 he was going away. He clouded up at that, and looked
sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when he said mournfully:
    »Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is, she noteth
not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth.«
    Of course I changed the subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful, it is true,
but take her all around she was pretty slack. I never meddled in these matters,
they weren't my affair, but I did hate to see the way things were going on, and
I don't mind saying that much. Many's the time she had asked me, »Sir Boss, hast
seen Sir Launcelot about?« but if ever she went fretting around for the king I
didn't happen to be around at the time.
    There was a very good layout for the king's-evil business - very tidy and
creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state, and about him were clustered a
large body of the clergy in full canonicals. Conspicuous, both for location and
personal outfit, stood Marinel, a hermit of the quack doctor species, to
introduce the sick. All abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the
doors, in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. It
was as good as a tableau; in fact it had all the look of being gotten up for
that, though it wasn't. There were 800 sick people present. The work was slow;
it lacked the interest of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies
before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me to stick
it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were
many people who only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who
were consciously sound but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a
king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of coin
that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold
piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you consider how much that amount of
money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous,
when not dead, you will understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was
just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the
treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus. So I had privately
concluded to
