KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS.
IV.—THE FINAL TRIAL.
"Ten Knights, as before, were put by the stone to guard it until the new trial," continued the Story-teller. "The Archbishop was not going, through lack of care, to have it said that anything had been done to the stone meanwhile to make it harder for the contestants to pull forth the sword, or easier for Arthur to perform that feat."
"I'll bet those Knights practised on it, though," said Jack. "I would have."
"It wouldn't have done any good, I imagine," said his father. "There was something mysterious about it all, and whatever that was it worked in favor of Arthur and against all the others."
"I don't believe all ten of 'em together could have pulled it out," Mollie put in. "It was one of those trick swords, like men swallow at circuses, I guess, and I'm certain that Mr. Merlin put it there, and showed Arthur how the trick worked. It had a spring in it, which he could touch with his thumb to make it come out, maybe."
"Maybe so," said her father, "although I doubt it. There were lots of queer things happening in those days that we of to-day would hardly believe if we saw them with our own eyes—things that sound in the telling of them quite like fairy stories."
"Like Merlin being able to tell what was going to happen next week?" suggested Jack.
"Exactly," said the Story-teller. "If anybody claimed to be able to do that now, we'd laugh at him."
"He'd be a great man for a newspaper," said Jack. "If a newspaper had a man like that on it, it could tell the people in advance that such and such an accident was going to happen at such and such a time on such and such a railroad, and then the people wouldn't go on that road at that time, and their lives would be saved."