walking the old way if the new were better, and I never intended forbidding men to church by saying:  ’Frequent not the place where thou art most welcome,’ and a hundred such.  But Someone is the name generally given me, and most often heard of when anything uncommonly bad happens; for if you ask one where that scandalous lie was told and who told it.  ‘Indeed,’ he will say, ’I know not, but Someone in the company said it,’ and if you enquire of all the company concerning the story, all have heard it of Someone, but no one knows of whom.  Is it not a shameful wrong?” he cried, “I beg of you to inform everybody who names me that I uttered nought of such things.  I never invented or repeated a lie to disgrace anyone, nor a single tale to cause kinsmen to fly at each other’s throats; I do not come near them; I know nothing of their scandal, or business, or accursed secrets—­they must not charge me with their evils, but their own corrupt brains.”

Hereupon a little Death, one of the King’s secretaries, asked me my name, and bade Master Sleep carry me at once into the King’s presence.  I had to go, though most unwilling, by reason of the power that took me up like a whirlwind, ’twixt high and low, thousands of miles back on our left, till we came, a second time, in sight of the boundary wall, and in an enclosed corner we could see a vast palace, roofless and in ruins, extending to the wall wherein were the countless doors, all of which led to this terrible court.  Its walls were built of human skulls with hideous, grinning teeth; the clay was black with mingled tears and sweat, the lime ruddy with gore.  On the summit of each tower stood a Deathling, with a quivering heart on the point of his shaft.  Around the court were a few trees—­a poisonous yew or twain, or a deadly cypress, and in these owls, ravens, vampires and the like, make their nests, and cry unceasingly for flesh, although the whole place is but one vast, putrid shamble.  The pillars of the hall were made of thighbones, and those of the parlour of shinbones, while the floors were formed of layer upon layer of all manner of charnel.

I had not to wait a longwhile ere I came in view of a tremendous altar, where we could see the King of Terrors devouring human flesh and blood, while a thousand impish deaths, from every hole, were continually feeding him with warm, fresh meat.  “Here is a rogue,” said the Death that led me thither, “whom I found in the midst of the land of Oblivion, having approached so light-footed that your majesty never tasted a bite of him,” “How can that be?” demanded the king, opening his jaws, wide as a chasm, to swallow me.  Whereupon I turned trembling to Sleep.  “It was I who brought him hither,” said he.  “Well then, for my brother Sleep’s sake,” said the awful and lanky monarch, “you can retrace your steps for the nonce; but beware of me the next time.”  Having been for some time cramming his gluttonous maw with carrion, he caused his subjects to be called together, and moved