Book ■H^g A^" CopightN" na ..Q C0PXRIGOT DEPosnr. WHERE THE SUN SHINES WHERE THE SUN SHINES BY GERTRUDE CAPEN WHITNEY AutKor of "I Choose", "Yet 5peake4\ He", "Roses From my Garden' "Above JUL !b Ih20 ^C;i,A571669 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 7 CHAPTER n 17 CHAPTER HI 22 CHAPTER IV 30 CHAPTER V 36 CHAPTER VI 43 CHAPTER VII 47 CHAPTER VIII 55 CHAPTER IX 62 CHAPTER X , dl CHAPTER XI 1(i CHAPTER XII 83 CHAPTER XIII 91 CHAPTER XIV 97 CHAPTER XV 105 CHAPTER XVI 107 CHAPTER XVII 113 CHAPTER XVIII 117 CHAPTER XIX 119 CHAPTER XX 120 WHERE THE SUN SHINES PART ONE CHAPTER I His Majesty, Hypocrates Socrates Moon was a worthy king in many ways. His do- mains extended over vast tracts of country where ice-bound streams ran merrily up hill and tropical flowers enlivened the dead blackness of unbroken expanses of snow. He had wealth untold. Gold mines, like towering castles, stood erect upon the sur- rounding plains. Rivers of liquid silver rushed underground with the sound of mighty roaring. His audience chamber was adorned with tapestries of filmy lace, into which, traced with masterly workmanship, were representations of wonderful land- scapes unknown to king or subjects. All of these, upside down. The throne was not at one end of the throne room; but exactly in the centre, though His Majesty, Hypocrates Socrates Moon was seldom seated thereon. He was a funny old king. One of his strictest man- dates was that every one should earn his salt. If some unlucky subject failed to earn it in some way or another before the old king learned of his incapacity or his indo- 8 WHERE THE SUN SHINES lence, the malefactor was sent to the salt mines. These, instead of being underground, were spread over the tops of mountains. There was the terrible climb to get there and then the climb down and up again. This was, for all the world, like the tumbles and climbs in the life of the earth. These people knew nothing at all of the life of the earth or of any but of their own land. If things there, seem upside down to us, who read of that strange country, they seemed right side up to the dwellers thereof. This points, after all, to the fact, that nobody sees anything as anybody else does unless he lives in precisely the same spot, and sees with 'the very same eyes, at the very same identi- cal moment, and at exactly the very same angle, the very same thing. Does this ever occur! As I say, the old king was seldom on his throne. He kept it there, he said, as a remi- niscence of inquisition days, when people were set to rule over conditions they knew nothing about, and to guide men through paths they, themselves had never travelled. A queer looking thing called a crown hung over the uncomfortable throne chair. The old king called it an instrument of torture for measuring, and compressing to a given and most limited size and weight, the brains it was supposed to encircle. He always said, "supposed.'* It was his theory that wearing that heavy band upon the head generation WHERE THE SUN SHINES 9 after generation had so reduced the size and weight of royal brains, that, more often than not, a post mortem examination revealed that there was no brain there; nothing but a mass of egotism reduced to gelatine. This all goes to prove that in the land of upside down, there may be opinions worthy of consideration. One very upside down method in this land of Hypocrates Socrates Moon was, that Hypocrates, himself, was a very good pat- tern for his people in many ways ; only that he was so testy, so wrathy, so ill-tempered! In this, indeed, he seemed like many rulers in the lands of right side up. This may suggest that it takes keen per- ception to differentiate between right side up and upside down. Hypocrates Socrates Moon insisted on drawing all the water that was used in his kingdom. He believed (perhaps Ruskin was born in Socrates' kingdom) that there was only one way to restore a brain that had been dried away and fried away, dessicated and blown away under that crown on that inqui- sition stand in the middle of that great throne chamber. It was to refuse to admit any machinery or labor-saving device into the kingdom under pain — not of death, death never seemed a bug-a-boo to old Hypocrates Socrates Moon; but of being exiled into the land of Stern Experience. There the offender was to test himself out, as one might say. 10 WHERE THE SUN SHINES Had it not been for this wise rule of the funny old king, the Kingdom of the Moon might have become, in truth, what we, on earth, have been taught to believe it — dead and done for. Hypocrates had his own way of doing work. He was just as autocratic in demand- ing that his will be followed in the lines of democracy and of what he called equality, as ever the fiercest of the old forefather kings had been in compelling aristocracy and what they termed superiority. Besides banishing and hotpotting, ever so many new punish- ments were in vogue with him. One punishment consisted in putting some- thing queer-shaped under you and blowing you to pieces and letting you tumble together again any way you happened to. One subject invented a machine that would hold you to- gether in shape, even though you tumbled to pieces when the bomb went off. It was a sort of thing such as the children of the earth play with, the tumble-down-picked-together skeleton, you know. He was quickly found out and duly dis- posed of by being made to spend the rest of his days in being constantly blown up and putting himself together again, so that, pretty soon, he didn't any more know what was coming than stock speculators do in the land of the earth. Hypocrates Socrates Moon drew the water that was used in his kingdom down from a WHERE THE SUN SHINES 11 well in a pail. This well was suspended over the castle, way, way up in the air. By the bye, this air was less like vital fluid than like the atmosphere of a New York tenement house. When he grew tired of carrying the pail, he hung it on a horn that stuck out on the end of his kingdom in the funniest man- ner. When the horn took care of the pail, all well and good. When, as was sometimes the case, the horn turned the other way, in ac- cordance with the general, but sometimes broken rule of having things upside down, such a deluge poured from the little pail upon the subjects that, with one accord, they fled to the subterranean rivers. There they con- cealed themselves until the horn could take care of its charge again. As in most epidemics of fear, this method of protection had been followed, in the first instance, on account of the real fright of some one person. Having found its advan- tages, the subjects were no longer averse to pursuing the policy on every possible occa- sion. The king never would part voluntarily with any of the treasures of his land of the moon; but these victims of the deluge soon found that they could make away with vast quantities of treasure from the waters of the subterranean rivers which coated them with precious metal during their superimposed bath. As the king refused to have guards and patrols and attempted to keep his individual 12 WHERE THE SUN SHINES eye on everything — another upside down method to which he was addicted — his sub- jects succeeded in evading him and often got away with an enormous amount of treasure. Hypocrates Socrates Moon was also very fond of gathering chips for the cook's kitchen fire. In this work — we must not call it labor, since he enjoyed it — he was fol- lowed by a mangy cur. It had lost its voice and could not tell its master that while his royal eye was fixed upon a splinter, great tracts of mammoth pines were being de- nuded for the purpose of making ships to transport vast quantities of wealth away from the moon to the land of Better-Than- This and the Islands of Do-and-Dare. I have told you what a testy old king was Hypocrates Socrates Moon; how really mon- archical instead of democratic were his de- mands and punishments. You will not be surprised, then, to learn how he treated his son. One evening, as he was about to shut up his kingdom, at curfew, he found that his youngest son, Biocletes, was missing. Biocletes had always been a difficult pro- position to the old father. Instead of terrori- zing the boy, the king's method of training was accomplishing what he claimed for it but, somehow, never seemed pleased to see realized. It had stirred up the protoplasmic brain of Biocletes on which no binding of crown had ever made its compression. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 13 The father, finding that this youngest son of his had gone off on some still hunt of his own, was furiously angry. He was so en- raged, that, at first, he almost decided to put the young man on to the throne. He would compel him to wear the crown, until his skull should be surely beyond chance of future in- crease in service or individual achievement. Somehow, that punishment, upon consid- eration, did not seem severe enough to fit the crime. Finally, he determined to visit upon the boy, the very worst of all his punish- ments. This, as I have said before, consisted in exiling the offender into the land of stern experience, there to test himself out. So, with a roar of rage, the king himself — he had no gatekeeper — crashed to the gates of his dominions, which suddenly dropped out of sight behind some forest trees. Just as the gates swung to, a small voice was heard outside. "It's me, father, it's me!" You see that even in grammar the moon had its own up- side down methods of expression, "Papa, it's me!" "Stay there, then!" Hypocrates Socrates was more furious than ever at not being called by his dress up name. You see, it was the upside down idea of moondom that aris- tocrats are just as entitled to prefixes to their names as are democrats and laborers! "Papa ! Father ! King Hypocrates Socra- tes Moon! Let me in, I beg!" 14 WHERE THE SUN SHINES Now, another upside down and extremely funny way known nowhere (?) outside the moon, was this : The king, having made up his mind, couldn't see matters in any other light. Having once been addressed in a cer- tain manner, he could not seem to hear from his son's lips, any other name than the des- pised ''papa !" however much the boy might resort, later, to most elaborate titles. Having trained his son in the beginnings of indivi- dual thinking, nevertheless, he could not for a moment brook the idea of having the boy use his own mind against him — the king! — He should do and dare only after the ideas and plans of His Majesty, King Hypocrates Socrates Moon. With all this in his mind, the old King re- mained obdurate. "O noble King Hypocrates Socrates Moon, let me in, I beg!" "Not I!" roared His Majesty, who was democratic enough to bellow at people. He felt, that, by so doing, he pandered to a still flowing current of royalty within him, even though it might move sluggishly. ''O Sir Hypoc— " Incensed at the pertinacity of his son — a trait that was a special gift from his father, as well as to silence the boy's pleadings, the king turned the liquid silver waters of the subterranean rivers upon him. In his wrath, he did not note that he had made a mistake and was not, as he had intended, deluging the WHERE THE SUN SHINES IS recreant with the ordinary drinking waters of the sky well. ''Shut up!" he bellowed. Thereby, he pro- ceeded to shut him out — the more surely by a double barricading of the heavy gates. The young prince suddenly found himself covered from head to foot with glittering silver. The drops that continued to fall after the downpour had ceased, formed delicate chasings and brilliant sparkling ornaments for his armor and a helmet of beautiful workmanship for his head. The irate father had quickly discovered the mistake he had made, and shut the spillway so that this beautiful punishment was robbed of what might otherwise have proven too weighty in result. "Get out and stay out !" he roared, opening the gates of his kingdom a wee bit. Thereby, because of his anger, he weakened the first terrifying effects of the penalty, for the open entrance allowed light to escape and fall for a short distance on the dense black- ness that spread before the exile. Thus he was enabled to see a very little way into the unknown into which he was shortly to be plunged. ''Learn w^hat it means to disobey my com- mands !" Before the final slamming to of the gates, the king threw into the pathetic face of the exile, one handful after another of diamonds and amethysts and pearls and gold dust, not to help him on his way; but as an 16 WHERE THE SUN SHINES especially vindictive assistance to his exo- dus. These embedded themselves in the still soft and malleable coating forming the silver armor. The gates shut again with an ominous menace of finality and Biocletes Socrates Moon was left alone in black and impenetrable darkness. CHAPTER II Prince Biocletes felt deeply grieved at his father's wrath; but bravely decided to pene- trate the blackness about him, and if he could get any light upon his surroundings, to in- vestigate the country. For a long time he struggled on. He heard voices. These came to him through the blackness. They expressed nothing but a jargon of noises that made his flesh creep. Earnestly, but in vain, he tried to translate the sounds into directions for himself and release from his predicament. The gelati- nous substance within the skull that had es- caped the compression of the inhibiting cir- clet called crown, seemed to roll about in his head as if trying to attract his attention. Biocletes did not recognize the movement as any effort on the part of his wits to assert themselves. The movement made his head feel a trifle queer. While he was trying to overcome the dis- agreeable sensation of incipient thinking, one by one the voices of the dark grew fainter, fading away before the brain stirrings of their intended victim. Still the dark rolled about him like unto the surf of the sea. It tossed him upon great crests and flung him into troughs. Slimy monsters, like the fabled creatures of the 18 WHERE THE SUN SHINES deep swam beside him. The slipperiness of the blackness, moulded into indistinguishable forms, sickened him until he thought that he should die. The moonlight was cold and queer. It had always given him the impres- sion that it was something dead. Had he thought, he might have expressed the im- pression this way: It was less like what he would call real light than it was like the fun- gus that exudes and shines with malefic and uncertain glow above the bodies on the battle fields. These, having given up their inha- bitants — their souls — make holocaust of the gasses and the tissues that formed them, the sooner to free their souls from what those coverings had bound them to. It had been thoroughly unsatisfactory, even nau- seous, to him, but it had been better than this awful black dark that seemed so fright- fully busy and teeming with venomous life. So dreadfully sly about it, too. He was tossed and pitched and tumbled about so much that if you had been there you surely must have thought he was in a training camp for moving picture pugilists. When he was standing up, he found he was sitting down with a great weight upon his chest. As soon as he began to wonder if he had a chest and where it was, he was landed (so he might have described the scenario from his knowledge of moving pictures) upon a table in the midst of hot apple pie, custard and wine bottles. