follow me. Or, better still, get up on my wagon and I 'll take you there. You 're lighter than that hewed stone, I warrant!"
So the traveler mounted upon the wagon, and was soon at the market-place, and stood before the statue itself.
As he gazed up at it, another citizen addressed him:
"Admiring the statue, eh? Well, it's a noble bit of art, and a credit to the place. Every stranger says so."
"It seems well done and well kept," replied the traveler, quietly.
"Well kept? To be sure it is well kept! Would the council of the town have me here if I did n't attend to my duty? Perhaps you don't know that I'm the custodian of this work of art? No? Well, I am. Yes, you see before you the statue-keeper. It's a great responsibility; but there, there!—the townspeople don't complain, so I suppose my work is not so badly done."
"Who is it?" asked the traveler.
"Oh, I forget," said the man, unconcernedly. "Maybe I 've heard the name; but I 've forgotten it long since."
The traveler thanked the fellow and gave him a silver coin. Then he departed from out the city. But as he went through the gate in the city wall, there was a boy playing marbles near by, for now the school-hours were over. And as the traveler passed him, the boy looked to see whose shadow fell upon the wall; and then the boy sprang to his feet, and said:
"See! see! 'T is he—the man whose statue stands in the market-place!"
And so it was; but none else in the city knew anything beyond their stone image of the man.
"You were asleep and dreaming in the sun!" the people said, when the boy told his story. And as the traveler never came again, even the boy himself began as he grew older to think it was a dream, so real seemed the statue compared to his faint memory of the great one in whose honor it stood aloft.
