He was dazzled, bewildered. He could think of nothing else at all. The very first meeting of the knights in the desert had marvellously caught his fancy. He had never imagined anything like that, so courteous, so amiable and so fierce! Just so would he entertain the Dean’s Ernest did he meet him in the desert, sharing his food and drink with him, complimenting him on his armour and his horse (he would be very showy would the Dean’s Ernest), and the next day sticking his spear through his vitals. Yes, that would be intensely pleasing, but the trouble would be that the Dean’s Ernest would most certainly not play fair, but would seize some mean advantage (steal all Jeremy’s dates when he wasn’t looking, or give him one in the back).

Then the visit to the hermit’s cave and the silence of the chapel and the procession of the wonderful ladies and the dropping of the rose at Sir Kenneth’s feet.

From that point forward Jeremy dwelt under enchantment. Nothing could take him from it. And he believed every word of it! Just as true to him these men and deeds of the Eastern desert as were the men and deeds of Orange Street, Polchester. Truer indeed! He never quite believed in Uncle Samuel and Aunt Amy and Barbara—but in Sir Kenneth and King Richard and Edith and Saladin—how could he not utterly believe?

Saladin! His was the figure that ultimately emerged from the gilded background of the picture. Saladin! He became at once Jeremy’s ideal of everything that was beautiful and “like a man” and brave. He haunted Jeremy’s dreams, he followed him in his walks, came before him as he ate and drank. He must know more about him than “Scott, Bart.,” told you; and once again Uncle Samuel was sought. Jeremy had formed a habit now of dropping into Uncle Samuel’s studio whenever it pleased him.

The other children watched him with eyes of wonder and desire. Even Aunt Amy was surprised. She said a little but sniffed a lot, and told her brother that he “would regret the day.” He laughed and told her that Jeremy was “the only artist among the lot of them,” at which Aunt Amy went to Jeremy’s father and told him to be careful because her brother “was filling the child’s head with all sorts of notions that could do him no possible good.”

Jeremy behaved like a saint in his uncle’s studio. He had his own corner of the shabby sofa where he would sit curled up like a dog. He chattered on and on, pouring out the whole of his mind, heart and soul, keeping nothing back, because his uncle seemed to understand everything and never made you feel a fool. He attacked him at once about Saladin and would not let him alone. In vain Uncle Samuel protested that he knew no history and that Saladin was a coloured devil as wicked as sin—Jeremy stuck fast to his ideal—so that at length Uncle Samuel in sheer self-defence was compelled to turn to a subject about which he did know something, namely the history of the town Polchester in which they were living.

Never to any living soul had Uncle Samuel confided that he cared in the least about the old town; in his heart, nevertheless, he adored it, and for years had he been studying its life and manners. To his grave his knowledge would have gone with him had not Jeremy, in the secrecy of the studio, lured him on.

Then, as though they were dram-drinking together, did the two sit close and talk about the town, and under the boy’s eyes the streets blossomed like the rose, the fountains played, the walls echoed to the cries and shouts of armoured men, and the cathedral towers rose ever higher and higher, gigantic, majestic, wonderful, piercing the eternal sky.

Best of all he liked to hear about the Black Bishop, that proud priest who had believed himself greater than the High God, had defeated all his enemies, lived in the castle on the hill above the town like a king, and was at last encircled by a ring of foes, caught in the Cathedral Square, and died there fighting to the end.

Jeremy would never forget one afternoon when he sat on the floor, his head against the shabby sofa, and Uncle Samuel, who was doing something to his paint-box, became carried away with the picture of his story. He drew for Jeremy the old town with the gabled roofs and the balconies and the cobbled roads, and the cathedral so marvellously alive above it all. As he talked the winter sun poured into the room in a golden stream, making the whitewashed walls swan-colour, turning some old stuffs that he had hanging over the door and near the window into wine-red shadow and purple light; and the trees beyond the high windows were stained copper against the dusky sky.

Uncle Samuel’s voice stopped and the room slided into grey. Jeremy stared before him and saw Saladin and the Black Bishop, gigantic figures hovering over the town that was small and coloured like a musical box. The cathedral was a new place to him, no longer somewhere that was tiresome and dreary on Sunday and dead all the rest of the week. He longed to go there by himself, alone, nobody to see what he would do and hear what he would say. He would go! He would go! He nodded to himself in the dark.