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 19 Prohibition had reached the moon as well as the earth. Though there was no wine, the king, for the sake of auld lang syne clung to the bottles and caraffes, because it gave esprit, if not spirit in toto, to the banquet table. He was so mean, was Hypocrates So- crates Moon, there, really, never was very much other than esprit at the table. Food cost too much, he grumbled and people were such pigs you couldn't serve it again. Now, dishes were a different matter. Those, you could use over and over. Good dishes and wine bottles gave a very fine appearance, without such a tremendous expenditure be- yond the initial cost, centuries ago. The in- terest on the money? He did grudge that; but he had borrowed it for practically nothing, intended never to repay it; so one might really call it an investment. This up- side down method seemed to him, entirely original, and he proudly declared that such skilful financing was unknown in any other land or sphere in all the universes. Yes, Biocletes was no sooner landed in the midst of wine bottles and ice cream than he felt himself go whop into the arms of an angel of beauty who proved to be a wild cat in human form. She had a garrotte and mar- velous strength in her hands. The garrotte, she proceeded to use with such skill that she all but killed him — really thought she had done so, and flung him contemptuously on to the crest of a mammoth wave. Again he 20 WHERE THE SUN SHINES heard monster voices travelling along beside him. One contended with another as to which would finally swallow him when the waves and the moving picture beauties and pugilists had churned him into a substance sufficiently digestible. Next, Biocletes found himself inside an immense cream whip and felt himself be- coming all froth. This gave him rather a sense of relief. He did not believe that fish would care to eat anything so foamy as he felt he had become. He thought they could eat the foam off the tops of the waves if they wanted froth. At last he reaHzed that all this tossing and beating was for the purpose of making him as light as possible.. He felt the cover fly off the cream whip, and over he foamed — all of him, strange to say! He was poured into the current of a breeze that lifted him away from the fish voices and the strange mixture into which he had been tossed, of ocean and banquet table, cream whip and moving picture town. It bore him along, he wondering where, until the gelatine inside the skull began to form into tiny cells through the speed of his transit and the intensity of his attempts to think out where he was going to land. On he was taken in the arms of the breeze, which grew momentarily to the proportions of a hurricane, on, on, in a state of wild un- reasoning undirected precipitancy. Had he WHERE THE SUN SHINES 21 not been held to a centre by the very fury of the motion about him surely what was left of him as froth, from the cream whip; as will, from the ocean billows and their fur- rows, and as courage, from the whispering sea monsters, would have been tossed into particles of air and disintegrated. Strange to say, the gelatine within the skull which bore upon its shape and sub- stance the felon brand of crown, was forming more and more, through this wild irresistible motion, into cells, that, each unto itself, seemed to demand something. To demand it futilely and weakly; still, to demand. As yet, through it all, there had come to Prince Biocletes no definite call to go or to come to any specific decision or place. When, at length, the tornado had exhausted, spent, capitulated itself and all its treasures to the superior forces of calm, with more real true air in him than he had ever inhaled before, Biocletes Socrates Moon found himself in the midst of a stillness so deep, so searching, so invigorating, that the litttle cells within the emancipated forehead whispered feebly, "I would rest." CHAPTER III Slowly, softly, gently, Biocletes Socrates Moon was wafted down on a couch of green such as his own land of the moon had never disclosed to him. When he had rested a little, he looked sleepily about him. He found himself in a land quite different from his own. There was no snow. All about him were great bou- quets of green in immense wooden bouquet holders. These towered many feet in the air. He found he was cradled in the heart of one of these bouquets, that it felt very pleas- ant and smelt very sweet. Strange feathered things that sang in musical twittering notes came close to him. Though it was dark, it was not the horrid dark that had surrounded him when he was tossed about on the crests and in the troughs of the sea. The voices of these feathered things seemed friendly. They seemed to whisper advice through the shadows, advice he could not understand but felt to be good. The tiny cells moved about in his head until they fairly squirmed in their desire to know what was meant by what was being said. This made his head feel very un- certain and wriggly. He put out his hand to touch the twitter- ing creatures. His fingers rested on the funny WHERE THE SUN SHINES 23 beds they were nestling in — little roundish things made of horsehair and hay and straw and bits of paper. He tried to penetrate the darkness, that, with his eyes he might exa- mine more closely, these tiny houses. All he could see with his eyes, was two small round blazing things, as, with a bloodcurdling hoot, something sailed heavily away. Biocletes nearly fainted with terror. As for the cells within the crown-warped head, they fairly began to talk to each other in the great and overwhelming surprise and excitement of these wonderful experiences. Biocletes lay quiet for some time after this shock. He decided that he would wait awhile before striving to penetrate the dark that was so dense. He seemed to feel, however, that the blackness was losing its spissitude, that it was becoming gray. As he lay there all alone, he began to think about the home he had left. He cast his eyes about in vain conjecture as to its whereabouts and the path he had travelled to get into this land of Don't Know Where. As his eyes circled the horizon, they espied a mass of clouds rushing along over a blue field in which was set a pale gold ball. It was that which had given a gray shade to the density of the blackness that was surround- ing him. He did not know what it was. In fact, it was the kingdom of the old king, Hypocrates Socrates Moon, who had gotten over his rage at the disobedience of his son, 24 WHERE THE SUN SHINES and was in a passion of grief at what he had done to his baby. For some time, he had been sending out search lights to guide the lad home again; but the search lights had availed naught, though the king had given orders to keep the lights burning brightly for many nights, always, until the day should come. The search lights from this big gold ball high up in the sky had dispelled more of the darkness. Now it was almost bright about Biocletes. The lad's head felt all wiggly again as the newly made cells began to talk to each other and to look out with a dull in- terest upon what the dim light was revealing to them. Half distinguishable objects piqued their curiosity. They all made such a pecu- liar stir inside Biocletes that he rose from his leafy resting place and walked straight off the trees and out to the air. He threaded the path on a noble highway of atmosphere until he discerned a light far, far below. At first, it seemed as if he would continue listessly on the path by which he had first left the tree; that is, unless he was shaken or tossed, or, in some way, other than by his own direction, compelled to change his course. The queer feeling came to his head again. That head of his was doing funny things inside itself. It seemed to be attracted to that light far, far below. Before Biocletes realized it thorough- ly, his whole being tingled to find out what that light would reveal to him. Added to that sense of attraction, there came a feeling WHERE THE SUN SHINES 25 neither entirely new nor yet, entirely old, — a feeling that he wished to follow that at- traction and find out what good and pleasant thing awaited him down there in the light. No sooner had he made up, what were the beginnings of his mind, to seek that light, than, with incredible speed and with no dif- ficulty at all, he shot accurately down into the very heart thereof. He found himself beside a stream in which water sprites were disporting gaily. "Good evening to you," said one, floating lightly upon the surface, as she greeted the prince. ''So you are a moonbeam, I presume !" She laughed saucily. "1 am Prince Biocletes Socrates Moon, son of His Majesty, Hypocrates Socrates Moon." Biocletes was very dignified. He was very much disturbed at the flippancy of this beau- tiful creature and determined to check it at once with a manner of hauteur. As one of the crown-branded race of aristocrats, he had been far more in the habit of addressing others as the water sprite was addressing him, than he was of being so addressed. He recalled that his father often talked that way, when he did not roar and bellow at you. This lovely creature cooed at you and her voice was limpid and sweet and made your heart feel as if it were being drawn gently by some invisible chain, straight down to the gleaming throat of the sprite. The feel- ing sent funny sensations to his arms that 26 WHERE THE SUN SHINES twitched to enfold her. It told his lips that there were none sweeter in all the world for his own to rest upon, than the lips of the wonderful being who floated on the water before him, once in a while, disappearing be- neath the sparkling waves, the further to tantalize him. His head stopped feeling wiggly just then, quite as if the cells inside had gone back to gelatine again; but a very strange feeling began in his left side just under his ribs. When he tried to answer the saucy sprite, a dry feeling prevented his articulating clearly. When he succeeded in speaking at all, he scarcely recognized his voice, it was so soft. All the hauteur had gone out of it, and there had come into it, a quality that was really very humble. It was a different sort of hum- ble from that he felt toward his father when he wanted to get home and was frightened. He was a little bit frightened, now; but it was a delicious fright. Of course Biocletes did not stop to analyze all these feelings. He only kept on enjoying the bumpy feeling about the lower part of his ribs, and the choky feeling in his throat. As to the way he was mumbling his speech, that didn't seem to matter so much, for the sprite was still talking, and in such an inde- pendent saucy manner that all these feelings inside him were being made to increase rather than to diminish. ''Where's the moon?" the sprite was in- WHERE THE SUN SHINES 27 quiring with her delicious soupcon of impu- dence. *'He has retired, madame," Biocletes tried to make this response sound stiff and royal. He failed signally. The sprite was not in the least bit abashed. She only laughed. ''Oh, you are shut out, are you !'' This remark made him feel so very much like a little boy, that he made no reply. Not until then, had it occurred to him how very weak-minded he must seem to others, that he had not the will to get into his own habita- tion. ''But then,'' he sighed inwardly, "Not everyone knows what a terror of a father I have." Although Biocletes' father had made a present of some of his own will to Biocletes, when the boy was born, he had spent all of Biocletes' life in trying to crush that will out of his son and increase his own holdings in the precious commodity. For that reason, Biocletes, though the cause was not patent, to him, had been, when at home, at a great disadvantage as regards the exercise of his will. Now that he was away from the stern parental eye, that will rose within him, to- gether with a feeling he had never had be- fore. An earth man would have recognized it somewhat akin to choler. No sprite like this beauty should play upon his will or on that queer thing that thumped so under his 28 WHERE THE SUN SHINES ribs and made him want alternately to kiss her for her charm and spank her for her naughtiness. He would speak if he wanted to and as he wanted to, with no mealy mouth or humble pie ! "Don't you mind," the sprite was saying- comfortingly, in such dulcet tones that Bio- cletes immediately felt something that had begun to stiffen inside him, grow soft like a whalebone that your corsetiere puts in water all night so she can shape it into your corsets. 'Tonight is a capital night to be out in the world! Dear me! I wouldn't stay in the moon with everything upside down, for any- thing!" ^'Upside down? Is everything upside down?" ''Sure," retorted the sprite jocularly. "Perhaps that is why I always felt rather out of place there. I would prefer to have things right side up. Are things always right side up in the earth?" "Sure!" The sprite's vocabulary did not seem very extensive. "Let's go on some tra- vels." She rose from the water and floated in the air like the delicate mist that rises over the river as the sun goes down. "I thank you, madame," Biocletes returned politely, even if a trifle stiflly and stiltedly and with a degree of humility that undoubt- edly pleased the sprite. So they started out. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 29 "I should like to go to that castle over there on the hillside," said the sprite. ^'Very well," said Biocletes, ''So should I." They directed their passage toward the castle garden which they could see in the dis- tance. CHAPTER IV One scarcely knows how to describe to you the method of the locomotion of Bio- cletes and the sprite. Surely, they did not walk, nor did they fly. They skimmed the ground, rose to the tops of trees, kissed the hearts of the sleeping poppies and caressed the roses, sometimes lingering, sometimes moving swiftly. Perhaps it might be said that they danced their way; but oh, the pass- ing of them was beautiful. All heaviness of motion they were relieved of, at the same time they had weight enough to do what they wished to with themselves. If they wanted to sit upon a thistle down, they could do so; also, they could remain there without holding on to it lest a vagrant, lightminded zephyr blow them away. They were a wee bit afraid of the big winds. Biocletes recalled the fury of the embrace of the big wind that had landed him on the forest trees, (that is what the sprite told Biocletes they were named, laughing scornfully at his ignorance, the while.) She made Biocletes feel that he would learn as quickly as possible so the sprite might have no honest reason to make fun of him. The sprite said that a breeze of any sort irritated her extremely. She said it made her WHERE THE SUN SHINES 31 feel as if she was going to be dried up, pre- sently, dried up to nothing, and never find herself as her old self any more. She said she felt as if it might turn her into a cloud or something, or tip her into the water, never to come out again; not to drov^n exactly, but — oh dear, she didn't know w^hat ! She only knew it made her feel fretty. But w^hat was the use of getting into the w^ay of anything that made you feel fretty, w^hen you could rest under tall blades of grass and let the old breeze hunt for you if it wanted to, and never find you ! She said a breeze had to stop to take breath, and while it was blowing itself up inside, for another onslaught on something or somebody, they two could just skip out from one hiding place to another. Anyway, she said, breezes didn't cover the earth. They were dreadfully limited. Why, she had seen corn fields blown all to bits, and right near by, it would be so still, near the brooks in the valleys, that you almost smother for a breath. It was all very funny, and for her part, she didn't intend to let the old breeze frighten her. She chattered on, not allowing Biocletes to get a bit of a word in, till in the very midst of her big boast about what she was going to do with the wind, a little whiff of air, being a bit more forceful than the rest about her, sent her panting under a mullein leaf. It was some time before Biocletes could coax her out. 32 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "Come," he urged, "It all looks so wonder- ful to me and there is so much to see, do let's hurry." "Now that is an awfully silly speech of yours, Biocletes!" The sprite crawled out from under the mullein leaf not a bit abashed at her cowardice. "The quicker you learn it, the better it will be for you." "Learn what special thing? I have very much to learn; but what is the specialty?" "That you can go quicker by going slow, than you can by hurrying. Hurrying makes you so fearfully nervous. It dries you up, too." "What makes you talk so much about dry- ing* up? I never think of drying up." "Of course not !" scornfully. "You'd only slide out and disappear, go up in moonshine, if anything scared you very much. Now, if I were to dry up, I feel sure I'd be something else. Dear me, I don't believe you'd ever be anything else but moonshine. Moonshine is always just moonshine, or else nothing at all." "That makes me feel very sad." Prince Biocletes sounded very mournful. "I do want to be something worth while. You have made me see things so different. You are a wee bit spiteful at times, but that may be good for me. I'd never met but two sorts of treatment in all my life; either a dreary lot of respect from my father's subjects, or a dreadful amount of abuse from my father. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 33 Neither kind is companionable. I never had a companion before I met you." Ingratiatingly, he moved a little nearer to the sprite, and started to put his arm about her. The sprite dodged the approaching caress. ^Tshaw! That isn't what companions do! Companions take hands and skip rope over the gossamers. Don't you see those lovely gossamers spread over the grass? They are most w^onderful things ! Nobody knows who put them there, or how they got there. Some people call them spider webs; but they are not. They are just — just — " The volubility of the sprite failed her. She closed her de- scription with jumping over one or two of the gossamers and stopping before another one. "Pretty dear, it looks thirsty and not so happy as the others. I am going to give it a present." She breathed upon it. A refreshing dew spread over the surface of the dainty gossa- mer. ''Suppose you kiss it!" she laughed, ''Do your initial lovemaking on her instead of on me. I have found that initial lovemakers are very poor at the work. I'd rather you would take lessons on someone else. Come, quick, make love to the gossamer." "How?" Truly enough, the bewildered Biocletes had little idea of lovemaking. The cglls in 34 WHERE THE SUN SHINES his head had suddenly stopped working as if they had clubbed together not to give him a single idea. The bumpity-bump which had set up such a commotion in the region of his ribs, when first he met the sprite, was sub- siding, so that he was looking at her and thinking of her less now, than he was of the wonders opening up before him on every side. ''How!" scoffed the sprite, "The idea of asking me how! Kiss her!" The sprite had noted how much more clearly Biocletes was speaking when he addressed her. She resented it that he no longer choked and palpitated when he looked at her or she at him. She wished to play a trick on him. She knew the gossamer would not reciprocate his attentions. She hoped, that, in his disappointment, he would turn again to her, with the open, unaffected admiration of their first meeting. Instead of imprinting a kiss on the lips of the gossamer, Biocletes plucked a handful of gems from one of his pockets. When the old king had pelted him ignominiously from his kingdom, the gold and gems he had thrown, in lieu of stones and bricks, had landed and adhered, not only to his son's armor, as we already know; but many had fallen into his pockets, so that, in the markets of the earth, Biocletes would find himself more than worth his weight in precious stones. The gossamer scintillated with pleasure. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 35 She knew she was beautiful, only when adorned with sparkling gems. The jewels became her mightily, so well, indeed, that the sprite, seeing the admiration in his eyes, foresaw for herself, a terrible downfall. Hastily, she pulled the prince away. "See how selfish she is, vain thing! All she wants is to get what she can from you without giving you anything in return. The garden belonging to the castle will treat you better. Let us skim along. I felt a sort of shiver, just now — a shiver that a dreadful hag, called dawn, sends ahead of her to let us know she is coming. It is well for both you and me to keep out of her reach. Come !" On they flitted, the sprite laughing and en- tertaining Biocletes until they reached the garden. CHAPTER V A beautiful garden it was, all hushed and still in the moonlight, and sweetened by the dews of the evening. Aroma, such as Bio- cletes had never inhaled, penetrated his nos- trils. The tiny cells in the crown-compressed head stirred again and talked over this won- derful something which was appealing to them, as well. They decided, in order to know, each, what the other was talking about, to call this rare and entrancing essence, an odor. "Odor, is a pretty word," they said, and, if this Biocletes is going wool gathering, and collecting all sorts of things, we must file his findings, or they will be in such a mix up he can not find them when he needs them. So, they will do him little good." "I am not going to have anything to do with filing his findings with that water sprite ! I don't trust her ! If that thing, called heart, that thumps so over nothing, down under Biocletes' ribs, wants to, let him; I shall not!" said one cell. "T notice the heart is getting tired of the business, already," returned another cell. ''Let the heart attend to its own affairs in its own place and way," said another, conci- liatingly, 'We ought to get together a mind WHERE THE SUN SHINES 37 for the fellow. You know that pommelling he received in the deep waters, made him really breathe. I don't suppose he ever honestly did that before." "How could he up in that gaseous place he called home ! You can't call that moon stuff, air! I don't see how he ever attained to enough of the spirit of life to take his own fortunes in his hands. Since he has shown so much pluck, I want to help him. We must get some more good air into him, and plenty of it." ''He must learn to breathe better, that's plain. Let's get the lungs to override the trickeries of that silly water sprite. We are not making enough impression on the man side of him." "I will tell you how to do that. Make him see something that will inspire him with the idea of work to be done and results to be accomplished. That will make him breathe with the very joy of the doing, and the exer- tion, as well. Now, he is just lolling about in that garden, with that volatile sprite, who can't be depended upon to do anything other than dissolve and disappear when she is most needed, instead of making opportunity. Pshaw! on this idea of waiting opportunity! Make it, I say." ''What shall the opportunity be?" "Something that will make him move fast. That will separate him quicker than any- thing else from that wet blanket of a sprite 38 WHERE THE SUN SHINES who wants him all to herself and for her- self." "He should look about and see something for himself," said still another. "We shall not be doing our duty as citizens of the town of wits if we do thing's for him. We have the privilege of stirring him up a bit ; but the definite seeing what to do and knowing what he wants to do, and seeing the way to do it — that must come from him." "What an awful responsibility for a head that has had that platinum crown on it ever since it was born, way back in its first ances- tor!" "No worse than for us who were melted and squashed into gelatine under its tight grip. Come ! Make him stir ! Time is pass- ing. We want to get him grown up. There is a great deal for him to do in life." "Life?" "Yes, moondom, earthdom and sundom. He is destined for great things; but to do them, he must get out of being moony and earthy — " "He hasn't gotten to be earthy, yet." "That is true. He must have felt us talk- ing about him, for at last he is looking some- where other than at that misty moisty water sprite. His eye is being really attracted to other things. Let us hope that in a minuh they will seize on something tangible. There, I told you so ! All by himself, too. I tell, you, comrades, he is growing. What he sees, and WHERE THE SUN SHINES 39 acts on, now, is going to take him a long leap upward and onward." Truly enough, and much to the distaste of the sprite, Biocletes' eyes were looking about with great activity and with a new intelli- gence in them. Especially, the sprite did not like that look of intelligence. Intelligence is a great big enemy of many things — parti- cularly of things that cannot be depended upon. As Biocletes was looking about, he and the sprite approached nearer and nearer to the castle. It was a noble castle, indeed. Bal- conies and turrets and battlements and other architectural ornaments of which Biocletes did not know the names, made the pile a most imposing one. One balcony in particular, drew his attention. It was, indeed, too beau- tiful to be described. It especially attracted him because he had an undefined sense that it linked him to something that w^as to make a great impression on his life. As, almost entranced, he stood looking at the balcony, he heard a heavy sigh. It seemed to proceed from the shrubbery near at hand. Biocletes darted toward the sound. The scintillations from his armor lighted the sha- dowy spaces and disclosed to him and the sprite a disconsolate looking* youth. "What is the matter?" Prince Biocletes was most sympathetic in his inquiries. He was kindly in disposition, very willing to assist those in trouble. 40 WHERE THE SUN SHINES The man looked quizzically at Biocletes. ''See here, you seem a good sort, I believe you can do something for me. You can climb, can't you?" ''Like a regular moonbeam. I assure you, sir, my climbing qualities are wholly and completely at your service." "Indeed, you are a good sort. I believe I will confide in you and tell you the whole story. There's nothing new about it, don't you know! Old story! Plagued old story! Old as the history of love itself, I suppose! Beautiful girl ! No-account poor fellow. Love to distraction. Cruel father, who, between you and me, knows the real worthlessness of the fool that loves the daughter, better than the daughter does. If I were he, I'd do the same thing. Can't blame him. Hits me hard, all the same. Beautiful girl about to elope with the no-account fellow — he being my- self. Plot discovered. Girl put up in the turret of this blooming old hole of a stone pile. The way into her parlor is up a winding stair! rather, up that winding balcony. See, it starts at the first story and winds on and on like a tivoli board till you are too dizzy to see straight. Then you have to put on flies' feet and take to the walls and the vines for the rest of the way — which is some!" He stopped and drew his breath. He eyed Biocletes, who, not understanding the slang of the earth-born youth, looked blank. The cells under the crown-compressed skull WHERE THE SUN SHINES 41 joined in a regular caucus in an endeavor to understand and then to translate the situa- tion to their pupil. "We must help him to understand," said one. "Don't you see what a chance this is for him to grow! Action! Action! Action! This is the greatest good fortune that could have come his way! It will interest him, too. That will make him grow faster still. Now, all together, let us help him understand.'' "I see what you mean!" The puzzled, dor- mant look in Biocletes' face, gave way, slowly, to a look of comprehension. "Yes! You are, what you call, in love with a girl and they won't let you see her. Eh?" "You've got me !" The man was very crude in his speech, thought Biocletes. It jarred on his sensibilities. "I want to get a note to her and I can't climb. I want you to beard the guard and the risk of tumbles and get this billet to her." "What's a billet?" "A note, telling her that I adore her, and won't she skim down the^ivy vines on the silken cord, and run away with me at three o'clock, tomorrow morning — or night — whichever it is." "I will go! Do not be disturbed. In a moment's time the note shall be in the hands of the woman you love." The bumpity-bump feeling started vigor- ously under Biocletes' ribs as he spoke. One of the cells growled. 42 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "There he goes again, meddlesome heart! He means the boy shall fall in love with the earth man's love. That w^ould be a dreadful state of affairs — for an earth and a moon person to marry. There isn't sense enough in either one to make up for the lack of sense in the other." "I told you he must have action in order to grow. He must do something that will make him breathe, too. If I don't mistake, it will take a good deal of breath to get to that window way up there in the turret, even though he can climb like a moonbeam." CHAPTER VI All eyes were intently fixed upon the doughty Biocletes as he ascended to the chamber of the girl he was already begin- ning to love, all codes of honor notwithstand- ing. Biocletes did not know that his inspiration was love. He thought it was a desire to be kind to the wailing young man in the yew tree hedge, together with a very plausible impulse to seek adventure. Then, too, he had a good healthy wish to stretch his legs and fill his lungs with the pure, fresh, and deli- cately scented air that blew into his nostrils from the pine covered hills beyond the garden filled with roses and lilies. The wailing young man watched him, open-eyed, as he skimmed the first hundred feet of the castle wall. The cells talked hap- pily together for a minute, calling to their ally, the lungs, to keep the matter well in hand, and shouting down to the heart not to put the ignorant young fellow into the dis- graceful plight of falling in love with the girl of a man for whom he was doing a service. The heart responded that he did not under- stand such autocratic language; that if Bio- cletes was ever to be the man they were talking about making him, he must grow out of his moony ways. He must know that, though he had a head, he had a heart as well ; 44 WHERE THE SUN SHINES especially, must he know how to cooperate with both. He continued by saying that he considered the citizens of the city of wits, as they called themselves, every whit as dicta- torial as he, himself, had ever been in his most excited and emotional moments. He said, that, if they had only suggested, he had only thrown photographs on the screen of the boy's mind — or what was going to be his mind, when their city was all built up and the inhabitants named, Attraction, Choice, Determination, Patience, and so forth. It would be well to call on another citizen and name him, Discrimination, who might show them what he, the heart, knew, the minute he heard the voice of the yew hedge man — that it would be no false faith in Biocletes if the fine little fellow should fall in love with the princess. The town of wits needed a little heart warming. For his part, he had known, at once, that the yew hedge man was a scoundrel. So much for feeling versus logic. As for logic, logic ought to teach them that no man who stood and howled under a maid- en's window was good enough for her — whether she be princess or peasant. He was disgusted with the whole lot of caucus callers up there in that skull. He, personally knew, too, that no earth man ever lived who did not have a heart and a well developed one at that. The quicker Biocletes' heart was de- veloped, the sooner he could take his part as a man of the earth, among men!" WHERE THE SUN SHINES 45 The heart was interrupted in this diatribe by a scream from the water sprite. ''Come back!'' she called in a fury, "Come back!" ''A little later," Biocletes telephoned through a transmitter made of one hand, while, cavalierly, he held on to a tendril with the other. "It won't take long!" In this, Biocletes was greatly mistaken. The undertaking was to be neither short nor easy. As he turned from the sprite to continue his ascent, he heard her voice still screaming up to him. "Indeed, you'll not come back 'a little later !' Deserting me for an earth girl, indeed. No sir ! If you want to fall in love with her, you need not depend on me any more, to nurse you, you big moon baby !" "I couldn't fall in love with the girl of an- other man, even if I did!" Biocletes was somewhat ambiguous as to his English, but wholly comprehending as to his own mean- ing. "That wouldn't seem nice to me if I could help it, and if I couldn't help it, it would seem worse!" "I've a mind to come after you!" The sprite was proving herself a perfect little vixen. The wailing young man caught hold of her arm and told her she hadn't any mind, and to hush! Amelia's grandmother looked out of the window and told Amelia that the night 46 WHERE THE SUN SHINES was growing damp and the wind was rising; also, that she should advise her son, the king, to have the frog pond cleared of frogs. She could not sleep, the frogs croaked so. The sprite heard the words. They made her more furious still. Everybody knows that frogs have perfectly awful voices and that her voice was perfectly lovely. The wailing young man stopped watching the ascent of Biocletes toward Amelia's win- dow, and looked more particularly at the sprite. ''Of course, everybody knows you have a lovely voice," he said, reassuringly. The sprite glared at him. 'T don't want any love making from you earth men," she said freezingly, ''You are nothing in the world but money worshippers. If I should marry you, the honeymoon wouldn't be over before you would bottle me up to furnish water power for a factory. No sir, not you! Nor you, either!" calling after the climbing Biocletes, "I had intended ask- ing you to marry me because moonbeams and the mist can work together very well. I have some sense, if I am volatile. But I won't ask you now, no I won't !" "Come my good woman, don't make such a row!" The dejected lover was changing his tactics. To be called a good woman was too much for the unhappy sprite. She burst into tears and disappeared in raindrops. CHAPTER VII "That was a more fortunate solution to the difficulty than I could have hoped." So, Biocletes to himself. Then he and the wailing young man and Biocletes' cells and lungs and heart gave themselves up to the marvelous acrobatic performance of the scaling of the castle walls, even to the win- dows of the princess Amelia in the turret. Oh, but it was a pretty sight ! All seemed to be going beautifully when there flew into the castle garden, a terrible gust of wind. Clouds concealed the searchlights in the kingdom of the king, Hypocrates Socrates Moon, who, though he did not know it, had been helping his son to find his foothold, — so often does the father light help us in the dark, when we know nothing of it. Biocletes, himself, ceased to glitter. When he stopped glittering, he could not see where to put his foot to climb a single step higher. The wind shook and swayed him upon his precarious fothold. It seemed certain that he would be shaken that terrible stretch of space through the air, to the ground. He seemed unable to walk off into that great expanse as he had done when first he left his resting place in the tree and began his voyage into the world of atmosphere — that wonderful voyage which had led him 48 WHERE THE SUN SHINES to the water sprite and to his subsequent journey hither, to the rescue of a maiden he knew would be beautiful. Her picture, as presented to him by his heart, made that organ go bumpity-bump more than it had ever done — far more, even, than when he first saw the water sprite. How black and cold it grew! The leaves Biocletes was clinging to, were torn from their stems and flung ruthlessly to the ground or into the air, to meet their fate. Rain pelted down upon him and drenched him so that he began to be very heavy — almost too heavy to keep his footing on the perilous ladder of practically nothing. The cells of the town of wits called out to the lungs to put on more power, and told the heart that if he had any of that quality, called compassion, usually attributed to him, please, please to stop going bumpity-bump while Biocletes was hanging to life by so precarious a thread. Still the wind blustered and roared; the rain poured in sheets. Biocletes clung des- perately to the slippery wall, banged and beaten by the elements. The wailing young man grew tired of being drenched. He de- cided that he would not wait for Biocletes to die up there in the air, or stop to help him on^ of his sad plight. If the silly moonfellow did not get the letter to Amelia, he did not want to speak to him again. As for what was hap- pening up there.