So Hazen left the garden and the gentle Bookman, who was loath to let him go, and hurried out into the world again.  
He travelled now for many days, hearing often of far countries which held what he sought, but never reaching any of them. Always he did what tasks came to his hand, for this seemed a good way toward fortune. But sometimes the Envy Self and the Discontented Self spoke loudly in his head so that he thought that it was he himself who was speaking, and he obeyed them, and stopped his work, and until the chance to finish it was lost, he did not know that it was these Selves who had made him cease his task and lose his chance and be that much farther from fortune. For that was the way of all the Selves—they had a clever fashion of making Hazen think that their voices were his own voice, and sometimes he could hardly tell the difference.
 
At last, one night, he came to a hill, sloping282 gently as if something beautiful were overflowing. Its trees looked laid upon the mellow west beyond. The turf was like some Titan woman’s embroidery, sheared and flowered. Hazen looked at it all, and at the great sky and the welcoming distance, and before he knew whether it came as a thought or as a song, he had made a little rhyme:—
Do you wish you had a world of gold
With a turquoise roof on high,
And a coral east and a ruby west
And diamonds in the sky?
Do you wish there were little doors of air
That a child might open wide,
Where were emerald chairs and a tourmaline rug
And a moonstone moon beside?
Do you wish the lakes were silver plates
And the sea a sapphire dish?
What a wonderful, wonderful world it is—
For haven’t you got your wish?
He liked to sing this, and he loved the hill and the evening. He lay there a long time, making283 little rhymes and loving everything. Next day he wandered away in the woods, and asked for food at a hut, and offered the bewildered woman a rhyme in payment, and at night he returned to his hill, and there he lived for days, playing that he was living all alone in the world—that there was not another person anywhere on the earth.
 
But one night when he was lying on the hillside, composing a song to the Littlest Leaf in the Wood, suddenly the voice of his song was not so loud as a voice within him which seemed to say how much he delighted to be singing. And then he knew the voice—that it was the voice of the Beauty Self in his own head, that it was that voice that had made him linger on the hillside and had commanded him to sing about the beauty in the world and to do nothing else. And all this time it had been king of the Selves, and not he!
 
He rose and fled down the hillside, and for days he wandered alone, sick at heart because this fair Beauty Self had tricked him into following her and no other, even as the Fun Self and the Knowledge Self had done. But even while he wandered, grieving, again and again the Idle284 Self, the Strong Self, the Discontented Self, deceived him for a little while and succeeded in making their own voices heard, and now and again the little shadowy Selves—the Malice and Cruel and Envy Selves drew very near him and tried to speak for him. And they all fought to keep him from being king and to deceive him into thinking that they spoke for him.
 
One brooding noonday, as Hazen was travelling, alone and tired, on the highroad, a carriage overtook him, and the gentleman within, looking sharply at him, ordered the carriage stopped, and asked him courteously if he was not the poet whose songs he had sometimes heard, and of whose knowledge and good-fellowship others had told him. It proved that it was no other than Hazen whom he meant, and he took him with him in his carriage to a great, wonderful house overlooking the valley, and commanding a sovereign mountain on whose very summit stood a deserted castle. It seemed as if merely looking on that wonderful prospect would help one to be wise and really good and beautiful and worthy to be loved.
 
At once Hazen’s host, the Gentleman of the Carriage, began showing him his treasures and285 all that made life for him. The house was filled with curious and beautiful things, pictures, ivories, marbles, and tapestries, and with many friends. In the evenings there were always festivities; mirth and laughter were everywhere, and Hazen was laden with gifts of these and other things, and delighted in the entertainment. But by day, in a high-ceiled library and a cool study, the two spent hours pouring over letters and science, finding out the secrets of the world, getting on the other side of words, saying sentences, and thinking thoughts that became solid; or they would wander on the hillsides and carry rare books and dream of the beauty in the world and weave little songs. Now they would be idle, now absorbed in feats of strength, and now they would descend into the town and there delight in its great sport. And in all this Hazen had some part and earned his own way, because of his cleverness and willingness to enter in the life and belong to it.
 
One day, standing on a balcony of the beautiful house, looking across at the mountain and the deserted castle, Hazen said aloud:—
 
“This is the true life. This is fortune. For now I hear all the voices of all my Selves, and I286 give good things to each, and I am king of them all!”
 
But even as he spoke he heard another voice sounding within his own, and it laughed, and cracked as it laughed, so that it sounded like something being broken that could never be mended.
 
“I told you so, Hazen! I told you so!” it cried. “Being loved and really good do not mean making our fortune. Just one thing means fortune, and that is being rich. To be rich, rich, means good times and learning and beauty and idleness. I’ve fought every one of the others, and now you’ve got all that they had to offer, because you have let me be king—me and no other.”
 
To his horror, Hazen recognized the voice of the dwarf, the Riches Self, and knew that he was deceived again, that he himself was ruler of nothing, and that the dwarf was now king of all his Selves.
 
When he realized this, it seemed to Hazen that his heart was pierced and that he could not live any longer. Suppose—ah, suppose that he did get back to the Princess Vista now—what had he to take to her? Could he give her287 himself—a Self of which not he but the dwarf was the owner?
 
Somehow, in spite of their protestations and persuadings, Hazen said good-bye to them all, to his host and to those who had detained him, and he was off down into the valley alone—not knowing where he was going or what he was going to do, or what hope now remained that he should ever be any nearer the fortune for which he had so hopefully set out.
 
It was bright moonlight when he came to the edge of a fair, green, valley meadow. The whiteness was flooding the world, as if it would wash away everything that had ever been and would begin it all over again. And in the centre of the meadow, all the brightness seemed to gather and thicken and glitter, as if something mysterious were there. It drew Hazen to itself, as if it were so pure that it must be what he was seeking, and he broke through the hedge and stepped among the flowers of the lush grass, and he stood before it.
 
