The Stool of Fortune

Twilight Land

by Howard Pyle

Once upon a time there came a soldier marching along the road,
kicking up a little cloud of dust at each step--as strapping and
merry and bright-eyed a fellow as you would wish to see in a summer
day. Tramp! tramp! tramp! he marched, whistling as he jogged along,
though he carried a heavy musket over his shoulder and though the sun
shone hot and strong and there was never a tree in sight to give him
a bit of shelter.

At last he came in sight of the King's Town and to a great field
of stocks and stones, and there sat a little old man as withered and
brown as a dead leaf, and clad all in scarlet from head to foot.

"Ho! soldier," said he, "are you a good shot?"

"Aye," said the soldier, "that is my trade."

"Would you like to earn a dollar by shooting off your musket for
me?"

"Aye," said the soldier, "that is my trade also."

"Very well, then," said the little man in red, "here is a silver
button to drop into your gun instead of a bullet. Wait you here, and
about sunset there will come a great black bird flying. In one claw
it carries a feather cap and in the other a round stone. Shoot me the
silver button at that bird, and if your aim is good it will drop the
feather cap and the pebble. Bring them to me to the great town-gate
and I will pay you a dollar for your trouble."

"Very well," said the soldier, "shooting my gun is a job that
fits me like an old coat." So, down he sat and the old man went his
way.

Well, there he sat and sat and sat and sat until the sun touched
the rim of the ground, and then, just as the old man said, there came
flying a great black bird as silent as night. The soldier did not
tarry to look or to think. As the bird flew by up came the gun to his
shoulder, squint went his eye along the barrel--Puff! bang!--

I vow and declare that if the shot he fired had cracked the sky
he could not have been more frightened. The great black bird gave a
yell so terrible that it curdled the very blood in his veins and made
his hair stand upon end. Away it flew like a flash--a bird no longer,
but a great, black demon, smoking and smelling most horribly of
brimstone, and when the soldier gathered his wits, there lay the
feather cap and a little, round, black stone upon the ground.

"Well," said the soldier, "it is little wonder that the old man
had no liking to shoot at such game as that." And thereupon he popped
the feather cap into one pocket and the round stone into another, and
shouldering his musket marched away until he reached the town-gate,
and there was the old man waiting for him.

"Did you shoot the bird?" said he.

"I did," said the soldier.

"And did you get the cap and the round stone?"

"I did."

"Then here is your dollar."

"Wait a bit," said the soldier, "I shot greater game that time
than I bargained for, and so it's ten dollars and not one you shall
pay me before you lay finger upon the feather cap and the little
stone."

"Very well," said the old man, "here are ten dollars."

"Ho! ho!" thought the soldier, "is that the way the wind
blows?"--"Did I say ten dollars?" said he; " twas a hundred dollars I
meant."

At that the old man frowned until his eyes shone green. "Very
well," said he, "if it is a hundred dollars you want, you will have
to come home with me, for I have not so much with me. Thereupon he
entered the town with the soldier at his heels.

Up one street he went and down another, until at last he came to
a great, black, ancient ramshackle house; and that was where he
lived. In he walked without so much as a rap at the door, and so led
the way to a great room with furnaces and books and bottles and jars
and dust and cobwebs, and three grinning skulls upon the mantelpiece,
each with a candle stuck atop of it, and there he left the soldier
while he went to get the hundred dollars.

The soldier sat him down upon a three-legged stool in the corner
and began staring about him; and he liked the looks of the place as
little as any he had seen in all of his life, for it smelled musty
and dusty, it did: the three skulls grinned at him, and he began to
think that the little old man was no better than he should be. "I
wish," says he, at last, "that instead of being here I might be well
out of my scrape and in a safe place."

Now the little old man in scarlet was a great magician, and
there was little or nothing in that house that had not some magic
about it, and of all things the three-legged stool had been conjured
the most.

"I wish that instead of being here I might be well out of my
scrape, and in a safe place." That was what the soldier said; and
hardly had the words left his lips when--whisk! whir!--away flew the
stool through the window, so suddenly that the soldier had only just
time enough to gripe it tight by the legs to save himself from
falling. Whir! whiz!--away it flew like a bullet. Up and up it
went--so high in the air that the earth below looked like a black
blanket spread out in the night; and then down it came again, with
the soldier still griping tight to the legs, until at last it settled
as light as a feather upon a balcony of the king's palace; and when
the soldier caught his wind again he found himself without a hat, and
with hardly any wits in his head.

