A Truth Seeker

He was a soeker after truth, and as he sbivered up the snowy stairway in ; , which the wind was blowing blindly j here was a looU of worried anxiety iu I , his faca He knocked at the door of the ; lite writiir,' medium, and after J 4Dg for a moment in an auteroom was . , nsTiercr! into the "presence. " j , ■ I desire, ' s:li1 tDÜ ïl(3iiker fter', truth. "to speafc with Philip Augustus , of Franoe, or Frederick Barbarossa of Oermany, or Richard of the Lion Heart. t They are iiow in the spirit world aud i have been for TOO years, more or less. I ] can 't jnst locall their nuinbers. " ( The wedinm went through the nsnal ;, form req uued by the spirits in snch , cases and said; , I tínd that the gentlemen you want ! sre all talking now, but tbere is a vonng man at Riobard's instrument whosays be would like to comraunicate j ( with yon. " ; "All right, " said the seeker alter ( trnth, "maybe ba will do. There is a . iïttle matter l want explained, and he ' an do it as well as auybody Wbat I ; want to kuow is how on earth the peo-" ple got aJong iu the days of sheet iron j urnior wben the snow aud the cold winds came. " Tbeu ibero was a suratebing on the late, and the medium b-.inded itover to i the truth seeker. Itread: "(ioodl That's just what 1 want to teil yon My name is Ichabod Potts. 1 lived on earth in the twelfth century i and was with Kiobard the Lion Hearted and Frederick Barbarossa and Philip i gnstus in the erusaiie that lasted ñora 118 to 1192, and I'ui the man you j ■want to see Tbere's a lot abont that ■ i-rnsade tbai history has botched up. In ihe first place, we called Richard Our j Dick, and Frederick, Reddy, and Philip j 0D vve called him several ! mentary thiugs. Do yon want the story? Let me kuow at once how rnany words. " "Let her go, " said the truth seeker as }ie looked over the slate and arranged witb the medium for the use of the line all day "Well," began the slate, "as I'said, 1 am Ichauod Fotta, yeotnan. I left Londou in I 1 88, or such a matter, to go to .lerusalem with Our Dick. The boys always oalled hini that just before a war Several thousand of us pulled out aud marched across oountry in the fall aud got down into southern France for ;hewwter,and by good luck got through ihat winter without misfortune. Then we fiddled around France aud Italyand ermany, drumraingup a crowd, when tbe fall of 1189 fouud us over in Austria, with a lot of Dagos. Dick got gay one day and ordered a lot of the Eyetalian armor - a job lot, with automatio olasps and a lot of dúplex levers and t-wivels that be wa3 rnigbty proud of. He kept us drilling iu those old base burnars all fall, and Reddy - him they oall Frederick Barbarossa in the book - iooked on mighty jealous, for his men ouly had one dog chain armor that didn't clank nor glitter, nor uothing. lts only advantage was it was comfortable. Well, to make a long story of snagazine length, the winter of 1189 íame on - yon reinember of course the wild winter - but of course you don't. Well, it was toarfully cold - rained all December and took the stove polish off them armors aud rustod 'ern up somo. And then on the öth of January there was the worst, blizzard on the 25 years' record of tbe University of Vienua. The uinges of tbem automática were wet and rusty, and, by Johnnie, when we t:ot up the moruing of the üth, we had io thaw em out to get 'em on. It kept KOtting colder and colder, and at 10 o'clock Thursday morning it began to now Say, but it did blow and snow! Dick, he had some tin ear muffs and didn't care a cent for tbe cold, so bo orilered the boys out for dress parade. "It was awful. The snow drifted into the crevioes of their breastplates and leg guards and iron shoes till every man was a walkiug snow blockade. But Dick wanted to make tbe Dutch dog chain armor look sick, wanted to show Reddy that his job lot of armor was sood for all kinds of wéather, sort of general purpose armor, and be put us Tbrough the Knights Templars' drill, and the fire drill, and the K. of P., and the Hicilian circle, and the 'cheat ar swing, ' and the 'ring around the rosy, ' and all the rest of it But 1 saw old Reddy, who was looking ou, wiuk the other eye, and one of his bead men rode off to our camp 1 say 1 uotioed this at the time, but 1 didn't think of it until after. "Well, the rime f rost was a-gatheiing on their broastplatps and arm covers and sheet iron helmets and hauherks of our'n