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tioned a grim lead soldier on each side, and he was chanting in a beautiful, strange, deep voice:

"There sat the seniors of the Trojan race, Old Priam's chiefs, and most in Priam's grace.

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'Long ago,' ,'" Sir Christopher's deep voice mused on. Yes, it was far back in

These, as the Spartan queen approach'd the old days, misty far. "And very far

the tower

"Here, we must have our Spartan Helen. Can't run the show without her. Son, can you find mother's scissors?"

Son bolted indoors, and returned with a snug little work-basket, scissors, pins, and all.

"Precisely." Sir Christopher produced a scrap of paper and a pencil. A snip or two, a thrust of the pencil, and before us stood a pixy Helen, tinier than my thumb.

"Her handmaids Clymene and Ethra wait-' now, her maidens." Again the wizard scissors flashed. Maybe Clymene and Ethra were a bit stocky for Grecian daughters of high degree, yet Sonny Boy and I could only stare at those big, lean, flying hands. No, we were n't oppressed by the consciousness that England's foremost dramatic genius was stooping to cut out paper dolls for us. Not a bit of it. We were bewitched, that was all. With every movement a new marvel appeared. An empty strawberry box or so, a branch of lilac from the hedge, and Troy town rose on its wide plain, with gray wall and somber tower, the blue sea before it, the dim, gray olive slopes behind. Away down the sandy shore (real sand, mind you) the toy horse loomed upon our sight, reared in triumph before the temple of Zeus the Thunderer, stuffed to his pink chenille collar with treacherous Greeks. And the twelve black fragments, ranked on the porch step-gravel from the path? Never! These were the twelve black ships of Salamanca, "whom the gigantic Telamon commands." Fanciful? Preposterous? To be sure; and yet those big, lean hands were weaving for us the very cloth of dreams.

"How does the man do it? How can he know?"

Across my mind there flitted a queer, vague recollection. Where had I seen another such worker in magic? Where had I watched another pair of hands, gaunt, sinewy, yet with a finer shapeli

away'- Ah, but where? Where?

Like pebbles cast in a deep pool, the words spread broadening ripples of memory, year on year on year. I could not capture those hazy gleams. Yet that faint, uncertain memory caught at my heart with a stabbing pang.

I saw a worn, stooped old man sitting in flickering lamplight close to a dingy wall. This was a public place of some sort, it seemed; dirty, cold, miserable, with a tremor of haste and fear upon it, and yet a sense of endless, dreary waiting. On the old man's knee cuddled a little child. With eyes aglow, cheeks scarlet, this small person sat watching the splendors wrought by the old man's big, gaunt hands. Up and down flashed those deft fingers, back and forth like wise shuttles, making shadow-pictures on the wallsuch shadow-pictures as you'll see only once in a lifetime. With no "properties" save his handkerchief and an envelop and a penknife, he was marshalling all the goodly company of fairy across that grimy stage. First there strode forth a haughty lord in robes of state, his penknife sword dangling from his hip. Behind him minced a medieval princess, grand in her peaked-envelop head-dress and flowing kerchief train. A ravishing pair of clowns pranced after. Then, tossing aside knife, handkerchief, and all, those cunning fingers sent all the beloved convocation of the rabbit race dancing and frolicking down their elfin road. On they romped, a winsome crew, humping their furry backs, bobbing frisky ears, skipping on silky cleft toes, while the drowsy baby on his knee fought off the sandman with both stubborn little fists, and chuckled in rapturous content. All this I saw as clearly as if it flashed before me on a lighted screen; but past it, around it, I could see nothing. For the mists of many years rolled deep between. Who could he be, this wise, tender old necromancer? And where? Where?

"Now for the shoe-box once more."

Behold, our tiny stage was a cave on a fair island, far away, past the low sunset's farthest gleam. The lilacs made its embowering tropic foliage, and the white arms of Helen were now the whiter arms of Miranda; and anybody with half an eye could see, in the prostrate lead soldier beside the cave, a groveling Caliban. And the melody of Sir Christopher's wonderful voice cast its spell over all.

"Of his bones are coral made;

Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

Yes, the lines revealed him. All that

those lean, gray, work-worn fingers touched they changed "into something rich and strange."

"We'll want dragons and sea-monsters for this," announced Sir Christopher.

I roused from my enchanted silence. "Give me the scissors, please. I used to cut out dragons by the yard; serpents and crocodiles and Jonah's whales, too. Just you watch."

I snipped and clipped away, vain of my old-time craft. Sir Christopher exclaimed as string after string of squirmy monsters writhed from my shears.

"My word! where did you learn all that? How can you make 'em so delightfully loathsome?"

I sat back, with Caliban and the Trojan horse in my lap.

"I've been cutting out animals all my life. When our children were little, Frederic and I lived away out West, on the prairie, miles from a village. We were snowed in by blizzards for weeks at a time. So I taught myself to hack out every beast that ever flew or crept or crawled. To amuse my little folks, you

see."

"So you cut out pictures for your children." Sir Christopher pondered. "Well, I've been cutting out pictures all my life, seems to me." He was robing a lead soldier in princely helmet and winged sandals. His thin hands flew. "I taught myself, too-to amuse Lucie."

"Your little daughter?"

"No, we never had any children." Over his dark face came a weary shadow. "Lucie was my wife."

There was a silence.

