“Silence, fools,” said Babadag, laughing. “We are about to listen to a tale,—a tale from Bald-er-Dash the peddler. Will you proceed now, excellent peddler?”
“Willingly,” said I.
At the sound of my voice, the three blind men cried out “Aha!” and broke into a fresh song:
“Silence, rascals!” said Babadag.
I was becoming, all this while, more and more restless, for I had no doubt that all this talk of marriage had reference to my own daughter. I wondered bitterly what mischief she had been up to during my absence.
“These rascals,” said Babadag, still laughing, “sometimes I am minded to put them to death. I don’t know really why I let them live. Now then, excellent one, let us hear the tale.”
I bowed, and while the repast proceeded, and the three ballad singers remained standing behind our chairs, I related to Babadag, as follows,
“In the course of my wanderings,” I began, “I arrived one day at a spring in the wilderness, beside which were encamped a company of—”
“I think,” said Solario, interrupting himself, “that I cannot conscientiously repeat this story, because—”
“Oh, please!” said Bojohn. “We’d like to hear it.”
“No,” said. Solario, “I couldn’t, conscientiously, because there is not a word of truth in the story, and I do not wish to tell anything which is not strictly true.”
During my tale (said the Prince) I pretended now and then to take a sip of wine, and to grow drowsy, so that toward the end I seemed to have difficulty in keeping awake. When I had concluded, Babadag laughed and said, “I thank you, peddler. Never in my life have I heard such a tissue of—er—amusing facts. Some more wine, peddler.”
I pretended to sip the wine again, and let my head fall forward on my breast, and roused myself as if with a great effort.
“I am something,” said Babadag, appearing to take no notice of my drowsiness, “of a teller of tales myself. I will tell you in return a story, and when I have finished you shall tell me another, if you know any, as you undoubtedly do.”
Thereupon he commenced a long and detailed story; and I could see that as he proceeded he was watching me from the corner of his eye. He had not spun out his tale very far when my eyes closed and my head nodded; and after an apparent effort to arouse myself I let my head fall forward on the table and lie there motionless.
Babadag instantly stopped, raised my head gently, and laying it back against my chair shook me roughly, but with no effect.
“Send in the accursed dogs,” said he in a fierce whisper.
I was aware, in a moment, that the eight tailors were standing around me.
“The eyebrows!” said Babadag, and the tailors bent over me and began to pluck at my eyebrows with instruments of some sort.
“Oh, father, father,” said Figli, “please don’t!”
“Be still, my son,” said Babadag.
I laughed inwardly, for I was sure that, under the protection of my doublet, my eyebrows would reappear as fast as they could be plucked out. And indeed, from the snort of rage given by Babadag, I soon knew that my eyebrows were safe. I could hear the eight tailors whispering together, as if in dismay.
“Goolk!” said Babadag, in the same angry whisper, “sting me this false peddler!”
“No, no, father,” said Figli. “Not that, oh, please!”
I shivered a little, for I confess that the thought of the spider was horrifying to me. I waited anxiously, not daring to open my eyelids even a trifle. I assure you it was all I could do to remain still. There was silence, and in the midst of it I felt a tickling on my left cheek, and then a kind of pin-prick there, and I knew that the spider had stung me.
“Back, Goolk!” said Babadag. “Now, false peddler that you are, be no longer either a prince or a peddler, but a spider,—a black spider!—and take your place with Goolk in the web! Change!”
I felt no change, and I heard another snort of rage from Babadag. “Some charm!” he muttered. “Some charm protects him! Let us see what charm this lying stranger carries upon him.”
I felt that my smock was being lifted from my breast, and I heard a kind of gasp from Babadag. “The doublet!” he said. “It is plain! Off with the doublet!” And immediately fingers were at my breast, trying to unbutton the doublet.
But they could not unbutton it. Not a button would come through its hole.
“Fetch me a pair of shears, rascals,” said Babadag, and in a moment I knew that shears were snapping away at my doublet. But it was no use; the blade would not cut, neither the thread of the buttons nor the cloth; they held like iron at every point. I heard the shears drop to the floor.
“The Shears of Sharpness! Bring me the Shears of Sharpness!” said Babadag. “Nothing else will cut this doublet.”
I heard a chuckle, and the voice of one of the ballad singers said, “The Shears of Sharpness, brothers!” And there was another chuckle.
“What!” said Babadag. “You laugh, rascals? You dare to laugh?”
“The Shears of Sharpness!” said the voice of one of the ballad singers. “Where are the Shears of Sharpness, brothers?” And at this there was a very considerable tittering.
“Ask the fair lady, brother,” said the voice of another of the ballad singers.