-^^ij: served the fluttery thing WHERE THE SUN SHINES 49 right for having no better sense than to do a favor for somebody he did not know. If Bio- cletes did get the letter to Amelia, the lover v/ould find her at three o'clock the next morning, sliding down a silken cord into his arms. If not — well, he'd better go ! There were reasons, too, which made it better for his health — so the slangy fellow stated the fact to himself — to be out of the garden and beyond the reach of the castle guards. So the wailing young man went away. Left alone in the garden, buffetting with the elements, Biocletes held his own on the wall or on the ivy leaves, one or the other, as he was flung ruthlessly about. He could have slipped to the ground and run away like the cad he saw disappearing beyond the yew tree hedge; but he scorned retreat. He was determined, too, to see the princess who could make a man cry. People very seldom cried in the moon. The phenomenon puzzled and interested him. He was too unsophisticated to judge of the quality of the yew hedge man's tears. He knew only they were something out of the usual to him. The tears seemed to be warm, gushing things. Things in the moon, were, quite generally, what he was now learning from his earth experiences, to call clammy. He wanted to see how much beauty it took in a woman to make an earth man cry. He won- dered if the earth men always stayed down in gardens and got other people to do their so WHERE THE SUN SHINES climbing, then went off and left them in the lurch if anything interfered with the swift completion of their plans. He wondered if the yew hedge man really loved the princess with every bit of him. Somehow, though he, Biocletes, had not much experience, it did not seem to him, that he did. He wondered if such luke-warmness as desertion on the part of the yew hedge man would raise the ban of disloyalty and permit the winner to love the lady of the run-a-way's heart — or whatever it was that did the loving. Biocletes had some time to puzzle about all this, because he had to crouch, for a long while, close to the wall. There, no wind could get behind him to wedge him from his foot- fall into the rain, where he would surely be washed away. After a while, the wind stopped blowing so furiously. The rain slackened until only a few drops fell here and there. Then the clouds put horses to their chariots and raced away; and there, trying to reveal and un- cover the whole round world to find the boy who had been sent away from home in a most unfatherly rage, were the searchlights of the king, Hypocrates Socrates Moon. As once before, the father was helping the boy when he did not know that he was doing it and the son did not know it either. It was such a help! Biocletes shook him- self. He found he was a wee bit heavier. The exercise of so much grit in holding on to a WHERE THE SUN SHINES 51 difficult proposition, had given him the be- ginnings of something that always has much weight in earth life. It is called character. He had to pick and choose his steps more carefully. He was finding that each step counted for good or ill in a fashion such as he had never before noticed. If he took a misstep now — he had to work harder — so it seemed to him, — to retrieve to his satis- faction. That was a bother; but, somehow, it made him have a feeling of self respect. Though this was all indefinite in his mind, his feeling led him truly to a sense of stab- ility as in contradistinction to the unstability of the water sprite who could not see a kindly action done to another without getting into a most undignified rage over it. He did not want to turn fickle himself, though, and desert the water sprite because he did not like all she did. She had really been very kind and had shown anything but lack of stability in her attraction toward him. He felt in her, even what she had not openly shown to him. As for himself, it was not just what he liked to believe of himself, that he could turn from the kindly water sprite without a better reason than that something else was awakening his attention. Did you think — so he communed with himself as he began his climb again — should you think it was dreadful to fall in love with another man's girl ? Pshaw ! That man down there, was a coward. It would be doing any 52 WHERE THE SUN SHINES girl a favor to get her out of the clutches of such a man. She should be told that the fellow had stood there at the foot of the turret and cried, and then had gotten some- one else to do his work and had run away and left that someone in the lurch. Biocletes was so indignant as he thought of all this, that he almost lost his balance. Then it occurred to him that if he wanted to make a success of getting to the princess, he must apply himself to the task and stop thinking of other matters till that was accomplished. The moment he stopped thinking about the wailing young man and stopped wondering and puzzling, and took care of his steps, he was surprised to see how quickly he reached the window in the turret behind which were his hopes and the realization of his dreams. True, there was the awful possibility that the Princess Amelia might have closed the window during the storm, so that he could not enter. That fear, however, halted him but a moment. 'T can shine through the pane so very brightly that she will be attracted to the window. When she has come so far, I can shine some more. Then she can not resist opening the window, and I will enter," He edged round to one side of the win- dow so that the direct rays of his light would not, at once, meet her eye. He was somewhat modest about peeping into a lady's chamber without being announced. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 53 When he gained the courage to look in, what he saw there, nearly took his breath away. He almost fell off the ivy leaf on which he was poising, in his endeavors to see without being seen. The Princess Amelia sat in the half light, such an exquisite sadness on her face that the prince's heart began a bumpity-bump that nearly jarred him off the window sill where he had gained a purchase. The earth people would say that he lost his heart that minute. You and I know he found it. For some reason, the cells of the town of wits did not seem as inclined as usual, to scold and jeer at the heart down under the ribs, at once so tremulous and so strong, and called so vigorously into action by the beauty and charm embodied in the gracious person of the Princess Amelia. When the cells did stir a little, it was for one of them to say: 'Tt is most fortunate that his incipient attraction on the earth plane should be for so rare and beautiful a specimen in every regard, as this Princess Amelia." Aquiver with delight at the beauty of the girl he saw and trembling with the wonder of it. Prince Biocletes leaned further and further forward, to watch her every move- ment and expression. What was she like? Never the same any two times he peeped at her. The water sprite 54 WHERE THE SUN SHINES had silvery hair and a complexion like the white dew of the morning as it lies over the fields in the early day. Biocletes had thought her very lovely in her ethereal beauty; but there was a reality in the charm of this earth born princess that made him feel strong, more closely knit together, if you understand w^hat I mean. The water sprite gave him a feeling that she might melt away any moment and take him with her. As he looked at the Princess Amelia, he felt less like melt- ing away than getting together something he could really call himself, to present to her, heart and brain, body and soul. CHAPTER VIII Biocletes did not express these thoughts all to himself exactly after the fashion herein set down. The citizens of wits, however, had it all formulated, pretty much after this manner. The heart, quivering with delicious tremor at the wonderful presence before him, ap- plied himself, indiscretely, and wholly unin- tentionally, to nearly bumping Biocletes off the sill. Fortunately, this tremor made him grip, with a still more determined tenacity, his foothold, as well as the thought that was taking deep root in his mind, that he was going to enter suit for the heart of the prin- cess and let the recalcitrant lover stay down in the yew hedge where his own choice had placed him. The coward had done worse than that. He had run away! Left Biocletes to his fate, intending to return and capture the prize Biocletes had won for him, when at three the next morning she should slide down a silken cord into the unworthy recreant's arms. How, thought Biocletes, could he save her from such a fate ! How does she really look! He continued to think. 56 WHERE THE SUN SHINES ''She is different every time I glance at her with a new heart thump. She responds to my every ideal !" As he gazed earnestly at the princess, this moment, she had the most v^onderful golden hair and marvelous blue eyes. The faintest flush of a seashell w^as on her smooth fair cheek. She was graceful in every movement. Her feet w^ere daintiness itself in their little gold slippers, and her hands were prettier, far, than the lilies he had seen in the castle gardens. As he continued to gaze, he could not help wondering how she would seem if she were otherwise. In response to the thought, her eyes grew as black as onyx; her golden hair fell from its coils in strands of midnight black. With forceful movement, her athletic hands coiled it quickly again above a low brow of ivory pallor. A strong foot tossed aside the golden slipper and thrust itself into a moccasin san- dal. Biocletes was astonished at the change. "I like her better as I saw her first," he sighed. As he spoke, there was the dainty Amelia with her golden hair and her witching charm. "How strange," pondered Biocletes. "Do people look as they look or as the one who looks at them thinks of them ! If that is the case, I shall be changing with every whim of fancy and that will make her change or seem WHERE THE SUN SHINES 57 to change. That will not be fair to her nor very easy for me. She would never know where to find herself. As for me, I should grow so interested in changing my mind I should never stick to one idea or accomplish anything. You have to stick to things, I see, to get anywhere, and not go sliding about like a moonbeam. Where would I have been if I had not stuck to my ladder and if I had died like a moonbeam when the clouds tried to kill me! Down in the list of cowards wath that yew hedge man ! If I am going to be in love with her, I must see what I love in her and stick to it.'' The citizens of wits had such a joy meet- ing over this reverie of Biocletes, that the boy's head felt all wuzzly. ''Good," said one, "li he gets stick-to-a- tive-ness settled in him and a better back bone I believe he will soon pass the authori- ties of earthdom as a full-fledged earth man." "Many earth men have neither," said an- other cell. "Then they are not men; they are some- things ! We want to present a candidate that the earth will have place and space for. We all know that it has enough of the other kind. Watch the lad!" The lad, of course referred to Biocletes. He was leaning so far forward, was being drawn so insistently by her charm into the presence of the princess, that, even as the cell spoke, he edged himself through a crack 58 WHERE THE SUN SHINES in the window and found himself precipitated at her very feet. "Beautiful Princess — " "What an exquisite bit of jewelry!" The princess sprang to her feet and seized him as if he had been a breastpin. Before he could utter a word to protect himself, she thrust him into a jewel casket near by, and returned to her reverie, too full of heart sorrow to be beguiled into more than a cursory glance at the trinket. Prince Biocletes was amazed. He had not realized before, that he was so much smaller than the earth people. It came over him with crushing force, that, unless he could grow, it was of no avail to reveal himself to the princess and avow his love for her. It would only make him the butt of her ridicule. He had not minded the ridicule of the water sprite; but he felt it would be more than he could endure to hear contemptuous or pat- ronizing words directed toward himself from those lips that, already, he adored. In all honor, he should try to deliver to her the letter from the wailing young man whom he had left running away from the yew tree hedge. Then he must try to grow before she slid down the silken cord at three in the morning. Could he grow by that time? He meant to try, even if it did seem like hurry- ing matters. How, honorably, he could re- ceive into his arms, a princess meant for an- other, he did not know. Somehow, he felt WHERE THE SUN SHINES 59 that would be arranged for him. His heart told him to have hope. The head of the clan of wits, named Reason, seemed rather more willing than usual, to cooperate with the heart in this matter. A warm flow of some- thing reason called resourcefulness, and the heart telephoned was rightfully named hope, flowed through the little Prince Biocletes shut up in the jewel casket. It made him ex- pand so that the hinges of the box were put to a great strain to keep their prisoner within bounds and not burst in the attempt. Biocletes heard the strain but did not real- ize the cause. He felt, though, that some more of the same thing — he did not know what — might make the hinges creak again. He made it very sure to himself, that he had the power, within himself, to weaken those bars of imprisonment, even though he could not, at once, trace the means. The thought made him expand again. Again, the hinges creaked. He continued to think. That was a new process to him. Of course, notions even ideas, had popped in and out and at- tracted his attention for the moment; but he had never definitely set himself to work any- thing out from inception — and back of in- ception — to realization. He had just done undetached things, with no thought what- ever, about what the thing done would lead to, or what it had led from. This time, however, he began deliberately to plan how he was to get out of his jail and 60 WHERE THE SUN SHINES grow big enough to face the princess as a suitor for her hand — big enough in every sense, he meant — and how he was to ar- range matters so that, honorably, he could receive to his own heart and keeping, a wo- man whose expectations were that she was to fall into the arms of another man. That that other was a coward, was not, after all, full and sufficient reason for making the change if the princess preferred the other man. She had something to say about the matter. Something! All! It was not enough for him to know what he wanted. He must know what she wanted, as well. As he reasoned thus in his tiny prison, the clan of wits condescended to rejoice with the heart, at this new indication of growth and the lungs drew such a deep breath of content at this exhibition of consideration, that the hinges of the casket absolutely parted. Biocletes saw this. He gave a great sigh of relief at the sense of his approaching relief. The hinges of the casket sank into place again. This return to imprisonment when he had seen release before him, was very disappoint- ing to Biocletes. He had not yet learned to trace events to causes. He was determined to observe, with the intention*that the next time the hinges parted he would discover the cause. Then he settled himself to plan. He saw that if the princess was to slide WHERE THE SUN SHINES 61 down the silken cord into the garden, she must know she was expected to do so. She must receive the billet, as the wailing young man called the note. It hurt Biocletes even to let the princess know there was such a lollypop of a man who expected to receive her in his arms. After all, that was but one step. He would have time to watch the effect of the note. Meanwhile, he might think up a way to grow, so as to be equal to the emer- gency he hoped to face at three the next morning. Then the wailing young man would have to stand the test of presenting himself before the princess, a leaner on the efforts of others, for the attainment of cher- ished ends. 'Tf I read her right, it will disgust her when she knows he can't do his own climb- ing. She is too noble a looking woman, truly to love a weakling. How very very strong I must become in purpose and in action, to win her. How very much I have to do.'' CHAPTER IX It did occur to Biocletes, that, after all, as the wailing young man was not a moonbeam, and had not a climbing makeup, he had been smart in the selection of one who had. He put that aside as a very small item in the meagre list of the yew hedge man's virtues, though he realized it was wise to g^t helpers of the right sort for the accomplish- ment of a given object. He did not believe, that, in the eyes of a true woman, that would do much toward balancing the other side of the ledger which contained the abhorrent item that a man who couldn't win his own lady love, was going to marry her. ''To run away, too!" exploded Biocletes, with such indignation that he drew a deep breath and the hinges of the casket parted again. 