"She was only a little girl," he went on meditatively. "She never really grew up. Her back was bad, you know. She never took a step after she was seventeen, and she died when she was twenty-one. You 'd never have thought that she knew what pain meant. She was the gentlest, gayest creature that ever breathed, always full of fun, the best pal you ever saw. We were going to do so many things together! We were always planning and dreaming." He threw me a slow, whimsical glance. "You know, even beggars can dream."

"Yes, I know," said I-I who have dreamed-dreamed, planned, possessed, and now can only dream once more.

"To find Lucie meant a good deal to me." He worked on, shaping the tower. "My mother had died when I was a baby. Father-well, father had a rough time of it, I dare say. There were six of us youngsters. I was the youngest. Father gave us a year or so schooling. Then he married again when I was nine, and turned us out. For a while I sold papers in front of the municipal library. It was sharp those winter nights. When I'd get stiffened up, I'd sneak inside and pretend to read a bit for the chance of thawing out. One night I got my hands on a book left on the table by accident. Grimm's 'Fairy-Tales' it was. My word! I blundered through it at one swoop. After that I read everything I could lay my hands on, though I had n't much spare time.

"By the time I was seventeen I was a strong, well-grown chap. I found a place as scene-shifter at the Empire. Lucie was a little girl then; fifteen, say. She sewed in a shop near by. She was wild for the theater. I took her to the very first pantomime she ever saw, and she was fair' crazy with delight. She was wild for story-books, too. I'd buy the penny papers every Saturday, and when I could get an hour off, we 'd go to the park and read them together. But the fairy-tales she loved best of all. Those were our good times, the best times I ever knew."

His quiet voice ceased. He drew our little host to his knee, and set the leaden Perseus and my dragon to furious combat. The little lad screamed with joy. I looked on, but I did not see that gory field. I was listening.

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"When she was sixteen the shop caught fire. Trying to get away, she fell. When the doctor told me she could never be well again, I made her marry me right away. I got us a room in Lancing Mews, only a step from the theater, where I could reach her in a hurry. Daytimes I waited in a chop-house at the top of the street. Nights I worked at the theater. We got along better than you'd think; but what broke me was to know that she 'd never see a play again. So when a new play came on, I'd keep an eye out, then tell her as much as I could; act out bits even. It helped her pass the time.

"One night her back was cruel' bad. She had n't slept in a good bit. I slipped down to the Arcade, begged a goods-box, and bought a handful of penny dolls and a roll of gilt paper. I built a toy stage, and carried it in and set it by her bed. Well, I'll be bound she was as daft as if I'd brought her the Empire itself. We played with it till near daybreak. I was as keen over it as she was.

"After that we staged every play that the Empire put on. I made whole sets of pasteboard-and-muslin scenery, and whittled out the props. Till you try, you'd never believe how far a cigar-box will go toward a set of drawing-room furniture. Then we began tinkering our pet stories into plays. I'd work out the dialogue, and when she'd had a comfortable day, and could use her hands a little, Lucie would make the costumes and set the scenes. Then we found we could make up new plots out of our own heads. That was the best sport going, and Lucie never tired of it. Even the last year our theater could always help her forget the pain.

"We had good neighbors. That helped." "Good neighbors are always a help," said I.

"Yes. There was one woman who lived two flights above us. Mrs. Hicks, her name was. She was a charwoman, and she was old, and knocked up with rheumatism, and I dare say she could just about keep body and soul together. Every week, as regular as Sunday morning came round, she'd drop in and scrub up for · Lucie, and make everything clean and sweet. Lucie enjoyed that above everything. I tried, but somehow I was n't. smart enough to do things right. It is n't a man's job, maybe."

"No, it is n't a man's job," said I. "That's what you rich folk miss," he went on absently. "Only the poor can ever savor it-the beautiful neighborliness of the poor."

I nodded, but I was n't nodding in assent, for I know very well what neighborliness means. I thought of the long, dreadful summer when Frederic lay ill, and how our neighbors had stood by us month on month. I minded how Stephen King had snatched precious days from his own crops to harvest our grain, that it should not rot in the fields. I thought of Mary, his wife, who had baked for me. and churned for me, who had tended my babies by day, and watched by my sick at night, and poured her love and her courage into me, and kept my soul alive in me. Oh, I know what neighborliness means. To be sure, I 've never known what it meant to be downright poor; yet I remembered how poor I'd felt, the goose I was, when I was putting little Barbara into short clothes, and had n't a stitch of new muslin in the house, nor a penny to spend, so I had to make her first little dresses out of flour-sacking, though I boiled the red letters out, you better believe. She was the prettiest baby I ever had, and it all but broke my heart to see her taking her first darling tottery steps in those coarse things; but we could n't afford anything else. As Frederic said, with a rueful twinkle, we could n't afford little Barbara. But I've been thankful for forty years that we did.

"Yes, we had good friends, those days." Sir Christopher gave me a slow, thinking glance. "I wish you 'd been a neighbor of Lucie's."

"I wish so, too," said I.

"And then-" he halted-"then when she died, it was as if-as if I was n't walking on solid ground any longer. I had to hang on to something. So I hung on to our little theater. I played with it every night. I even made up new plays alone. Dare say it sounds foolish. But it seemed like there was a bit of her still. clinging to those dolls and that tinsel. I kept working with 'em times whenwhen it seemed like I'd drown. Maybe you know."

Yes, I know how drowning feels. Only I've always had my children to cling to. They kept my head above water. But

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