“She knows! The wonderful lady!” said the voice of the third.
“Ineffable scoundrels!” said Babadag. “Have you stolen my Shears?”
“No, no! Only borrowed them! What harm in that?” said the ballad singers.
“Return them to me at once!” said Babadag.
I could hear the ballad singers chuckling together again. “We would, we would,” said one of them, “we meant to, but—”
“But what, beast?”
“She has them,” said one of the three.
“The most wonderful of women,” said another.
“She who swore she would marry one of us,” said the third.
My daughter! My own daughter! She had beguiled the Shears from these foolish vagabonds! Or had they let her have the Shears for some purpose of their own—to help their brother, say? I was quite bewildered.
“Oh, that I should let such scoundrels live!” said Babadag, fiercely. “Where is this woman?”
“But she wouldn’t marry us unless we gave her the Shears,” said one of the ballad singers. “No harm in that!”
“No harm in that, surely!” said the other two.
“Where is this woman?” said Babadag again.
“We left her,” said one of the others, “by the dry fountain at the governor’s palace.”
“Accursed,” said Babadag, evidently addressing the eight tailors, “pick up this peddler and follow me. We must find the Shears. You, imbeciles that you are, I will deal with you afterward. Goolk, back to your web!”
I could not see what became of Goolk, but I knew that the eight tailors were lifting me from my chair, and I felt myself being borne away.
“Oh, father!” cried Figli. “You mustn’t! Please let the poor man go, oh please!”
“My son,” said Babadag, in the voice of tenderness with which he always addressed his son, “he is my enemy. I must have him in my power. Accursed doublet!”
In a moment I was aware that we were in the street, and I opened my eyelids a trifle. The moon was shining. I saw Babadag starting on before, with the three ballad singers at his back. Behind, the eight tailors were holding me in a sitting posture between them. I could see the shop door, without moving my head, and as we started I beheld Figli, coming from the door, in the act of stowing away something, I could not see what, in the bosom of his shirt. The shop was dark, but as Figli closed the door behind him I noticed, flickering from within, a tiny flame of light which had not been there before. I remarked that the boy’s face was very pale in the moonlight.
We came, after a long journey through deserted streets, to the little hill which led up to the governor’s palace. We entered the ruined park, and crossed it to the mansion. Babadag opened the door, and the company paused inside, listening. All was silent. I had an impulse to shout, in order to warn my daughter; but I knew that that would be fatal, and I continued to lie inert and speechless in the arms of the tailors. I risked opening my eyes from time to time, and I saw that Babadag was leading the way from room to room, all dark except for moonlight here and there upon the floors, and that he came at last, followed by all the others, into the court of the dry fountain; and there the eight tailors laid me down on the ground. My heart almost stopped beating, for fear that my daughter should be there.
“Vile rascals,” said Babadag, “you have deceived me! There is no woman here.”
“Astonishing!” said one of the ballad singers. “Not here! Who would have thought it?”
“I doubt that she was ever here,” said Babadag. “Wait!”
I saw him go off down the alley of cypress trees toward the Cobweb Room, no doubt to assure himself that his prisoner was safe, or else to seek the woman there. As soon as he was gone, I felt a hand on my arm, and the voice of Figli whispered in my ear, “Are you awake?” and I pressed his hand in answer.
The eight tailors were sitting on the rim of the fountain’s basin, mopping their foreheads and panting, and the blind men were standing near them. I measured with my eye the distance to the door from which I had come, and gave a sudden spring toward it which carried me nearly there; and I was off and away, before the eight tailors realized what had happened.
I scoured swiftly and silently through the dark rooms in all directions, listening now and then for sounds of pursuit. But I heard nothing, and I began to whisper my daughter’s name from time to time. In a room far distant from the court, to which I presently came, I found the door at the opposite side closed, which in that house of open doors struck me as being odd. A broad band of moonlight lay across the floor, and in the dim light I could see the furnishings of a kitchen. I approached the opposite door and opened it cautiously, thinking to go through; but I looked into a cupboard, hung with pots and pans, and there on the floor of the cupboard was sitting my daughter, calmly eating a fig.
She looked up at me with a merry laugh, and sprang to her feet.
“There are very good fig trees in the park,” said she. “Will you have one of these? No? You’ve been gone a long time. I heard some people going through the house, and I thought I had better wait in here. I’m going to be married!”
“Beauty in tatters!” said Babadag the Tailor
“Come,” said I, “we’ve no time for jesting.”
“But it’s the best joke!” said my daughter. “When I think how I played on those half-wits! I’ve never had such sport in my life! I promised to marry one of them, if they’d choose which—do you remember the three ballad singers?”