It was a fountain of water, greater than any fountain that Hazen had ever seen or conceived. It rose from the green in pure strands of exquisite firmness, in almost the slim lines and spirals288 of a stair; and its high, curving spray and its plash and murmur made it rather like a gigantic white tree, with music in its boughs—the tree of life itself.
 
Hazen could no more have helped leaping in the fountain than he could have helped his joy in its beauty. He sprang in the soft waters as if he were springing into arms, and it drew him to itself as if he belonged to it. The waters flowed over him, and he felt purified, and as if a healing light had shone through him, body and mind.
 
But to his amazement, he did not remain in the fountain’s basin. Gently, as if he were upborne by unseen hands, he mounted with the rise of the fountain, in its slim lines and spirals, until he found himself high above the meadow in a silvery tower that was thrown out from the fountain itself. And there, alone in that lofty silence, it was as if he were face to face with himself and could see his own heart.
 
Then the Thought spoke to him which had spoken to him long ago that morning in the king’s kitchen, and again on that first night in the wood.
 
“Hazen!” it said, “you are not wise or really289 good or loved or beautiful. Why don’t you become so?”
 
“I!” said Hazen, sadly. “I have lost my chance. I came out to find my fortune and I have thrown it away.”
 
But still the Thought spoke to him, and said the same thing over and over so many times that at last he answered:—
 
“What, then, must I do?” he asked.
 
And then he listened, there in the night and the stillness, to hear what it was that he must do. And this was the first time that ever he had listened like this, or questioned carefully his course. Always before he had done what seemed to him the thing that he wished to do, without questioning whether his fortune lay that way.
 
“Bravely spoken, Hazen,” said the Thought, then. “Someone near is in great need. Find him and help him.”
 
Instantly Hazen leaped lightly to the ground, and ran away through the moonlit meadow, and he sought as never in his life had he sought anything before, for the one near, in great need, whom he was to find and help. All through the night he sought, and with the setting of the290 moon he was struggling up the mountain, because it seemed to him that he must do some hard thing, and this was hard. In the early dawn he stood on the mountain’s very summit, and knocked at the gate of the deserted castle there. And it was the forsaken castle of his father, the king, whom the Princess Vista’s father had conquered; but this Hazen did not know.
 
No sound answered his summons, so he swung the heavy gate on its broken hinges and stepped within. The court yard was vacant and echoing and grass-grown. Rabbits scuttled away at his approach, and about the sightless eyes of the windows, bats were clinging and moving. The clock in the tower was still and pointed to an hour long-spent. The whole place breathed of things forgotten and of those who, having loved them, were forgotten too.
 
Hazen mounted the broad, mossy steps leading to the portals, and he found one door slightly ajar. Wondering greatly, he touched it open, and the groined hall appeared like a grim face from behind a mask. On the stone floor, not far beyond the threshold, lay an old man, motionless. And when, uttering a little cry of291 pity and amazement, Hazen stooped over him, he knew him at once to be that old man who had greeted him at the entrance to the wood on the evening of the day on which he himself had left the king’s palace.
 
What with bringing him water and bathing his face and chafing his hands, Hazen at last enabled the old man to speak, and found that he had been nearly all his life-time the keeper of the castle and for some years its only occupant. He was not ill, but he had fallen and was hurt, and he had lain for several days without food. So Hazen, who knew well how to do it, kindled a fire of fagots in the great, echoing castle kitchen, and, from the scanty store which he found there, prepared broth and eggs, and then helped the old man to his bed in the little room which had once been a king’s cabinet.
 
“Lad, lad!” said the old man, when he had remembered Hazen. “And have you found your fortune? And are you by now wise, really good, beautiful, and loved?”
 
“Alas!” said Hazen, only, and could say no more.
 
The old man nodded. “I know, I know,”292 he said sadly. “The little Selves have been about, ruling here and ruling there. Is it not so? Sit here a little, and let us talk about it.”
 
Then Hazen told him all that had befallen since that night when they sat together in the wood. And though his adventures seemed to Hazen very wonderful, the old man merely nodded, as if he were not hearing but only remembering.
 
“Ay,” he said, at the last, “I have met them all—the Merry Lad, the Bookman, and all the rest, and have dwelt a space with some. And I, too, have come to the fountain in the night, and have asked what it was that I should do.”
 
“But tell me, sir,” said Hazen, eagerly, “how was it that I was told at the fountain that there was one near in great need. Did the fountain know you? Or did my Thought? And how could that be?”
 
“Nay, lad,” said the old man, “but always, for everyone, there is someone near in need—yet. One has only to look.”
 
Then he talked to Hazen more about his fortune, and again the old man’s meaning was in his mere presence, so that whether he talked293 about the stars or the earth or the ways of men, he made Hazen know fascinating things about them all. And now Hazen listened far differently from the way that he had listened that other time when they had talked, and it was as if the words had grown, and as if they meant more than once they had meant.
 
Now, whoever has stood for the first time in a great, empty castle knows that there is one thing that he longs to do above all other things, and this is to explore. And when the afternoon lay brooding upon the air, and slanting sun fell through the dusty lattices, Hazen asked the old man eagerly if he might wander through the rooms.
 
“As freely,” answered the old man, willingly, “as if you were the castle’s prince.”
 
Thus it chanced that, after all the years, Hazen, though he was far from dreaming the truth, was once more roaming through the rooms of his birthplace and treading the floors that had once echoed the step of his father, the king.
 
It was a wonderful place, the like of which Hazen thought he had never seen before,............