'Tt is because I make myself bigger down between my waist and my throat," said Bio- cletes, and, exultantly, he drew such a very deep breath, that the hinges of the casket were strained so far apart, they fell out of position and could not get together again, so there was a good sized crack all along the back of the box. Hastily, Biocletes threw the yew hedge man's note through this crack made by the WHERE THE SUN SHINES 63 parted hinges. So accurate was his aim, that the bit of paper fell at the very feet of the princess. The princess started from her meditations and caught up the little billet. Eagerly, Biocletes watched her. He clenched his fists tightly and brought to- gether his jaws with a grip of determination to do something, whatever that something might be. 'Tsn't there anything in the world that will show my beautiful princess the worth- lessness of that fellow!" between white set lips. ''Must she find it out for herself when it is too late! Isn't there something or somebody to take care of beautiful people and make them find out rascals before the villains can do them harm! If there is, please, O you Something or Somebody, speak to my beautiful, beautiful princess and show her the truth! I don't mean that you are to do it only because I love her and want her myself; but because I want her to have the sweetest of everything, and to know what she is going into, and whether she truly wants it or only fancies she does." ''See here," said the head of the clan of wits, "This fellow of ours is growing prettv fast. We shall have him an earth man of first class stuiT, in short order." "Better than an earth man, I say," whis- pered another cell, "He is learning about the 64 WHERE THE SUN SHINES 'Something That Is Behind.' That is more than many earth people know." "I think it rather fine of him, as he is still only a moonbeam, and not supposed to know anything about a moral sense, not to run and tell her; but to leave it to her judgment," said another cell. Meanwhile, the princess, who, at first, had kissed the billet and pressed it to her heart, was reading and rereading it, while a puzzled look was creeping into her beautiful eyes, and a sad little shadow, that had been chased away by the advent of the note, was return- ing, with an ever darkening shade, 'T wonder — I wonder — " she was saying sadly, ''Somehow, the words don't ring true." She read aloud: "Come to me tomorrow night, at three. Slide down the silken cord you have told me about. Be sure to leave someone behind whom you can trust to untie it. We will want to take it away with us for our future protection." She looked anxiously at the window. "Are you there?" she whispered. Of course, no one answered. It was all that Biocletes could do to refrain from calling, "He is not there, Princess. He stayed down by the yew tree hedge, crying, till he saw me and got me to come up here for him. When it began to rain, he ran away and left me to the mercy of a possible defeat, WHERE THE SUN SHINES 65 which, fortunately, I have made success. No ! No, I mustn't say that!" He clenched his jaws the tighter, lest he speak against his will and according to his wish. That would be to be a boaster and a tattle-tale! I must not be either to be worthy of my princess." "Nor of yourself!" A new voice spoke to the little prince shut up in the jewel box, within it, the growing soul of a man-life, waiting for release from a chrysalis. The new voice made him feel sure and very safe. It made him feel that Something was caring for the beautiful princess, waking her to take cognizance of all the circumstances in this strange series of incidents. "Something leads me to feel that I should be careful." Thus, the princess to herself. Then cautiously, "Are you there? There, outside my win- dow, waiting for me to bid you enter?" Of course there was no answer. A tear found its way down her lovely cheek. "He could not climb so far and so high! He tells me it is my duty to leave all I have grown to love, all that is part of my very self, and go with him, to save those for whom he is giving his life. He tells me that he loves me! He tells me so! Why should I doubt? How did he send me this note? Perhaps by a rocket. I did see a flash of light at the win- dow, a moment ago. He must have sent me, as a gift, that brooch I so heedlessly tossed 66 WHERE THE SUN SHINES into the casket. Why such earnestness about my taking with me, the silken cord? Does he want me for more than myself? — for my sources of protection? For his own gain, rather than for the love of myself or of others? In this note, there is something that cuts my heart. I fear him ! I do not know why! But his will leads me! I must go!" CHAPTER X Then Biocletes knew that he must work fast and hard. How could he save the beauti- ful princess! First of all, he must get out, where he could act ! Second — this was far from his wish; but wholly with his judgment — he must not speak to her. He knew, now, that he was tiny, too inconsequental in appearance and in expression, to win her confidence. He must work for her without letting her know anything about it. He must be on hand — that was it, on hand! For what? For anything that was needed of him, just as he had been on hand to bear to her the letter, which, now, alas, was bringing grief to her heart and doubt to her mind. Doubt and grief! He, who loved her so, had brought her both! He sighed. Then, realizing that if he were to prove of any assistance to her, he must keep up his courage, he drew in so full a breath, that the cover and box were strained still further apart, Biocletes slipped quickly through the opening and was free once more, unaware that he was carrying away with him, the princess' largest diamond, which she used in playing ball with her kitten. ''What a beautiful moonbeam," he heard her exclaim, as he lighted on an ivy leaf, pre- 68 WHERE THE SUN SHINES paratory to escape. "I can not send him an answer in any other way. Moonbeam, will you tell him, that, at three, tomorrow morn- ing, I will slide down the silken cord and flee with him to the ends of the earth, if so he bid me ! Tell him, O Moonbeam, to be true to me and give me no cause to doubt him. For his sake, am I forsaking father and mother, and into his hands do I confide the. keeping of my happiness, yea, my very soul.'* Biocletes was so affected by these words of the princess, that, knowing he must not speak, nor advise, nor, indeed, express him- self in any way, all he saw to do was to hasten down the vines as quickly as possible, far, far away from her whom he loved with the fervor of his very life. To go — where? He was all alone, without friend or compa- nion, leaving the presence of the only one he loved, feeling assured, too, that he was leav- ing her in the jaws of some terrible danger; desirous of protecting her from the yew hedge man without any means for doing so. It was a most perplexing situation. He reached the ground. All was still and sweet and peaceful. There was no hint of the tragedy those lilies and roses would see to- morrow night, and that the yew hedge would conceal from those within the castle walls, who loved the Princess Amelia. Having reached the ground, Biocletes found himself very exhausted, more as the effect of his emotions than of his exertions. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 69 So, weary, and, oh, so very lonesome, he crept into the heart of a rose and fell asleep. So tired was he, that for long, long hours, he slept. At last, he stirred, drowsily, and drew up the covering of rose leaves, for a strange damp was disturbing him. He tried to snuggle down among his sweet scented blankets for another nap. Disquietude con- tinued to possess him. He decided that he would be better able to think if he got up. Just as he was emerging from the fragrant couch that had so contributed to his comfort, he heard a slight stir in the garden, in the vicinity of the yew tree hedge and near his quondam resting place. Cautiously, he moved in the direction of the sound, wisely keeping well within cover of the shrubbery, till he could locate the disturbance. He found the yew hedge lover talking in whispers, to three unsavory looking men. When he saw Biocletes, he scowled. *^Good heavens, what are you doing here! I had forgotten it was full moon." This remark was accompanied by an un- complimentary anathema on his own stupid- 'There is one thing in our favor, the castle people will have relaxed their vigilance. They will never believe that a man with a grain of sense would choose the night of a full moon to carry out an abduction scheme." "Perhaps you haven't a grain of sense." Biocletes whispered to himself. The yew 70 WHERE THE SUN SHINES hedge man must have heard him — or was it the echo of his own thoughts he heard, — he turned quickly. ''Keep out of my way," he growled, as Bio- cletes approched him, bravely issuing from the protection of the shrubbery, 'Tor heavens' sake, keep out of my way." "I helped you last night," Biocletes was very ingratiating in his manner, "Let me into your plans. Perhaps you will be sur- prised to see how well I can enter into them." One of the cells among the citizens of wits gave a little chuckle of amusement. "Good! He is getting there!" "Where?" growled Reason, discontently. "To manhood. Did you hear that. Diplo- macy?" "I heard that approach to trickery. I don't like it. I was in hopes we could prepare one earth man without those two abominable traits — trickery and caution." "Why, caution is one of your closest rela- tions. Not deceit; but caution. Why shouldn't he be cautious, dealing with those villains?" "Because, within himself, he has the qual- ity of defense against them. What can they do to him? They can not stop his shining, and you know it. Only his Source can do that. You know that men like those fellows, brave as they may be in perpetrating vil- lainies are afraid when it comes to dealing with The Source." "You can't and you mustn't expect to send WHERE THE SUN SHINES 71 out a finished product into the world. If you did, there would be nothing left for the earth to do for him. Besides, a finished product would be too good to be true, and he would not fit into the scheme of earth. It is a long way to perfection, by the earth road." Reason turned away impatiently. He was anxious to hear what Biocletes and the yew hedge man were saying. . ''Hang round out of sight, there, till after the princess gets down here. Don't go away. Since you are willing, I think you may be able to help us after we get her. As we run one way with her, you might run in the other direction and impersonate her, so the pur- suers will follow you instead of us." ''A fine idea." Biocletes seemed most im- pressed with the guile of the yew hedge man. ''I will stop here in the shrubbery and wait for signals." ''Liar !" growled Reason. Saying one thing and standing on an entirely different plat- form." "I don't agree," said Diplomacy, "It would be murder to show one's hand prematurely." "Can he not trust his Source?" "Be reasonable, Reason, don't you know he has not grown enough, yet, to realize he has a Source. He has to learn the best means to an end, I repeat. Reason, do be reasonable. They who know Truth, must become ac- quainted with him, through the Master of Ceremonies, Experience." 72 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "Don't talk so much!" growled Reason, ''You ball up ideas with words so there is no sense to what has sense." ''You'd better stop talking yourself, Rea- son," quarrelled Diplomacy. "You are balling up your ideas most woefully, with your logic." The attention of all concerned in the making of Biocletes into an earth man was now attracted by a stir in the garden. A little tremor of excitement quivered through the whole line of ivy leaves from the window of the Princess Amelia's room unto the very earth, as a slender cord, almost of the texture of a spider's web, floated down, over and through the leaves, until it touched the ground. The yew hedge man was filled with sup- pressed excitement. From being a weak, wailing young man such as Biocletes had seen the night before, there seemed to shoot from his being, a diabolic force. As he saw Amelia hesitate as if to return, as she poised on the window ledge of the turret, far, far up toward the starry heavens, the vengeful spark of diabolic force seemed to shoot from the man to the very centre of the being of the Princess Amelia. As one moving against her will, she began, slowly but surely, to descend. "If I could get that cord intact, the girl could stay at the other end, for all I care." Biocletes heard the words. His fists, which WHERE THE SUN SHINES n had done a good deal of clenching since he first saw the princess, clenched again and almost let fly at the jaw of the yew hedge man. But he restrained himself. "Patience!" he whispered to himself. There was a still more excited stir among the ivy leaves at the top of the turret. The watchers in the garden below, viewed the perilous descent. Biocletes clasped his hands and grit his jaws in his desire to aid. Once, he rushed out of the shrubbery, in order to throw more light upon her path. The gruff whisper of the yew hedge man sent him back precipitously. ''Don't you know better, you fool moon- beam! You will frighten her. She will think the light you will throw on her will reveal her to the guards. Let her come down in the dark. She will have enough of it for the rest of her life." Biocletes' blood boiled. Yes, he could feel it. It was some sort of a substance that had been forming ever since he had fallen in love with an earth-born maiden. He did not feel so light as before; but he felt braver, more solid, more real. He slipped back into the shrubbery and anxiously followed the de- scent of the woman he loved into the arms of the man he had learned to abhor and detest. The yew hedge lover gave the princess so cursory a greeting when, at length, she reached the ground, that Biocletes fairly raged within himself. 74 WHERE THE SUN SHINES , 'Is someone undoing the cord?'' "No/' quivered Amelia, frightened by the strange manner of her lover, ''There was no one I could trust. My mother has slept in my chamber ever since they discovered our first attempt — " "Here you!" Rudely, the yew hedge man summoned Biocletes. "Come out of the shrubbery and run up there and untie the cord, and drop it down to us. Quick, now!" Biocletes fairly flew up the ivy vines to the window of Amelia's room. Even with the added weight of his coming earth life, he was still fleet and light. Up he sped, with so many plans teeming in his brain, that they almost overbalanced him. This time it was his heart that whispered, "Faint heart ne'er won fair lady." This remark sounded new and very won- derful to Biocletes, for, not being earth-born, he had never before heard that trite but true remark. He steadied himself at once, with the result that he reached the chamber of the lady Amelia in the full brilliance of his powers. He shone so brightly that he illumined the apartment, which otherwise, would have been in darkness. He paid no attention to the silken cord — not he ! He went directly to the bedside of the mother — a woman as beautiful as her daughter, with much wisdom illumining her splendid face. Biocletes stood very still at the bedside, WHERE THE SUN SHINES 75 focussing all the light of his knowledge upon her mind, through the intense light of his being. Soon the mother stirred and opened her eyes. ''What a brilliant moonlight night!" she exclaimed, "It makes it difficult for me to rest.'' She tried to shade her eyes with her hand; but the determined Biocletes got behind it and shone so persistently that the mother rose and crossed the room to shut out the moonlight by drawing the draperies of the window. Of course, she saw the silken cord depend- ing from the sill, looked at Amelia's couch and read the whole terrible history in a flash. CHAPTER XI The queen mother was wise. She did not scream. Quietly, she roused the sleeping king, who notified the guards to enclose the garden as silently and a§ quickly as possible and not attempt to seize the party of marau- ders directly under the window. Biocletes had felt that the yew hedge man would be disturbed at the length of time he was taking to execute his commission and would not wait for him. So very much did he wish to inform the king and queen of this impression that he shone and shone and shone his intense desire to express himself. Because he felt so deeply and keenly, he en- abled the father and mother, as they leaned cautiously from the window, to see that the men had already left the vicinity of the castle and were forging ahead into the forest be- yond. So anxious was Biocletes to keep the vil- lains within his ken, that he fairly flew down the ivy into the garden, illumining every nook and cranny of