There he sat upon the stool for a long time without daring to
move, for he did not know what might happen to him next. There he sat
and sat, and by-and-by his ears got cold in the night air, and then
he noticed for the first time that he had lost his head gear, and
bethought himself of the feather cap in his pocket. So out he drew it
and clapped it upon his head, and then--lo and behold!--he found he
had become as invisible as thin air--not a shred or a hair of him
could be seen. "Well!" said he, "here is another wonder, but I am
safe now at any rate." And up he got to find some place not so cool
as where he sat.

He stepped in at an open window, and there he found himself in a
beautiful room, hung with cloth of silver and blue, and with chairs
and tables of white and gold; dozens and scores of waxlights shone
like so many stars, and lit every crack and cranny as bright as day,
and there at one end of the room upon a couch, with her eyelids
closed and fast asleep, lay the prettiest princess that ever the sun
shone upon. The soldier stood and looked and looked at her, and
looked and looked at her, until his heart melted within him like soft
butter, and then he kissed her.

"Who is that?" said the princess, starting up, wide-awake, but
not a soul could she see, because the soldier had the feather cap
upon his head.

"It is I," said he, "and I am King of the Wind, and ten times
greater than the greatest of kings here below. One day I saw you
walking in your garden and fell in love with you, and now I have come
to ask you if you will marry me and be my wife?"

"But how can I marry you?" said the princess, "without seeing
you?"

"You shall see me," said the soldier, "all in good time. Three
days from now I will come again, and will show myself to you, but
just now it cannot be. But if I come, will you marry me?"

"Yes I will," said the princess, "for I like the way you
talk--that I do!"

Thereupon the soldier kissed her and said good-bye, and then
stepped out of the window as he had stepped in. He sat him down upon
his three-legged stool. "I wish," said he, "to be carried to such and
such a tavern." For he had been in that town before, and knew the
places where good living was to be had.

Whir! whiz! away flew the stool as high and higher than it had
flown before, and then down it came again, and down and down until it
lit as light as a feather in the street before the tavern door. The
soldier tucked his feather cap in his pocket, and the three-legged
stool under his arm, and in he went and ordered a pot of beer and
some white bread and cheese.

Meantime, at the king's palace was such a gossiping and such a
hubbub as had not been heard there for many a day; for the pretty
princess was not slow in telling how the invisible King of the Wind
had come and asked her to marry him; and some said it was true and
some said it was not true, and everybody wondered and talked, and
told their own notions of the matter. But all agreed that three days
would show whether what had been told was true or no.

As for the soldier, he knew no more how to do what he had
promised to do than my grandmother's cat; for where was he to get
clothes fine enough for the King of the Wind to wear? So there he sat
on his three-legged stool thinking and thinking, and if he had known
all that I know he would not have given two turns of his wit upon it.
"I wish," says he, at last--"I wish that this stool could help me now
as well as it can carry me through the sky. I wish," says he, "that I
had a suit of clothes such as the King of the Wind might really
wear."

The wonders of the three-legged stool were wonders indeed!

Hardly had the words left the soldier's lips when down came
something tumbling about his ears from up in the air; and what should
it be but just such a suit of clothes as he had in his mind--all
crusted over with gold and silver and jewels.

"Well," says the soldier, as soon as he had got over his wonder
again, "I would rather sit upon this stool than any I ever saw." And
so would I, if I had been in his place, and had a few minutes to
think of all that I wanted.

So he found out the trick of the stool, and after that wishing
and having were easy enough, and by the time the three days were
ended the real King of the Wind himself could not have cut a finer
figure. Then down sat the soldier upon his stool, and wished himself
at the king's palace. Away he flew through the air, and by-and-by
there he was, just where he had been before. He put his feather cap
upon his head, and stepped in through the window, and there he found
the princess with her father, the king, and her mother, the queen,
and all the great lords and nobles waiting for his coming; but never
a stitch nor a hair did they see of him until he stood in the very
midst of them all. Then he whipped the feather cap off of his head,
and there he was, shining with silver and gold and glistening with
jewels--such a sight as man's eyes never saw before.

"Take her," said the king, "she is yours." And the soldier
looked so handsome in his fine clothes that the princess was as glad
to hear those words as any she had ever listened to in all of her
life.

"You shall," said the king, "be married to-morrow."

"Very well," said the soldier. "Only give me a plot of ground to
build a palace upon that shall be fit for the wife of the King of the
Wind to live in."

"You shall have it," said the king," and it shall be the great
parade ground back of the palace, which is so wide and long that all
my army can march round and round in it without getting into its own
way; and that ought to be big enough."

"Yes," said the soldier, "it is." Thereupon he put on his
feather cap and disappeared from the sight of all as quickly as one
might snuff out a candle.

