[XIII]
TORON CONTINUES HIS STORY
But still the young prince did not reply.
Myles Cabot glanced around the little group and saw that they all were grinning broadly. They had heard the story before.
Cabot turned back to Toron again and urged, “Go on. You have just said that, as you dashed through the row of ghostly figures, some one lassoed you around the neck. What happened then?”
“What happened then?” replied the prince tantalizingly. “The next thing that I knew the red light of morning was flooding the eastern sky. I was lying naked on the ground in a garden, while just above me stretched a clothesline with a row of Cupian togas fluttering in the breeze. These were the ghostly row of sentinels of the night before, and the rope which had cut off my wind so summarily had not been a lasso at all, but merely the clothesline itself.”
Myles looked very uncomfortable and sheepish as a general laugh went up at his expense. Then he declared: “Toron, you are a first class story-teller, and you certainly had me fooled. Did it really happen?”
“Honestly,” the boy replied.
And Poblath added: “It couldn’t have been better if he had made it up.”
Then Toron went on with the narrative of his adventures: “The clothesline was Builder-sent in my then naked condition. Hastily grabbing one of the togas from off the rope, I donned it and hurried out of the garden, just as the morning life began to stir in the little village. Before folks had fully awakened for the day’s round of pleasures and work, I had gained the fields and the woods beyond, and there I slept throughout the day.