Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident.  I have read this. absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it.  There certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it.  I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke’s friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to.  I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such production as the above.

A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE

CHAPTER I

The secret revealed.

It was night.  Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein.  The year 1222 was drawing to a close.  Far away up in the tallest of the castle’s towers a single light glimmered.  A secret council was being held there.  The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of state meditating.  Presently he, said, with a tender accent: 

“My daughter!”

A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, answered: 

“Speak, father!”

“My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath puzzled all your young life.  Know, then, that it had its birth in the matters which I shall now unfold.  My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of Brandenburgh.  Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son were born to me.  And further, in case no son, were born to either, but only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich’s daughter, if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed, if she retained a blameless name.  And so I, and my old wife here, prayed fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain.  You were born to us.  I was in despair.  I saw the mighty prize slipping from my grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away.  And I had been so hopeful!  Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no heir of either sex.

“‘But hold,’ I said, ‘all is not lost.’  A saving scheme had shot athwart my brain.  You were born at midnight.  Only the leech, the nurse, and six waiting-women knew your sex.  I hanged them every one before an hour had sped.  Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty Brandenburgh!  And well the secret has been kept.  Your mother’s own sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing.