fleshly blossom more white than augmenting tempests
that go, with thunder for weapon, to ravage the strait waste fastness of
snow. She sang how that all men on earth said, whether its mistress at
morn went forth or waited till night,--whether she strove through the
foam and wreckage of shallow and firth, or couched in glad fields of
corn, or fled from all human delight,--that thither it likewise would
roam."

Now a fourth began:

"Thus sang Denise, what while the siccant sheets and coverlets that
pillowed kingly dreams, with curious undergarbs of royalty, she neatly
ranged: and dreamed not of that doom which waited, yet unborn, to strike
men dumb with perfect awe. As when the seventh wave poises, and sunlight
cleaves it through and through with gold, as though to gild oncoming
death for him that sees foredoomed--and, gasping, sees death high and
splendid!--while the tall wave bear