the way the men were passing. He ran through the garden till never before had it been so flooded with light. He ran into the forest, sending gleam and glow under leaf and shrub and into dark woodland paths. He could hear the yew hedge man in the distance cursing the moonlight and urging on the horses, though, as yet, without WHERE THE SUN SHINES 11 realizing that pursuit had already begun. On flew Biocletes till he fairly surrounded the marauding party. Just as they crossed a space of lovely parking, the other side of the hill, the castle guards, guided by the faithful Biocletes came down upon them from the front. All the evil doers were captured, ex- cept the yew hedge man who, putting spurs to his horse, rode wildly out of sight. In a moment, Amelia was in her father's arms. ^'Father! Father!" she whispered, "Hold me fast! I do not know why or how I ever did it. I seemed compelled to it against my will, until it seemed to become my own wish and will. The moonlight was fairly inspired to help me! It flooded every corner of valley and wood. Wherever those terrible men hid, there would the moonlight shine the bright- est. It was to save me. Father, to save me!" The father was a wise and loving man, not cold and cruel. He held his daughter closely within his arms and kissed her many times. Then the cavalcade turned homeward. Bio- cletes clung to the company until they reached the very doors of the castle. The king, the queen and Amelia entered and the doors were closed; the guards dispersed and Biocletes Socrates Moon was left all alone in the spaces of the darkling woods. Then it was that despair overtook him. He who had wondered how much beauty it took in a woman to make an earth man cry, fell 78 WHERE THE SUN SHINES face down upon the green sward and drank of the dregs of loneliness and desolation. Bit- ter tears took from him the gleam and glow that had enabled him to do so great good and to armor himself from harm. He felt that disaster was about to come upon him. A great weight of impending evil overwhelmed him. He began to pity himself that he was so different from the princess — so very dif- ferent that there was absolutely no use in aspiring to her love. The more he felt that way, the dimmer he grew, less and less filled with the vital glow of the moonlight that had so valiantly aided the king father in the re- covery and salvation from a sad and miser- able fate, of his only child. He rose from the spot where he had thrown himself in his desperation. A band of marauders beheld the gleaming of his dress and ran toward him in search of booty. Then Biocletes, the brave, the doughty, grew afraid! He forgot that they could not seize him and denude him of the light which was inseparable from him. In a frenzy of terror, he fled over the blades of grass, hiding be- neath them, now, in cowardly fashion, now, leaping upon and over them. He climbed upon shrubs and trees, and ran from leaf to leaf for his very life. The race grew more and more exciting. ''There he is. Shadow," cried one pursuer, ascending a tree, and trying to oust Biocletes from his high position. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 79 ''Catch him, Darkness/' called another. So on they ran — a horde of belligerents, chasing the tired, disconsolate little prince until they came to the surface of a large lake. There, the pursuers could not reach him. They gathered about the shores, however, ready to seize him, should he advance within their grasp. ''How desolate I am!" thought the poor little fellow, quivering and glancing upon the small undulations of the water, weary and sick at heart, "Where shall I go, and what shall I do?" The shadows were very still and watchful for some time; then they gathered together seemingly in parley. A few hasty words and an appearance of great agitation, and they slowly and silently retreated. "Now for a little rest and a little peace, for I am very tired," thought Eiocletes; but sud- denly, to his horror, he heard a great outcry, that, to his weary brain, sounded like trum- pets of war, though, really, they were birds singing their matin sings. Over the east, there flashed a terrible light. The glare be- came more intense and distracting. Biocletes, who, all his life, had lived in light but had thought and known nothing of his own gift, was terrified almost beyond the power of motion. At last, he pulled himself together, and madly fled. A great army was behind him. He had no recourse but tp flee, 80 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "It is not cowardice like that of the yew hedge man," he quivered, heart broken, to himself, 'It is because the odds are against me. I must flee, in order to live." On he ran, the great army following, and gaining, momentarily, upon him. They chased him from the great surface of the lake; from every leaf and blade of grass he chose as vantage ground, until he was ready to drop with fatigue. They shot great shin- ing lances at him, that wounded him many times. Still he struggled on, reaching, at length, the cool, green forest made of the large bou- quets he had seen when first he had rescued himself from the dark, deep waters and its dreadful inhabitants. He sank exhausted on the brink of a stream. He dipped his hand into the water to allay his faintness, and found himself face to face with the water sprite. *'You have had a hard time since you de- serted me, haven't you?" she said spitefully. "Yes, yes," panted Biocletes. "I slapped you well in the face for that desertion! Did you know that all those rain- drops that nearly washed you off the vines on your way to that Amelia person's rooms, were cuffings and slaps from me?" "No. How could you do such a thing when you had been so nice to me and I meant no harm to you?" "You left me! That hurt my feelings! It WHERE THE SUN SHINES 81 always harms one to hurt other people's feel- ings." ''But you can't keep from doing what is right because it is going to hurt someone's feelings ! People should not let their feelings be hurt over what is done to them that is right !" "You moralize too much for your health, Moonbeam ! Suppose you marry me ! I'll take care of you and keep you out of trouble. I'll show you how to hide and how to strike from the dark, the way I did when I slapped your face." "I thank you for the honor conferred upon me." The prince was almost amusing, de- spite the tragedy of the situation, in the stiltedness of his old-fashioned courtesy, the regret he felt at giving pain, and the inte- grity of his purpose to escape, in no under- hand manner from what life had set before him. As Biocletes spoke, the water sprite turned and saw the outriders of the great army ad- vancing upon them. She grew pale with ter- ror. ''Oh!" she shrieked, "It is the army of the sun." "Who is he?" Biocletes was terrified, but still alert to learn. "He is what made you and me, and kills us both whenever he wishes." "What is it to kill?" Biocletes demanded 82 WHERE THE SUN SHINES an answer, even though the tyrant were at his very heart and brain. ''You'll find that out soon enough! That army is deadly enemy to the moonlight and the mist. I am dying, now. There is but one escape for us both!" Just then, the sun came into view in his flaming chariot. ''Come! Come!" gasped the water sprite. "I will run no more! I will hide no more! If the sun made me, he will not, cannot, kill me, for I must be part of his very self. I must receive my very light from him. If he quench it, it is only to absorb his light again unto himself. I will not run. I will face him. I will stand." But the water sprite had disappeared. PART II CHAPTER XII With a little touch of sadness upon his noble face, the sun dismounted and the glory of him spread over field and sky. He stood and conversed v^ith his courtiers on the spot w^here the water sprite had dis- appeared, and the moonbeam awaited the reading of his fate. 'Timid ones," he said gravely, ''Why do they flee from me? Do they not know that I, who have charge of their comings and goings can summon them at any moment at the call of my Leader, who is greater than I! Let the water sprite go for the while. She is always disappearing, mad with terror, and bobbing up before me in a summer cloud or a morning mist and laughing in my face. As for this moonbeam, I would speak with him. He has proven himself so full of the meat of achievement I must provide means for his advancement. He must enter the earth life. Let him sleep now. We must approach him gently. He has suffered. When we have suf- fered, we must be left in peace and quietness until we come again to our own. Let him sleep long. Later, I will talk with him." All day Biocletes slept, a deep deep sleep. 84 WHERE THE SUN SHINES When he awoke, it was well into the morn- ing of the next day. His first thought was of the Princess Am- elia; his second was a feeling of shame that, even for a moment, he had run away from anything. "It was a foolish thing to do! One can't really run away from anything. If the sun could kill me it would be far better that I fall into his power, facing him." ''Good morning, young sir." It was a plea- sant voice that accosted him. "How is it you have spent the night in the forest when the city is so near?" Biocletes looked up. He saw a large man with a noble face. "I have nowhere else to go» sir," Biocletes rose to his feet and stood confidingly beside the stranger. "I feel that I can tell you that I am not an inhabitant of the earth. I am a moonbeam. My father shut me out from his kingdom." His lip quivered a little. "You see, I had an adventurous spirit. I wanted to learn something beyond my sphere. Was that wise, sir, or very wrong?" "We do not know the limits of our spheres until we have reached them, and that is, never. I think you are a child of earth, now, at all events, a student of the earth. You shall if you wish, come with me to the town whose roofs and steeples you see in the light of the morning sun. There I will introduce you to those who will acquaint you with WHERE THE SUN SHINES 85 the life you will see about you. It is for you to use that life as you will." In perfect trust, Biocletes listened to the stranger. As they moved away together, he halted and looked down at himself. He found that he was dressed in a suit of modish tweeds. A portmanteau was on the ground where he had lain. It contained his suit of shining armor, his gold and jewels, and, above all, the diamond with which the Lady Amelia had been used to play with her kit- ten. "May I not shine any more, sir, in this city of the earth?" "More than ever, but with a different shine." "First of all, I must find the earth maiden, the Princess Amelia, to restore to her the diamond that, unintentionally, I took from her possession, one night when I saved her from a dreadful fate." "Let us walk to town. It is a pleasant stroll." Biocletes moved on beside the noble look- ing man, his portmanteau in his hand. Though it was heavy with jewels and gold, he bore its weight with ease. Presently, he began to laugh. "I have to laugh at this manner of moving. It is that of the snail compared with my mo- tion of yesterday. May I no longer float and swim and skim and stir and do all the things I used to do?" 86 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "Do anything you want to. Ask something inside you what you may or may not do." ''As I see those about me are walking, per- haps I would better walk. I want to be a real man before I meet the Princess Amelia and that must be very soon, for I should re- store to her her diamond ball at once." ''Where do you expect to find her?" "I do not know. In the castle, I suppose. I do not know that they would let her give audience to a stranger, especially after the danger that has threatened her. They will never know that it is I who saved her, and that, even then I had the heart of a man in- side the embodiment of a moonbeam." "T may not tell you how or where to find the Lady Amelia. I only feel you will find her if you care enough for her to be patient and to work with life. The first thing for us to do is to find you a place on this earth plane. We all work here, you know." "What can I do?" "That, you must find out for yourself. You have some money, or what can be turned into money. You can live like a very rich man, if you want to." Biocletes looked troubled. Seeing this, the sun changed the subject. The walk to the city was accomplished, not in conjecture; but in simple comradeship. The two went to a hotel. In the course of the morning, the appointed protector invited WHERE THE SUN SHINES 87 a coterie of friends to a dining. There he in- troduced Biocletes. ''You can still call yourself Biocletes, though, if I were you, I would drop the name, Socrates. That old fellow was too dirty in his habits. Besides, he was a street loafer. Civilization is trying to do away with street philosophy, and introduce the philosophy of work. That is the slogan of this generation. Monarchies are toppling every day. It is doubtful, indeed if, in a very short time, it will be of any use for you to seek for your Amelia in a castle." He smiled in a kindly fashion, for Biocletes had told him of the incidents of his earth life, preceding his appearance as a real man. 'T cannot say that you are a real man, yet.'* This, in response to Biocletes' use of the word. ''You will have to. prove whether or not you are a real man. Shape, you know, is but a small part of a real man. As work is the slogan of the life of today, what should you like to be?" "I know nothing of its occupations. I should like to be placed so that I can see the goings and comings of great and small, poor and rich, high and low." "We will ask our guests at dinner, to take a vote as to what position in life will best give you such advantages." The question was presented. The universal decision was that no place so fully filled the 88 WHERE THE SUN SHINES demand as that of policeman on Grab-and- Get-Some Square. *'This square is in the centre of the city, with streets, like spokes of a wheel, ex- tending in every direction. From it, can be reached the slums and the castle where lives the king. It is a most desirable institution of learning, better far, for your purpose, than colleges and universities." ^'You speak of universities. I am not as well educated as I should be, in the curri- culum of the earth. I misunderstand words, as these are used. For instance. I had thought that lav^ and justice should convey the same idea. I find they do not. I need to go to a university to learn such differences." "There is no university for that, like Grab- and-Get-Some Square, and no scholarship equal to that of being a policeman." All joined in the merriment. "Our young friend is not large enough. The policemen on Grab-and-Get-Some Square have to be large," said Mr. See-It- All-At-a-Glance, "What shall we do about that for our new citizen?" "Shall I suggest?" said a kindly man at the head of the table. "Do so," said the others. "Let him apply consciously to his training the principles the flowers unconsciously apply to theirs. In the woods and forests let him glean all possible knowledge. How does the tree grow? It strikes down and up and WHERE THE SUN SHINES 89 round and about according as the power within finds aid and stimulus." ''Good! If not nurtured on all sides its growth is unsymmetrical." ''Abnormality results from unbalanced as- similation with surroundings." "So, will he realize that upon the quality of what is absorbed depends the quality of what is enfibred in the man. He will find his mind reasoning, his heart pondering, his de- sire growing, his discrimination selecting, his will acting, his whole self affiliating with life in all its phases. Nor may he esteem it a virtue to cramp or limit himself. To do so is to inhibit power for service. It is a crime." "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," quoted one guest thoughtfully. "He may listen patiently to the opinions of others, measuring standards, balancing med- itation and action. When he speaks he will choose his words as they were picked soldiers for a legion. Thus shall he, with the fulness of joy go into the woods, the fields. He shall, with more than his old-time moonbeam skill, climb trees, skate upon ice-covered lakes, sail upon the seas, run over mountains, shine through clouds, mount even farther than the moon, that he may know what all are think- ing and how each came by his mode of thought." "The moon?' 'said Biocletes, delightedly. "The moon, boy, and far, farther, still." 