enormous lid.  A blow on the trumpets proclaimed that the well was open, and the people would approach it, laughing and chattering, and the Keeper of the Key would march back to his mansion in the same military order, ascend the steps, push open the great door, and the routine of daily life would ensue.  For the closing of the well at sundown a similar ceremony was observed.  The only additional incident was the marching of a crier through the streets, beating great wooden clappers, and standing at each street corner calling out in a loud voice:  “Hear ye people that the lock is on the Seven Sisters.  All’s well!”

In those days there was a saying among the people which was in common usage all over Ireland.  When a man became possessed of any article or property to which he had a doubtful title his neighbours said, with a significant wag of the head, “He got it where the Keeper gets the Key.”  This saying arose out of a mysterious thing in the life of the Keeper of the Key.  Nobody ever saw the secret key.  It was not in his hands when he came forth from the mansion morning and evening to fulfil his great office.  He did not carry it in his pockets, for the simple reason that he had had no pockets.  He kept no safe nor secret panel nor any private drawer in his mansion that the most observant among his retainers could espy.  Yet that there was a secret key, and that it was inserted in a lock, anybody could see for himself, even at a distance of fifty yards, twice a day at the well.  It was as if at that moment the key came into his hand out of the air and again vanished into air when the proper business was over.  Indeed, there were people of even those remote and enlightened days who attributed some wizardy to the Keeper of the Key.  It added to the awe in which he was held and to the sense of security which the proceedings of his whole life inspired in his fellow-citizens.  Nevertheless had the Keeper of the Key his enemies.  A man of distinction and power can no more tread the paths of his ambitions without stirring up rivalries and hostilities than can the winds howl across the earth and leave the dust on the roads undisturbed.  The man who assumes power will always, sooner or later, have his power to hold put to the test.  So it was with the Keeper of the Key.  There were people who nursed the ambition of laying hands on the secret key.  That secured, they would be lords of the town of the Seven Sisters.  The reign of the great Keeper would be over.  His instinct told him that these dangers were always about.  He was on the alert.  He had discovered treachery even within the moat of his own keep.  His servants and guards had been tampered with.  But all the attempts upon his key and his power had been in vain.  He kept to the grand unbroken simplicity of his masterly routine.  He had crushed his enemies whenever they had arisen.  “One who has survived the passions of Ireland’s poets,” he would say—­for the poets had all been Ankleites—­“is not likely