“I always belayved,” says the King, “that if he can help it, no one should fight whin he’s sure to get hurted, onless it’s his juty to fight. To fight for the mere sport of it, when a throuncin’ is sartin, is wasting your time and hurtin’ your repitation. I know there’s plenty thinks different,” he says, p’inting his pipe. “I may be wrong, an’ I won’t argyfy the matther. ’Twould have been betther for myself that day if I had acted on the other principle.
“Howsumever, be the time that everybody was sidestepping mountains and dodging tunderbolts, I says to myself, says I, ‘This is no place fer you or the likes of you.’ So I took all me own people out to the battlements and hid them out of the way on the lower steps. We’d no sooner got placed whin—whish! a black angel shot through the air over our heads, and began falling down, down, and down, till he was out of sight. Then a score of his friends came tumbling over the battlements; imagetly hundreds of others came whirling, and purty soon it was raining black wings down into the gulf.
“In the midst of the turmile, who should come jumping down to me, all out of breath, but Thady.
“ ‘It’s all over, Brian; we’re bate scandalous,’ he says, swinging his arms for a spring and balancing himself up and down on the edge of the steps. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t think it of me, Brian Connors; but I’m a fallen angel,’ says he.
“ ‘Wait a bit, Thaddeus Flynn!’ says I. ‘Don’t jump,’ I says.
“ ‘I must jump,’ he says, ‘or I’ll be trun,’ says he.
“The next thing I knew he was swirling and darting and shooting a mile below me.
“And I know,” says the King, wiping his eyes with his cloak, “that when the Day of Judgment comes I’ll have at laste one friend waiting for me below to show me the coolest spots and the pleasant places.
“The next minute up came the white army with presners—angels, black and white, who had taken no side in the battle, but had stood apart like ourselves.
“ ‘A man,’ says the Angel Gabriel, ‘who, for fear of his skin, won’t stand for the right when the right is in danger, may not desarve hell, but he’s not fit for heaven. Fill up the stars with these cowards and throw the lavin’s into the say,’ he ordhered.
“With that he swung a lad in the air, and gave him a fling that sent him ten miles out intil the sky. Every other good angel follyed shuit, and I watched thousands go, till they faded like a stretch of black smoke a hundred miles below.
“The Angel Gabriel turned and saw me, and I must confess I shivered.
“ ‘Well, King Brian Connors,’ says he, ‘I hope you see that there’s such a thing as being too wise and too cute and too ticklish of yourself. I can’t send you to the stars, bekase they’re fun, and I won’t send you to the bottomless pit so long as I can help it. I’ll send yez an down to the world. We’re going to put human beans on it purty soon, though they’re going to turn out to be blaggards, and at last we’ll have to burn the place up. Afther that, if you’re still there, you and yours must go to purdition, for it’s the only place left for you.
“ ‘You’re too hard on the little man,’ says the Angel Michael, coming up—St. Michael was ever the outspoken, friendly person—‘sure what harm, or what hurt, or what good could he have done us? And can you blame the poor little crachures for not interfering?’
“ ‘Maybe I was too harsh,’ says the Angel Gabriel, ‘but being saints, when we say a thing we must stick to it. Howsumever, I’ll let him settle in any part of the world he likes, and I’ll send there the kind of human beans he’d wish most for. Now, give your ordher,’ he says to me, taking out his book and pencil, ‘and I’ll make for you the kind of people you’d like to live among.’
“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’d like the men honest and brave, and the women good.’
“ ‘Very well,’ he says, writing it down; ‘I’ve got that—go on.’
“ ‘And I’d like them fun of jollity and sport, fond of racing and singing and hunting and fighting, and all such innocent divarsions.’
“ ‘You’ll have no complaint about that,’ says he.
“ ‘And,’ says I, ‘I’d like them poor and parsecuted, bekase when a man gets rich, there’s no more fun in him.’
“ ‘Yes, I’ll fix that. Thrue for you,’ says the Angel Gabriel, writing.
“ ‘And I don’t want them to be Christians,’ says I; ‘make them Haythens or Pagans, for Christians are too much worried about the Day of Judgment.’
“ ‘Stop there! Say no more!’ says the saint. ‘If I make as fine a race of people as that I won’t send them to hell to plaze you, Brian Connors.’
“ ‘At laste,’ says I, ‘make them Jews.’
“ ‘If I made them Jews,’ he says, slowly screwing up one eye to think, ‘how could you keep them poor? No, no!’ he said, shutting up the book; ‘go your ways; you have enough.’
“I clapped me hands, and all the Little People stood up and bent over the edge, their fingers pointed like swimmers going to dive. ‘One, two, three,’ I shouted; and with that we took the leap.
“We were two years and tunty-six days falling before we raiched the world. On the morning of the next day we began our sarch for a place to live. We thraveled from north to south and from ayst to west. Some grew tired and dhropped off in Spain, some in France, and others ag’in in different parts of the world. But the most of us thraveled ever and ever till we came to a lovely island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the say.
“ ‘We’ll