90 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "And I may climb and run and skim the walls covered with ivy leaves?'' ''Indeed, and more, and in more subtle ways." "And the first step to this, is — to be a policeman?'' "No. The first step to being a policeman, is this." "You are putting before me a life time of preparation. How shall I ever attain to the position in Grab-and-Get-Some Square?" "If you will follow my instructions, faith- fully, young Biocletes, beginning with them in their simplest form, under tutors I will suggest, I can assure you that very soon you will be appointed to a position as policeman in Grab-and-Get-Some Square." CHAPTER XIII I am not going to tell you how long it took Biocletes to prepare to become a policeman. To some of you who read, the time would seem ridiculously short, to others, ridiculous- ly long. At all events, one day found him on Grab-and-Get-Some Square, in the uniform of the king, well equipped to serve him. Though no longer a moonbeam, he re- tained valuable qualities from his former state, among them, that of being so self- effacive that he was practically invisible when he so elected, though at other times he could be notably prominent. The first morning of his service as he stood in the most conspicuous part of the square, in his granite gray uniform, he seemed a very part of the obelisk near which he was placed. The day was passing. Biocletes had seen many amusing, as well as heart rending sights; but none that had especially required his attention. He was not a traffic policeman and did not even have to direct the constant whirl of teams and equipages that thronged the square, making it, at times, well nigh im- passible. He stood there, a common man in a common mart. Still as the granite near him, he stood, at- tentive to all that moved before and behind 92 WHERE THE SUN SHINES and beside him, as well. He had attained the quality, also, of extending himself beyond himself — if you understand what I mean. The roar of the city came to a sudden lull, as is sometimes the case. Floating out above the silence, like the obligato of a choral symphony, there came to his attentiveness, the words, 'The Silken Cord." That voice! The Silken Cord! At that moment, into the further side of the square, there came a victoria, drawn by the king's bays. Seated in the carriage — the policeman could scarcely see her through the blur that came into his eyes — was the Prin- cess Amelia. There was no reason he should think that the love of his moonbeam and his manhood dreams was in danger. She was well guarded. Nevertheless, he leaped from his station near the granite obelisk and sprang into the seat beside her, just as, seemingly out of no- where, the yew hedge man appeared at the other side of the vehicle on a stallion of Arabian blood. As Biocletes, with the rapid- ity of a moonbeam and the altertness of a man lilted her from her seat, placed her on the other side of the carriage and, himself, dropped into the spot left vacant by the change, the yew hedge man, with herculean strength seized him and fled wildly with him, out of sight. So necessary was it that the yew hedge WHERE THE SUN SHINES 93 man guide and govern his steed through the crush of the traffic, that he was well into the country before he looked down at the bur- den on his arm. He felt the weight, and was amazed that he could see no one. ''Amelia," he whispered, ''Reveal yourself to me! They shall never recover you this time. Here, in the full daylight, I, whom the moonlight betrayed, have seized you. Be- fore we go further, give me the silken cord." "Wait," whispered the policeman, "Give me time to gain my bf eath ! You have seized me as the whirlwind, the leaf. I am breath- less and dismayed. Speak to me again. Tell me your plans." The yew hedge man galloped on until they reached the confines of a wood of which Bi- ocletes knew every hillock and dingle. Had not he, as a moonbeam, foraged through every blade of grass and played the mad game of life and death with the shadows! What was the plan of this kidnapper? If it was not passion that led him to abduct Am- elia, what was it? As they rode swiftly on, the action of their going seemed to awaken something in his mind — something one of his brain makers had said. He had heard it then; he under- stood it now. It was this : "He need not be deceitful. Within him, he has the quality of defense. Only his Source can cut off that." He was quoting his men- tor: "Men like those fellows, brave as they 94 WHERE THE SUN SHINES may be in perpetrating villainies, are afraid when it comes to dealing with the Source." Biocletes revealed himself, suddenly and without warning. The man, looking down at his burden, the invisibility of which had been making him more and more nervous, was terrorized as he beheld, resting in his arms, with ever increas- ing, and, what was becoming, overpowering weight, a big policeman in the granite gray uniform of the king. With a howl of terror he dropped his bur- den in the road and fled. A heavy dust in the highway warned Bio- cletes that the flight of their leader was stir- ring up the speed of a squad of confederates who were following on horseback. Biocletes lay quiet in the dust of the road until the squad was abreast of him. Then, standing, he arrested them all in the name of the king. Sullenly, at his command, they dismounted and faced him. "Who are you?" he asked. '^And who are you?" retorted the horde in- solently. With concerted action, they ad- vanced against him. Biocletes stood still. "He has within him, the quality of defense. Those fellows are afraid when it comes to dealing with The Source." "I wish to work with you in the interests of right," he said quietly. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 95 The men halted in their advance. '*Tell me, first of all, why your leader tries to kidnap the princess, whom, it is plain, he does not love? Why does he attribute such value to a silken cord, when you and I know that silken cords are easily procured?" "That girl represents the last of a race of kings. We are done with kings! We are going to take her away and kill her!" ''Oh, that is it ! Then why not do it at once, not weaken your chances of success by re- maining where you are in danger? Why is it necessary to abduct the princess in order to get it?" ''Don't you know the cord is the tie be- tween the present and the past? We can do nothing with the government until we have the cord. We can not get the cord without the girl. We want it to tie our past of slavery and servitude to her luxury and ease." "Oh, that is it!" thoughtfully, "Then it is a valuable cord, indeed. It ties cause with result and result with cause. It can not be made to tie anything else together. Indeed, it is a necessary instrument. But what matter in whose hands? It can not be lost, you know." "We do not intend it shall be!" growled one. "We are going to use it to tie about the necks of kings." "What about yourselves?" "We shall be free forever, after we have used it to strangle kings. No cord can ever 96 WHERE THE SUN SHINES tie our actions to the results we are going to let loose upon the earth. The results will all pile themselves upon the kings and bury them." "What do you expect as results for what you are doing — results for yourselves, I mean?" ''All that the kings have had: joy, pleasure, food, wine, women — and we have one of the finest of her race, now, in the hands of yonder man." The granite uniform of the policeman flashed like a moonbeam through the air. Aye; but the soul of a man was within it. He flashed with his old time swiftness across the eyes of the men before him. They began to mouth horribly to gibber and to writhe. ''We are moon crazy, moon crazy, com- rades !" they cried, and fell upon each other with the ferocity of wild beasts. Thus he left them, fighting with each other, until, they, every one, died. CHAPTER XIV Still the yew hedge man was at large; still the princess, fairest woman in the world, in danger. Still there was the mother whose noble face he had looked upon that night when he saved the daughter from a dreadful fate. There was still the kindly father who had taken the daughter in his tender arms and who had done all that he could do, bound, as he was, in the chains of a system, to uplift and benefit the earth. There was the court, there was the government, which, despite many and terrible abuses, had made much of the world to bloom with beauty and with prosperity in many directions. Certainly, the good in these should be preserved, not de- stroyed, while the less good passed its way and better took its place. Yes, valuable, in- deed, was that silken cord that held together cause and result, result and cause. It was the causes, the rsults that must be sought and changed. The silken cord could never be made to connect other than its own result with its own cause, never be wrested from the holder thereof. The Source. In a flash he realized what The Source meant ; what the words of one of the teachers of his making meant. The Source and what it held could not be killed or maimed or stolen. 98 WHERE THE SUN SHINES He settled his helmet firmly on his head and walked to town. ''Every result is a new cause," he said, "and every cause, a result." On his way to the city he passed through a section seething with decrepitude more physical, here, than moral, yet, again, not so much of the body, he could see, as it was of thought and attitude of mind. The attitude of mind was a result, he quickly decided, but once, in the far-back days, it must have been the attitude of mind that v^as the cause. These people he saw were not villains and robbers, blood drinkers and crucifiers. They were kind, they meant to do their best; but there was no strength in them ; no health ; no food to nourish them; no teachers to direct them. They truckled to wealth, like serfs; they worked as best they knew; they did not fight and try to steal the silken cord. They made a fetich of their rulers, discriminating not at all between what they did that was good and what was not good, because few of them could discriminate what was wise and what was unwise. Often what was for the best of all was decried or ignored. Because of their ignorance, they could not separate what they should be pleased to have done and what should pass away. The silken cord! They knew nothing of it ! Should not such be released from the cord? Ah! but they could not! The cord was like law — immutable. It was law! WHERE THE SUN SHINES 99 He threw some gold as he passed through the throngs. As these saw the gold, the throngs grew greater, receiving while giving nothing. He had their thanks! Nay, even these were unintelligent and maudlin. He could feel the pull of the cord upon them; the pauperizing from ill-advised giving and brutal witholding of that which would give them the meat of training; the drink of reci- procity; the fruit of rightly directed en- deavor. When he reached the square of Grab-and- Get-Some, he found it seething with excite- ment caused by the attempted abduction of the princess. The guards had been quad- rupled and bayonets bristled. Cannon were being placed at the entrance to the avenue which led from the square to the castle. The king, himself, had come into the square to direct the operations. His face was noble. ''Here is the man who saved your daugh- ter, sire,'' said one of the guards as Biocletes approached that part of the square where the king was standing. "Come here, lad," said the king cheerily, in any but the manner of the old time kings. Biocletes drew nearer, more and more im- pressed with the true, not only the external, majesty of the king. Here was a man who wished all his people well, who, daily, sought means to accomplish their welfare. Would it not be better for the king and for Amelia could he find a way to abduct the silken cord 100 WHERE THE SUN SHINES that held such a king to the dynasties which, more than good, represented murder and rapine? Ah! but he never could! The cause and effect were: rapine induces rapine. It had been the rapine of kings and barons that was paramount. Now it was becoming the rapine of the people. The only way that he could see to act was to help check the rapine of the present; to aid in turning activities, not into generosity; but into justice. How was that to be done? The kings seemed no longer to have the power to breast the waves to their own personal safety. The only remedy he could think of was to summon all who knew of their Interior Defense from whatever place in life and create a new aristocracy — the aristocracy of constructiveness and worth. He approached the king. *'The Princess Amelia is the apple of my eye." The king shook hands in friendly demo- cratic fashion. ''We must stop these outra- ges. With such men at large, we are all in danger. See, I am making the city bristle with cannon. The slums are to be searched. When found, these men are to be put to the cannon's mouth and split to pieces." ''Already they are that, sire." The bodies of all but one of your daughter's abductors, are disintegrated to dissolution by the rend- ing, within them, of their evil thoughts. These are the most telling cannon the world has. All but one went rnad on the highway. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 101 They fell on one another with fearful mouth- ings and disputes and recriminations. When I left them, already, they were fighting to the death. May I tell you, sire, that cannon are the least of all weapons of defense and of deliverance. Necessary, they may be, now, as objective lessons to the moon men and the earth men, of what power means; but they are really nothing. They but disintegrate the shell. The mind goes on. The silken cord these men are trying to find still holds in- tact the causes with the effects those causes have set up. May I say, sire, there must be new causes?" "That must mean the disintegration of all present systems." The king was very thoughtful. 'T have heard that all talked over and called out in the market places where I have gone disguised, to listen. Are you one of these disrupters of social sys- tems?" 'T am a policeman." Biocletes smiled a quiet amused little smile. ''A strange policeman, truly," laughed the king. "Come, sit with me in my carriage and talk with me while these preparations are going on. Tell me all you can to throw light on these terrible complications of life. Tell me what you see, as policeman ,and what you see as within yourself." "King, these men who have tried to gain possession of the silken cord through the person of your daughter and her will, are 102 WHERE THE SUN SHINES moon men. They see things upside down. I have been one. I know whereof I speak. Can- non will splinter only bodies. The upside down of the mind still goes on. That mind they will continue to project into the minds of others, to the same untoward end. They are tied by the silken cord." The king looked at him penetratingly. ''What do you know of the silken cord?'* "I know!" said Biocletes simply. ''These men think upside down. Others in the world think not at all. They, too, will be splintered by the cannon and the shrapnel; but the silken cord will still hold them to you — the effect to the cause." "Do you mean I am the cause of all this horror I see about me?" "You are one of the effects of the cause, so, one of the causes of the present effects." "What can I do?" "As an individual, little other than to bear constantly in mind and action, that your defense is within you. They who see upside down will soon absorb, and, in their mad- ness, destroy those who see not at all, and increase, by so much, their force. Still, they will be tied to you and you to them, by the same silken cord — the cord of cause and ef- fect." "May not we, too, think upside down? Why should we be at one end of the cord and they at the other?" WHERE THE SUN SHINES 103 *'You are linked to what you and yours have done. You are Hnked to what these others have done and are going to do." ''What can I do?" repeated the king. ''x\t present, leave these cannon here as an objective expression of a force that, from time immemorial has made causes. Then send a far call from The Source. They who recog- nize the banner as their own will come from the mountains and the valleys, the castles and the slums of the earth. They will show themselves apart from the moon men and the earth men. They are the sun men who shall make a new heaven cause for a new earth. These shall stand behind the cannon and their speech shall be greater than the thun- derings of gunpowder. It shall give impetus to its charge and direction to its blow. The power of their forces shall rest, not in rapine nor in killing, nor in communism nor in jeal- ousy nor in lust; but in holding together what you and yours have brought the earth in beauty and prosperity and increasing its value through the willing work of their hands." "We shall die!" ''As earth men, yes. What matters that if we are to be sun men ! I was a moon man. I saw things upside down. Now I am an earth man. I see things as they are. I am on the way to being a sun man who sees things as they are to be, working justly and according to law, to a royal consummation. I will stand 104 WHERE THE SUN SHINES with you. I will answer your call from The Source." ''How shall I send the far cry?" 