A CONNECTICUT YANKEE
IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
by
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel L. Clemens)
Part 5.
CONTENTS:
| CHAPTER XXIII. | RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN |
| CHAPTER XXIV. | A RIVAL MAGICIAN |
| CHAPTER XXV. | A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION |
| CHAPTER XXVI. | THE FIRST NEWSPAPER |
CHAPTER XXIII
RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN
Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlinwas still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and mutteringgibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, forof course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.Finally I said:
"How does the thing promise by this time, partner?"
"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulestenchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the landsof the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish."
He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and musthave made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the windwas their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense andbillowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contortedhis body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinaryway. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, andabout exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monksand nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple ofacres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and allin a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously forresults. Merlin said:
"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds thesewaters, this which I have but just essayed had done it. It hasfailed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared isa truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the mostpotent spirit known to