an inch deep, and tbe thermometer was getting down doeper and deeper in the tube. When we broke ranks and went back, you could sce the steam "ome up from under them irou breastplates and through the bars in our visors like the steam comes out of the "Wnhole of a sewer on a cold morning. .5 was awful. The snow had drifted ihrough the slashes in our boots, and we had to empty 'em out before the track was open. " The slate was read and erased, and the pencil began again: "I was puiling throngh an extra deep fut goiug back to camp when I epiea a lady who had on one of the new high hats they were wearing that winter. Old Dick, he was goiug on ahead of iae, and I saw him braoing up to make a killing Ga feit hurriedly all over his arnior to soo that it waan't ■wrinkled nor nnbnckle.d nny plaoe - ha was snch a skeeztokH atnong the womeu that wa.v - and as sbo went by he i'ipped bis hand np t; his iron heimet that was covered with an inch of trost, and as he started to salute her the hand didn't come. Froze fast! ADd the lady, sho j hnms as ahe passes, 'Where Did Yon ; Get That; Hat?' I thought the Lion j Heart wonld just burst his breastplate, ! he was that ruad. But he pretouded ' tbat was the way he always done, says j 'the best peoplo was all doing that way' -holding their fiugers to their helmets I sfter saluting a lady 1 didn't saynothI ing It wasn't my cue to come in. So I jnst belperi tlio oíd man up tbo palaco steps and pal led out to teil the boys. " Anew shitewas brought, andthenarrative went on. "Well, sir, whoii J got there, whatdo yous'pose 1 found? Weather cold, miud you, way down tm 30 degrees below and Btill a-dropping. I fonnd that wholc blamed aray of English ornaadèis in their job lot base burner armor leaniug np against one another, not able to budge. The.e they was, a-whoopiug and hollering for some oneto come and take the base bnrners off'n 'em, but uot moving an inch. Tbey conldn't. They had perspired on the road and naelted some of the show, and that, with tho rust of the night before, had froze tight as a rook. They couldu't move, orthey'd f all over "There they stood staeked np like a flre sale of old iron, and the snow drifting in and packing down harder in tho cracks of the armor plateevery minute. I was still in wor Icing order, so I sets out to find the blacksmith. When 1 found bim, he was silly drnnk, a-dropping the last monkey wrench on the whole European continent into a bole in the ice on the river, whioh he'd out to see if the fish wouldn't bite. Thegooso crease, which we used to limber up the hinges of tbe army when they creaked, bad gono ahead of the monkey wrench. And there we was. Ten fchousand men or so froze in the armor, and nothing to turn a nnt or bolt nor to loosen a hinge, snel tho blacksmith 80 drnnk hecouldn't tall straight t'rom horizontal." At this the corner of t!ie slate creaked to simúlate a chncklo that Mr. Potts desired to naake vocal Then the story went on: "Wel!, 1 done all 1 coulcl. I pulls out and tells old Dick, and also tells him that I thought old Reddy, the Dutch king, had did it by getting his head man to git the blacksmith full. We couldn't do nothing. Dick and I went out, and the minute we'd got a mau away from the stack to thaw his hinges out he'd fall over. He oouldn't walk, and when we got three or four off of the south side the wind blew the whole pile over. And there they was. A whole ship load of iron gone to waste, as you may say, on account of armor plate frauds. It was a shame. I told Dick so, but he didn't say nothing. He knowed where he could got plenty more men, and he found a ready sale for tha iron in tho spring. "But whatworriod him worst was to think how that redheaded Dutch king would give him the laugh at the wassail bout that night. From that on he had it in for Frederick, and so the crusade that had started out so fine and gay busted wide open in thesummerof 1192 on aocount of the lack of confidence of the leaders. But itwas all that trick of Reddy's in getting Dick's blacksmitb full in the cold of 1189 that started the row. Dick always after that seemed to side with Philip, who was just no account on earth. Me? Why, the grate of my base burner burned out in the summerof 1191 uuder tbescorching sun of Palestine, and I died. That I job lot of iron wasno good for winter or su mm er. " And hare the peucil feil on the slate witb a short, sharp click and would ■vrite o further.