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Updated: June 3, 2025


Without much previous knowledge of the road he was to take, Shamus walked and begged his way along the coast to the town where he might hope to embark for England. Here the captain of a merchantman agreed to let him work his passage to Bristol, whence he again walked and begged into London.

Being a shrewd lad, he saw early that men seldom made a fortune and won the good things of the world through toil and the sweat of their brows. Not at all! And Shamus loved an easy life only less than he loved to play upon the harp and sing songs of the old days, the wars of kings, and the love of beautiful women.

Gallant, kindly hearted Shamus, you who fought once for half an hour to save a frog from being skinned; they tell me you are now an Income Tax assessor; a man, it is reported, with power of disbelief unusual among even Inland Revenue circles; of little faith, lacking in the charity that thinketh no evil. May Providence direct you to other districts than to mine.

"Well, the Black Officer got better again, and went about among his friends; and once he was driving home from a dinner-party, and Shamus was with him. It was just the last night of the hundred. And on the road they met a man, and Shamus knew him for it was him they had seen by the fire on the march, as I told you at the beginning.

"I do not value the goblet a whit but I must, of course, lay upon you three tasks which you must perform before it is yours." "What are they?" Shamus asked. "First," said the King, "get me the magic dog that belongs to the King of the Gnomes and the sound of whose silver bell drives away all thought of sorrow." "Good," said Shamus, and away he went to seek the King of the Gnomes.

All this Shamus knew, though only from report, inasmuch as his uncle had exiled himself while he was yet a child, and without previously having become known to the eyes of the nephew he had so much injured.

"An' so did my curse-o'-God's uncle," thought Shamus, his heart's blood beginning to boil, though, with a great effort, he kept himself seemingly cool. "And this is the man fornent me, if he answers another word I 'll ax him.

"Well, what they said, Shamus could not hear, and presently they walked away, and the Black Officer came back alone. "He took them to England, but never to London, and they never saw the King. He took them to Portsmouth, and they were embarked for India, where we were fighting the French.

Also, he stayed to supper with the King and afterwards sang and played, the King every now and then breaking in with a word to say how it should be done. "You do not badly for a beginner," said he when Shamus had finished. Shamus could have slain him where he stood for those ungracious words, but he bided his time, pretending to be well-pleased.

Shamus rallied his prudence. "An', sure, sorrow a thing is the matter wid me, only the dhrop, I believe, made me do it, as it ever and always does, good luck to it for the same. Only it's the laste bit in the world quare to me how you'd have the dhrame about your own country, that you didn't see for so many years, sir for twenty long years, I think you said, sir?"

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