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The crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall.
Yes! even at that time when beauty was being victoriously born again, the mad fear of her raged with such panic in certain minds that, when Savonarola lit his great bonfire so subtle a servant of beauty as Botticelli, fallen into a sort of religious dotage, cast his own paintings into the flames to the lugubrious rejoicings of the sanctimonious Piagnoni as Savonarola's followers were called; predecessors of those still gloomier zealots who, two centuries later, were to turn England into a sort of whitewashed prison, with crop-headed psalm-singing religious maniacs for gaolers.
'If you will take my counsel, you will play with someone else. 'No; I will play with the Gruagach, persisted the king. 'Well, if you must, you must, I suppose, answered the wizard; 'but if you win that game, ask as a prize the ugly crop-headed girl that stands behind the door. 'I will, said the king.
It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane, going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go by without one glance.
One by one they came; tall and short, dark and fair, plump and thin, and each said, 'I am she whom you want. You will be foolish indeed if you do not take me. But he took none of them, neither short nor tall, dark nor fair, plump nor thin, till at the last the crop-headed girl came out. 'This is mine, said the king, though she was so ugly that most men would have turned from her.
'Choose your prize, said the king, when the game was ended, 'but do not be too hard on me, or ask what I cannot give. 'The prize I choose, answered the Gruagach, 'is that the crop-headed creature should take thy head and thy neck, if thou dost not get for me the Sword of Light that hangs in the house of the king of the oak windows.
I hope I have not his death to my account, and for certain no corpse lay in the road when I passed along it a few hours later. 'Right! I called sturdily, deepening my voice to imitate that of my victim as nearly as I could match it 'Crop-headed Puritans, tow-row-row! Still shouting the chorus, I mastered the reluctant horse, swung myself into saddle, and edged up towards my comrades. 'Carey!
Then, as I stared at my host and he at me, the noise became articulate as drunken singing 'Tow, row, row! Tow, row, row! . . . Crop-headed Puritans, tow, row, row. . . . Boot and saddle, and tow, row, row! and, nearing so, broke into chorus, 'Waller and Hazelrigg, Stapleton, Scroop Way! Make way for His Majesty's troop!
'Choose your prize, said the king, when the game was ended, 'but do not be too hard on me, or ask what I cannot give. 'The prize I choose, answered the Gruagach, 'is that the crop-headed creature should take thy head and thy neck, if thou dost not get for me the Sword of Light that hangs in the house of the king of the oak windows.
"Honest Russian thought" had his right hand raised and in it held a glass as though he wanted to propose a toast. In a line With him on each side tripped a crop-headed nihilist girl; while vis-a-vis danced another elderly gentleman in a dress-coat with a heavy cudgel in his hand.
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