He mounted his three-legged stool and away he flew through the
air until he had come again to the tavern where he was lodging. There
he sat him down and began to churn his thoughts, and the butter he
made was worth the having, I can tell you. He wished for a grand
palace of white marble, and then he wished for all sorts of things to
fill it--the finest that could be had. Then he wished for servants in
clothes of gold and silver, and then he wished for fine horses and
gilded coaches. Then he wished for gardens and orchards and lawns and
flower-plats and fountains, and all kinds and sorts of things, until
the sweat ran down his face from hard thinking and wishing. And as he
thought and wished, all the things he thought and wished for grew up
like soap-bubbles from nothing at all.

Then, when day began to break, he wished himself with his fine
clothes to be in the palace that his own wits had made, and away he
flew through the air until he had come there safe and sound.

But when the sun rose and shone down upon the beautiful palace
and all the gardens and orchards around it, the king and queen and
all the court stood dumb with wonder at the sight. Then, as they
stood staring, the gates opened and out came the soldier riding in
his gilded coach with his servants in silver and gold marching beside
him, and such a sight the daylight never looked upon before that
day.

Well, the princess and the soldier were married, and if no
couple had ever been happy in the world before, they were then.
Nothing was heard but feasting and merrymaking, and at night all the
sky was lit with fireworks. Such a wedding had never been before, and
all the world was glad that it had happened.

That is, all the world but one; that one was the old man dressed
in scarlet that the soldier had met when he first came to town. While
all the rest were in the hubbub of rejoicing, he put on his
thinking-cap, and by-and-by began to see pretty well how things lay,
and that, as they say in our town, there was a fly in the milk-jug.
"Ho, ho!" thought he, "so the soldier has found out all about the
three-legged stool, has he? Well, I will just put a spoke into his
wheel for him." And so he began to watch for his chance to do the
soldier an ill turn.

Now, a week or two after the wedding, and after all the gay
doings had ended, a grand hunt was declared, and the king and his new
son-in-law and all the court went to it. That was just such a chance
as the old magician had been waiting for; so the night before the
hunting-party returned he climbed the walls of the garden, and so
came to the wonderful palace that the soldier had built out of
nothing at all, and there stood three men keeping guard so that no
one might enter.

But little that troubled the magician. He began to mutter spells
and strange words, and all of a sudden he was gone, and in his place
was a great black ant, for he had changed himself into an ant. In he
ran through a crack of the door (and mischief has got into many a
man's house through a smaller hole for the matter of that). In and
out ran the ant through one room and another, and up and down and
here and there, until at last in a far-away part of the magic palace
he found the three-legged stool, and if I had been in the soldier's
place I would have chopped it up into kindling-wood after I had
gotten all that I wanted. But there it was, and in an instant the
magician resumed his own shape. Down he sat him upon the stool. "I
wish," said he, "that this palace and the princess and all who are
within it, together with its orchards and its lawns and its gardens
and everything, may be removed to such and such a country, upon the
other side of the earth."

And as the stool had obeyed the soldier, so everything was done
now just as the magician said.

The next morning back came the hunting-party, and as they rode
over the hill--lo and behold!--there lay stretched out the great
parade ground in which the king's armies used to march around and
around, and the land was as bare as the palm of my hand. Not a stick
or a stone of the palace was left; not a leaf or a blade of the
orchards or gardens was to be seen.

The soldier sat as dumb as a fish, and the king stared with eyes
and mouth wide open. "Where is the palace, and where is my daughter?"
said he, at last, finding words and wit.

"I do not know," said the soldier.

The king's face grew as black as thunder. "You do not know?" he
said, "then you must find out. Seize the traitor!" he cried.

But that was easier said than done, for, quick as a wink, as
they came to lay hold of him, the soldier whisked the feather cap
from his pocket and clapped it upon his head, and then they might as
well have hoped to find the south wind in winter as to find him.

But though he got safe away from that trouble he was deep enough
in the dumps, you may be sure of that. Away he went, out into the
wide world, leaving that town behind him. Away he went, until
by-and-by he came to a great forest, and for three days he travelled
on and on--he knew not whither. On the third night, as he sat beside
a fire which he had built to keep him warm, he suddenly bethought
himself of the little round stone which had dropped from the bird's
claw, and which he still had in his pocket. "Why should it not also
help me," said he, "for there must be some wonder about it." So he
brought it out, and sat looking at it and looking at it, but he could
make nothing of it for the life of him. Nevertheless, it might have
some wishing power about it, like the magic stool. "I wish," said the
soldier, "that I might get out of this scrape." That is what we have
all wished many and many a time in a like case; but just now it did
the soldier no more good to wish than it does good for the rest of
us. "Bah!" said he, "it is nothing but a black stone after all." And
then he threw it into the fire.

Puff! Bang! Away flew the embers upon every side, and back
tumbled the soldier, and there in the middle of the flame stood just
such a grim, black being as he had one time shot at with the silver
button.

