Part 5 (2/2)

The little fellow did his best to keep awake, but he was too worn out with his run from St. Minver sand-hills to Tintagel Castle to sit and watch for the coming of the red-legged bird; and long before the sun wheeled up behind the Tors and shone upon the sea he was sound asleep under a great mallow growing by one of the grey old walls. When he awoke a day and a night had come and gone, and the birth of a new day was at hand.

When he crawled out from under the mallow, the first thing he saw on the Island facing him was the dark form of a great black chough. He was perched on the wall above the old arched doorway, gazing gravely in front of him.

The Piskey lost not a moment in getting across to the Island, which he did by the Piskey pa.s.sage known only to the Piskeys; and when he had caught the bird's attention he said:

'I am a poor little Piskey who has lost his laugh, and I am come to ask the Good King Arthur if he has seen it.'

But the bird was too high up for him to make himself heard, and he had to wait patiently till it flew down. After waiting a short time it did, and perched on a stick stuck in the ground.

The Piskey ran over, and, clasping his hands, he repeated what he had just said.

'How came you to know I was King Arthur?' asked the chough, ignoring the little fellow's question.

'The mole who says she is the Lady Want told me,' he answered.

'Ah, I know her--the grand lady who considered the ground on which she walked was not good enough for her dainty feet, and has now, as a punishment, to walk under the ground--a lesson to all children of pride.'

'But please, Good King Arthur, answer my question about my laugh,'

pleaded the little Piskey, in an agony of impatience. 'If I don't find it soon something dreadful will happen to me.'

'Have patience,' said the chough kindly. 'Nothing is ever won by impatience. I have seen something very funny lately running about over the gra.s.s. It is like nothing I have ever seen before except in a Piskey's face when he laughs. It is like a laugh gone mad, and it is enough to kill a man with laughing only to watch its antics. It made me laugh till I ached when I first noticed it. It does not make a sound, but its grimaces are worth flying a hundred miles only to see.'

'It must have been my laugh you saw,' cried the Piskey--'my dear little lost laugh that I have travelled so far to find. Where is it now, Good King Arthur?'

'It was here not long since,' answered the bird, who did not deny that he was Arthur the King. 'Why, there it is quite close to you,'

pointing with his long-pointed beak to the most comical-looking thing you ever saw, on the gra.s.s a foot from where the Piskey was standing. 'It was a laugh gone mad,' as the chough said.

The Piskey looked behind him, and when he saw the little bit of laughing, grinning absurdity on the gra.s.s, he jumped for joy and shrieked: 'It is my own little laugh that I lost!'

Holding out both his arms, he cried, 'Oh, dear little laugh, come back to me! Oh, dear little laugh, come back to me!' And the droll little thing, which was a grin with a laugh and a laugh with a grin, came over to the Piskey, and began to climb up his legs, grinning and doubling itself up with laughter as it climbed, till it reached his chin, when it narrowed itself into a tiny grin and vanished into the Piskey.

The next moment the Piskey was shouting at the top of his voice, 'I have got my laugh! I have got my laugh!' and he ran off laughing and dancing to the edge of the cliff and disappeared into the Piskey-hole, and in a few minutes more he was on Castle Gardens in the great Piskey-ring, laughing and dancing and dancing and laughing.

His laugh was so loud and so free that his brother Piskeys heard him from afar, and came running over the cliffs from Bossiney to see what ever had happened.

Little Fiddler Piskey was the first to reach the Gardens, and the first glance at the little whirling figure told him that his little brother had found his laugh; and putting his fiddle in position, he began fiddling away as hard as he could.

As he fiddled, the other Piskeys, including Granfer Piskey, reached the ring, and the next minute they were all dancing and laughing as they had never laughed and danced before; but the one who laughed the heartiest was the little Piskey who had lost and found his laugh.

They danced for a good hour, the little fiddler in their midst fiddling his fiddle, all the while keeping time with his head and foot, heedless that the daylight was driving the darkness away to the country to which it belongs; and King Arthur the Bird flew up on the wall and watched, and the mole who called herself the Lady Want let her dainty hands be seen on the mole-hill, till the fiddling, dancing, and laughing were finished, and the Piskeys went off to the Piskey-beds to sleep.

THE LEGEND OF THE PADSTOW DOOMBAR

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