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      A flower-girl, a Saxon singer, slaves, trades-folk, soldiers of the military police; guards and overseers of the mines, and miners; Roman nobles and patrician women; Saxon men-at-arms, and men of the outland nations

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       THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

       BOOK I

      link to original decorative page

      NICANOR:

       TELLER OF TALES

      Book I

       THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

      I

      Nicanor the story-teller was the son of Rathumus the wood-cutter, who was the son of Razis the worker in bronze, who was the son of Melchior the story-teller. So that Nicanor came honestly by his gift, and would even believe that his great-grandsire had handed it down to him by special act of bequest.

      Now Rathumus the wood-cutter, tall and gaunt and fierce-eyed, coming home with his fagots on his shoulder in the gloam of the evening, when the fireflies twinkled low among the marshes, saw Nicanor on the side of the hill against the sky, sitting with hands clasped about his knees, crooning to the stars. Rathumus bowed his head and entered his house, and to Susanna, his wife, he said:

      "The gift of our father Melchior hath fallen upon the child. I have seen it coming this long, long while. Now he singeth to the stars. When they have heard him and have taught him, he will go and sing to men. He is our child no longer, wife. His life hath claimed him."

      Susanna, the mother, said:

      "He will be a man among men. He will be a great man among great men. It may be that the Lord Governor will send for him. But—oh, my boy—my boy!"

      Rathumus answered gravely:

      "Pray the holy gods he will not misuse his power!"

      Presently Nicanor came in, with the spell not yet shaken off him, wanting his supper. A smaller image of his father he was, lean and shock-headed, with gray steady eyes changing from the stillness of childhood's innocence to the depth and wonder of dawning knowledge.

      Rathumus said:

      "What hast been doing, boy?"

      Nicanor stretched like one arousing from sleep.

      "I know not," he answered. "Perhaps I slept out under the moon last night and she hath turned my head.—Father, I have been thinking. When I am become a man I shall do great things. Even you have told me that the destiny of a man's life lieth between his hands."

      "Son," Rathumus said quickly, "remember also that men's hands lie between the hands of the gods, even as a slave's between the hands of his over-lord. Keep it in mind, child, that thou art very young, that thy first strength hath not yet come upon thee; and strive not to teach to others what thou hast not learned thyself. For that way lies mockery and the scorn of men."

      "Now I do not understand where thy words would lead," Nicanor said; and his gray eyes, in the wavering torchlight, were doubtful. "I teach no one. Perhaps—it was not I who slept under the moon, after all."

      For he was young, and though his parents saw what had come upon him, he himself saw not.

      So Nicanor had his supper, of black bean-porridge, taking no thought of those parents' loving thought for him; and later climbed the ladder to the loft where he slept. After a while, Susanna, yearning over her boy in this, the first dim hour of his awakening—yearning all the more since she saw that he was following blindly the workings of his own appointed fate, without any sense or knowledge of it himself—went up the ladder also and sat beside him, thinking him asleep. But Nicanor put out a hand and slid it into hers, and shuffled in his straw until he was

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