As for the poor soldier, he just lay flat on his back and stared
with eyes like saucers, for he thought that his end had come for
sure.

"What are my lord's commands?" said the being, in a voice that
shook the marrow of the soldier's bones.

"Who are you?" said the soldier.

"I am the spirit of the stone," said the being. "You have heated
it in the flame, and I am here. Whatever you command I must obey."

"Say you so?" cried the soldier, scrambling to his feet. "Very
well, then, just carry me to where I may find my wife and my palace
again."

Without a word the spirit of the stone snatched the soldier up,
and flew away with him swifter than the wind. Over forest, over
field, over mountain and over valley he flew, until at last, just at
the crack of day, he set him down in front of his own palace gate in
the far country where the magician had transported it.

After that the soldier knew his way quickly enough. He clapped
his feather cap upon his head and into the palace he went, and from
one room to another, until at last he came to where the princess sat
weeping and wailing, with her pretty eyes red from long crying.

Then the soldier took off his cap again, and you may guess what
sounds of rejoicing followed. They sat down beside one another, and
after the soldier had eaten, the princess told him all that had
happened to her; how the magician had found the stool, and how he had
transported the palace to this far-away land; how he came every day
and begged her to marry him--which she would rather die than do.

To all this the soldier listened, and when she had ended her
story he bade her to dry her tears, for, after all, the jug was only
cracked, and not past mending. Then he told her that when the
sorcerer came again that day she should say so and so and so and so,
and that he would be by to help her with his feather cap upon his
head.

After that they sat talking together as happy as two
turtle-doves, until the magician's foot was heard on the stairs. And
then the soldier clapped his feather cap upon his head just as the
door opened.

"Snuff, snuff!" said the magician, sniffing the air, "here is a
smell of Christian blood."

"Yes," said the princess, "that is so; there came a peddlar
to-day, but after all he did not stay long."

"He'd better not come again," said the magician, "or it will be
the worse for him. But tell me, will you marry me?"

"No," said the princess, "I shall not marry you until you can
prove yourself to be a greater man than my husband."

"Pooh!" said the magician, "that will be easy enough to prove;
tell me how you would have me do so and I will do it."

"Very well," said the princess, "then let me see you change
yourself into a lion. If you can do that I may perhaps believe you to
be as great as my husband."

"It shall," said the magician, "be as you say. He began to
mutter spells and strange words, and then all of a sudden he was
gone, and in his place there stood a lion with bristling mane and
flaming eyes--a sight fit of itself to kill a body with terror.

"That will do!" cried the princess, quaking and trembling at the
sight, and thereupon the magician took his own shape again.

"Now," said he, "do you believe that I am as great as the poor
soldier?"

"Not yet," said the princess; "I have seen how big you can make
yourself, now I wish to see how little you can become. Let me see you
change yourself into a mouse."

"So be it," said the magician, and began again to mutter his
spells. Then all of a sudden he was gone just as he was gone before,
and in his place was a little mouse sitting up and looking at the
princess with a pair of eyes like glass beads.

But he did not sit there long. This was what the soldier had
planned for, and all the while he had been standing by with his
feather hat upon his head. Up he raised his foot, and down he set it
upon the mouse.

Crunch!--that was an end of the magician.

After that all was clear sailing; the soldier hunted up the
three-legged stool and down he sat upon it, and by dint of no more
than just a little wishing, back flew palace and garden and all
through the air again to the place whence it came.

I do not know whether the old king ever believed again that his
son-in-law was the King of the Wind; anyhow, all was peace and
friendliness thereafter, for when a body can sit upon a three-legged
stool and wish to such good purpose as the soldier wished, a body is
just as good as a king, and a good deal better, to my mind.

The Soldier who cheated the Devil looked into his pipe; it was
nearly out. He puffed and puffed and the coal glowed brighter, and
fresh clouds of smoke rolled up into the air. Little Brown Betty came
and refilled, from a crock of brown foaming ale, the mug which he had
emptied. The Soldier who had cheated the Devil looked up at her and
winked one eye.

"Now," said St. George, "it is the turn of yonder old man," and
he pointed, as he spoke, with the stem of his pipe towards old
Bidpai, who sat with closed eyes meditating inside of himself.

The old man opened his eyes, the whites of which were as yellow
as saffron, and wrinkled his face into innumerable cracks and lines.
Then he closed his eyes again; then he opened them again; then he
cleared his throat and began: "There was once upon a time a man whom
other men called Aben Hassen the Wise--"

"One moment," said Ali Baba; "will you not tell us what the
story is about?"

Old Bidpai looked at him and stroked his long white beard. "It
is," said he, "about--