went on again directly, conversing and relating and commenting, as if no one was there of other kind or of higher rank than themselves. So the king heard a good many stories. At some of them he laughed, and at some of them he cried. But if the stories that the Shadows told were printed, they would make a book that no publisher could produce fast enough to satisfy the buyers. I will record some of the things that the king heard, for he told them to me soon after. In fact, I was for some time his private secretary.
“I made him confess before a week was over,” said a gloomy old Shadow.
“But what was the good of that?” rejoined a pert young one. “That could not undo what was done.”
“Yes, it could.”
“What! bring the dead to life?”
“No; but comfort the murderer. I could not bear to see the pitiable misery he was in. He was far happier with the rope round his neck, than he was with the purse in his pocket. I saved him from killing himself too.”
“How did you make him confess?”
“Only by wallowing on the wall a little.”
“How could that make him tell?”
“ He knows.”
The Shadow was silent; and the king turned to another, who was preparing to speak.
“I made a fashionable mother repent.”