'The Source will send it. Give orders that all shall listen. The Source will speak to all. They, who, like Samuel, are listening, they shall surely hear." CHAPTER XV The preparations for killing with cannon went on. Watchmen were set in the towers; but Biocletes went back to his position in the market square. There, day after day he watched, attentive to — oh, so much no one else saw, because, having been a moon man, he knew how the moon men saw, and being, now, an earth man, could translate what they saw into what really is. Being still in the hands of the citizens of wits, nourished by the chemicalizing of the lungs, strength- ened and warmed by the advices of the heart, always within the call of The Source, he was, in very truth, becoming a sun man, son of the Real Father who knew him and whom he was beginning to know. He knew what he was set to find in the square of Grab-and-Get-Some. Day after day, month after month he stood there, ful- filling the usual duties of assisting the young, the old, the heavy-laden through the busy thoroughfare, quelling disturbances, keeping the peace to outward apperances, bringing order out of the turmoil about him. With mind never asleep, always alert, he listened to the call of The Source, till men on the force said he was a wizard who could tell what was going to happen before it came to 106 WHERE THE SUN SHINES pass and thus turn many a possible disaster into a public benefit. The citizens of wits and the republic of the heart, added teacher after teacher to the corps that long had been training Biocletes. One day, a new voice spoke to him. This voice taught him lessons different from even the finest and best of the other teachers. Had he not been listening very intently, he would not have heard the voice. Had he not been listening intelligently, he would have thought some of the teachings to be nonsense. Now he almost always listened. The lessons never came in specific directions to be blindly obeyed, and never in commands. There was always some delicate or forceful suggestion, as the case might be, presented to his intelligence for him to reject or to accept. Always, it was left for him to work out the details. This day, the lesson came from this won- derful soul teacher like a sweet song, beauti- ful in the simplicity of its utterance: "Eye hath not seen; ear hath not heard; neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things prepared for them that love HIM." CHAPTER XVI It was just before the electric lights were flashed on in the square, that the granite gray policeman quickly left his post. Since his prompt action had saved the Princess Amelia, he had been allowed to follow his own dictates. He had been facing the setting sun. It had seemed to hang for a moment over the battlements of the castle before it disappeared. He had been watching it, no longer with fear but with love, and a deter- mination that never again would he run from anything. Every night he faced the sun be- cause once he had turned from it in fear. Tonight, it seemed to give him benison. In his soul, he heard the far call of the king as he sent forth his cry to those who knew the Source of their defense, to make ready to respond to the summons of that Source, and, as sun men, to rally together, letting the moon and earth men shred themselves and each other to pieces if they would. The sun had sent long, long rays far into the world before it dropped. One ray, like a finger, seemed longer and more insistent than the rest. Then a sudden gloom fell on the square for the lights were late in being flashed on. Biocletes suddenly left the spot where he stood, turned, after all, and ran i08 WHERE THE SUN SHINES away from the sun, into the shadows that were falling, into dense shrubbery, that the long last finger of the sun, had seemed, the most insistently, to pierce. Into the copse he flew with his old moon- beam speed, to the spot where a cannon stood concealed. With clearly directed action, he tore away something that was strapped across its mouth with a silken cord. Glancing along the barrel, he saw a man in the act of lighting the fuse. It was the yew hedge man. Biocletes looked into his eyes. In a moment, the man mouthed and gib- bered. "I am moon mad!" he leered, and began to tear his body with horrid clawings, as he howled and cried. Biocletes looked down upon the burden in his arms, the silken cord that was attached to it, trailing on to the body of the writhing man. He looked into the face of the Princess Amelia. "I have seen you before,'' she said looking up at him with perfect trust. "Where?" said Biocletes. "In my heart," said Amelia happily. "Why do you follow the yew hedge man?" "He makes me." "How?" "He keeps telling me I owe it to the suf- WHERE THE SUN SHINES 109 fering and the poor to sacrifice myself to their interests until I think the suggestion is from my own mind." ''How did he explain that sacrificing your- self unto a useless death would help them in their poverty and suffering? That may not be unless you give your life to translating to them the difference between The Great Prin- ciple and v^^him, liberty and license." ''He said my death would give into their hands, the silken cord." "O Ladv, where were You — Your Self?" "Asleep." "Why did you not listen to your Source. You know you have one." "I could not hear its voice. The auricles of my mind were clogged with the dictates and opinions of others until all I did with my mind was to let it be put to sleep by others while with the body I followed blindly, men- acing and jargonned vituperations. I could not see that useless dying does not compen- sate for useless living." Biocletes drew forth a little leathern bag that was suspended about his neck, so close to his heart that the pulsations of that sturdy friend acquainted him, always, of its safety. He took from it — Amelia watching, won- dering, the while — the princess' diamond. "I return this to you. It is yours," he said, gravely and tenderly. She fingered the royal jewel carelessly but with surprise. 110 WHERE THE SUN SHINES "It is the diamond I lost while playing with my kitten. You found it. You should have it. Take it." '1 thank you for the graciousness of the thought but I may not. That stone is your responsibility. Gladly, for your sake, would I relieve you of its burden; but each must wear his own, even as, about each one, must his own silken cord be tied. Your respon- sibility is in the form of a brilliant diamond. Mine is in the granite gray uniform of a policeman." ''And I played ball with my kitten with it !" Amelia was appalled. They moved away; but the silken cord had fastened its other end into the shredded body of the man still gibbering out his life, though the body was splintered beyond recall or recognition. As the princess moved, the body was dragged along by her. "Tear off this cord," she screamed. "Al- ways, it has brought me horror upon hor- ror." She showed signs of fainting. Biocletes placed the diamond before her eyes. Just then, the electric lights were flashed on. The light was refracted from the jewel's many facets. It sparkled into her eyes. The light revived her. She shook herself and stood upon her feet. "A greater, even, than the sun, shall re- veal your path to you,'' whispered Biocletes. "For each greater occasion, he sends a WHERE THE SUN SHINES 111 greater leader. The moon, the earth, elec- tricity, the sun have been my mentors. Now, I read in them all, messages from The Source." ''Take away from me the body of this death!'' Unconsciously, she paraphrased a geat teacher, as, loathingly, she turned from the quivering body that writhed as a serpent writhes till the sundown of the day it is slain. "I can not. It is tied to you with the cord that binds cause with effect." "I am no cause ! I have done none of these things which have brought these present ef- fects! I have but followed the directions of my heritage and when I was told these direc- tions were wrong, blindly I followed the mentor who told me so ! I did not order these cannon here!" "You are an effect of that cause." *T will be good," she said pitifully, like a frightened child. "You are good!" He bent with exquisite love and kissed her, embracing her beautiful body, reading the heart of her soul through her lovely eyes. "Will not goodness release me?" She was assured by his caress and, though still afraid, nestled closely to him. "No," he said sadly, "No!" "What will?" "The Source will tell you, not I !" As she moved, once more she felt the pull 112 WHERE THE SUN SHINES of the dreadful thing, as she had not felt it for the moment. "I can not walk with this horror trailing behind me," she screamed. Again Biocletes held the diamond before her. It had grown larger. It flashed its bril- liance into her eyes with the refracted light from many more facets. ''If it is larger, it is also finer." Biocletes whispered. Again Amelia stood erect. "Shall we ride home?" said the policeman to the princess. ' Let us walk," said Amelia. So, together, they walked to the entrance of the castle. CHAPTER XVII The castle guards fled crying before Bio- cletes and his companion as they beheld the dreadful thing that dragged along behind their beautiful princess. The king, hearing the commotion, ran to the outer door. Ap- palled, he looked uncomprehendingly. "What does this mean?" he said hoarsely. 'Tather, it is the result ! The result !" The king turned to Biocletes. "I have brought you, sire," said the police- man, "the daughter whom you love, from the mouth of the cannon you ordered to be placed for her protection. She was bound to it by this silken cord. As I tore her from the mouth the other end of the cord fell on to the body of this man who was lighting the fuse. It will not be separate from him." *'The cord of cause and effect," groaned the king. "What are we to do?" The mangled body of the fallen man had been lying still, so still that all knew him to be dead. It stirred and writhed again. "What do!" it called, "Get out of the moon and earth notion that I am dead. I live! I gibber! I still hold on to the end of the cord." "Transfer yourself to me," said the king. "The princess has done no harm! She has 114 WHERE THE SUN SHINES ever been kind, and obedient to those in au- thority. If she played with a diamond worth a kingdom, she did it unwittingly. Tie your- self to me!" 'The cord of cause and effect makes no skips," gibbered the moon mind, ''I am learn- ing things now that my body is shredded and is what you call, dead, so that I no longer depend on it, but on what has kept it going all this time. You can not transfer her res- ponsibility nor take one jot nor tittle from her. She is the last expression, the gatherings together of what hers and yours have done." The mutilated corpse of the moon man laughed and writhed again. ''And YOU are the result of what you and yours have done!" said Biocletes sternly, as the king groaned and looked down at the bestial face of that, to which, he, through his daughter, was linked. "Get you gone." Biocletes spoke as one having authority. "You, too, are the cause of an effect — the effect of centuries of irrespon- sibility, jealousy, hatred, spleen and greed!" "There shall be no more kings," roared the moon mind. "They are despots! They shall die! and all their brood. The beauty they have built up shall rot on the landscape! If one knows more than another, he shall be crucified! If one works more than another, he shall be flayed! If one eats and drinks more than another, he shall die!" "What are you talking about! You have WHERE THE SUN SHINES 115 seen that one does not die! One only sheds one's coat. You are still tied to the princess and to hers as much as ever she is tied to you ! You are as much responsible for her and their autocracy as they are responsible for you and your degradation. They have never degraded you! You have degraded your- selves ! In the beginning, had not some of your forebears v^eakened, you vv^ould be rul- ing as these hated kings have done. If your face does not belie you, you would be ruling with rapine and murder, instead of, as this king has done, with justice and mercy and wisdom." "Yes we are tied together! I want to get rid of that woman as much as she wants to get rid of me. I want to get away where I can spread my ideas among the millions you can not see." "The cord will not be broken nor the bur- den at the other end released! It will be unseen! That will be the more horrible!" Amelia shivered and ceased speaking. The king groaned. "Give it to me !" he said again and again. But no one answered him. "I will take my responsibility," said Am- elia suddenly, "Come, brother, stand up by me! Be my equal! You are my equal! Stand! We will share equally, our crust of bread." The corpse shrieked with glee. "Now indeed, you are becoming a moon mad man and are seeing things upside down. 116 WHERE THE SUN SHINES I can see that, myself, now. Are we equal? Does saying so, make it so? I, with blood and venom in me, you, with purity and sweetness ! Don't be a fool !" 'The Source! The Source! cried Biocletes. "Princess Amelia, your defense is within you ! O king, summon the sun men who know their Source." * * The three stood still in the soft light of the garden, into which, long ago, Biocletes had been led by the water sprite. The noble mother stood beside the husband, now, and many of the courtiers and the serving men. Others, like vipers, slunk into the dark fast- nesses of the forest beyond, or, like basilisks, circled the garden and tried by breath and look to blast the coming day. The noisome thing that had writhed at the feet of the princess, lay still. "'The Source!" cried the king. ''Come, ye sun men who know your Source!" CHAPTER XVIII They came ! Above the smoke of the cannon, from out the hearts of the poppies of Flanders, from the plains of Verdun, the forests of Thierry, from out the palaces of Petrograd, the mines of Siberia, from out the slums of London, Paris and New York as well as from the tem- ples of all creeds and beliefs ; from the homes of the wealthy and the honored and the hovels of the poor and unstudied alike, mar- shalled the hosts of the sun men. From the beginning, they came. Side by side they stood by the millions upon millions, the children of the Sun, who knew their Source. Then from out the hearts of the poppies of Flanders, from the plains of Verdun, the forests of Thierry, from out the palaces of Petrograd, the mines of Siberia, from out the slums of London, Paris and New York, as well as from out the temples of all creeds and beliefs; from the homes of the wealthy and the honored and the hovels of the poor and unstudied, marshalled other hosts. From the beginning they came. Side by side they stood by the millions — the moon mad men who saw things upside down, the 118 WHERE THE SUN SHINES crazed earth men, who, frenzied with condi- tions, strove with blood for blood and rapine for rapine to straighten out things as they are. CHAPTER XIX All the devices of man's brain, spent their wrath. Cannon boomed; gasses filled the spaces that belong to the life sustaining air. Millions were felled. But nothing injured the cord of cause and effect. Behind the bellowing of crazed men, the shrieking of shrapnel, the crashing of battle, there were the lust of conquest ; the greed for possession; the revenge of jealous souls. Yes, but also back of, and within the bel- lowing of shrapnel and of cannon was the glad cry of those who knew their Source. Not one of these turned from the responsi- bility that cause had placed upon them. Not cne quavered. As body after body fell, each rose again. "A man all light, a seraph man On every corse there stood." With new strong bodies, the tired outer shell cast off; with forces stronger; think- ing and seeing powers clearer, they stood. The light of The Source in their faces was brighter than the noonday. It dazzled the moon mad men, frightened them. Even in their madness they knew that it is the Sun that gives light to the moon and life unto the earth. Here and there, by ones and in groups, moon men and earth men turned, as Biocletes had done, and faced the Sun, that, rising, shone and seemed to stand still. CHAPTER XX When there had come a lull in the con- vict Biocletes looked about him for Amelia. She stood beside him. The diamond, with which she had played ball with the kitten, shone larger and brighter than ever before with millions of facets, each refracting light. He looked behind her. The loathsome shell that had been her responsibility, had disap- peared; but fine spun shafts of light, with her, as a centre, radiated from her. The ends could not be seen, but visioned along their way, results born of righteous causes. The sun men, who knew their Source, stood together, in soul, upon the mountain tops though they were seen in all the marts of trade and in the governmental halls. Fol- lowing the perfect cause, The Source, they commanded all the valleys of the moon and of the earth, seeing life come forth from the poppies of Flanders, from the forests of Thierry, from the slums and the palaces of the earth. Uncertainly moving, like fading moon- beams ; squirming like worms, lay or moved or fought or raged the moon men and the men of earth. Phalanxed together, responsibility shining like a glory on their brows; with beauty, util- WHERE THE SUN SHINES 121 ity and joyous response to the power within, stood Biocletes, the Princess Amelia, and all who had gathered from the farthermost parts of the world, at the summons of the Source, clothed upon with the Sun. Even as these stood there, the contending, the raging, the squirming, as of earth worms; the inconsequential wanderings, as of moonbeams, felt the effects of the Great Light, and turned their backs, and slunk or ran away. Thus, clothed upon with Light, Amelia and Biocletes faced the Sun and his cohorts. "Follow me, my children of Light," he called to them, "1 have led you, daily, more closely to yourselves. For, the Kingdom is within you." THE END LIBHAHY OF CONGRESS i iililliililiiillillllli 018 477 547 5