“And you have the Shears of Sharpness,” said I.
“How do you know that?” said she. “They’re simply mad! And I wouldn’t promise them anything unless they gave me the Shears. And they did! And I promised! And now you’ve got to get me out of it. Here are the Shears. Take them.”
“I suspect, my dear,” said I, taking the Shears from her, “that these three imbeciles meant that you should have the Shears all the time, and they’ve been making a bit of a fool of you. But there’s no time for talking. Hurry!”
I stepped quickly toward the door, and as I reached it it was blocked by a huge dark figure. It was Babadag.
“Not so fast, peddler,” said he; and then he saw my daughter, who was standing in the band of moonlight, most fairylike and beautiful. He brushed past me and stopped before her, gazing at her in astonishment and admiration.
“Beauty in tatters!” he said. “No wonder that even blind men are conquered. You make me forget the Shears. Surely there is no woman in Oogh so beautiful. Will you look on me kindly? I am powerful, and I offer you a share of my power. It is Babadag who speaks.”
He held out his hand to her, and she shrank away in horror. “No, no!” she screamed. “Father!”
Babadag turned swiftly, and at that moment I sprang upon him; but the old man snatched forth a knife, and as I caught and held the arm which was lifted to strike, a small dark figure darted in from the doorway and flung something over the old man’s neck from behind.
The knife dropped from Babadag’s hand. He swayed, tottered, collapsed, and fell full length on the floor, and lay motionless on his back in the strip of moonlight. The little dark figure knelt beside him. It was Figli.
“Oh, father! Oh, father!” he cried. “I’m sorry, sorry! I had to do it! I couldn’t let you kill him! It can’t go on any longer! The eyebrows must be cut, father! It’s only to make you like the others! We’ll both be happier, oh, indeed we will! It’s only because I love you, father!”
“I didn’t think you would have done this, Figli, my son,” said the old man, gently. “You have put me in the power of my enemy. Ah, Figli, my son, my son!”
“I know it, I know it,” sobbed the boy, “but the lady will give the Shears to me, and I will cut the eyebrows myself, with my own hand. The peddler will do you no harm. You’ll be glad, father, afterward, indeed you will.”
“Ah, my son, my son! I wouldn’t have thought it of you,” said the old man, still gently.
I knelt beside him, and found around his neck a noose of the slenderest thread, extremely tough; and the end of this thread the boy was holding in his hand. I took it from him and looked at him inquiringly.
“Yes,” said the boy, “it was spun by Goolk the Spider, and there is no will can stand against it, not even my father’s. It’s the thing that made him first able to pluck out the eyebrows of the people. I stole it as we left the shop to-night. You won’t do him any harm, will you?”
I stood up, keeping the end of the thread in my hand. A patter of running feet sounded from the next room, and the eight tailors crowded in at the doorway. They rushed to their master, and wailed and wrung their hands. One of them drew a pair of shears, and began to snip away at the thread, but it was plain that no ordinary blade would cut it, and the tailor gave it up, and the other seven wailed louder than before.
“Lift up this knave,” I said, “and follow me.”
The eight tailors obeyed instantly, and our party started back to the court of the dry fountain. I walked beside the body of Babadag, keeping close hold of the thread. When we reached the court, the three ballad singers were sitting calmly on the rim of the basin, singing softly to themselves. My daughter, ever incorrigible, greeted them with an amused laugh, and they crowded around her, each trying to elbow the others out of the way. At my command, the eight tailors laid Babadag down on his back in the dry basin. I then gave the end of the thread into the hand of my daughter, and left them.
I ran down the cypress alley to the deserted audience chamber. I looked through the cobweb at Urban, and by the dim light of the high window saw him sitting there motionless as stone, in the same attitude as before.
“I am here!” I cried, but he neither moved nor spoke. I applied the Shears, and in a moment the cobweb was hanging in shreds, and I was standing beside my friend. I tried to pull him up, but I could not budge him. I lifted the golden chain from around his neck, and dropped it to the floor. Immediately he raised his head, stretched his arms, looked up at me as if awaking from a dream, and sprang to his feet.
“Prince!” he cried, and threw his arms about me in a transport of joy.
I calmed him, and when he had recovered himself he said, “What of Babadag?”
“He is in the court at this moment,” said I, “bound fast.”
“Good news indeed!” he cried. “Let us go!”
We sped back to the court, and when Urban beheld my daughter he scattered the blind men right and left and clasped her hand in his. I took from her the end of the thread and knelt in the basin beside the huge body of Babadag, and gazed down into his eyes, glittering up at me in the moonlight through their tangle of hair. I drew the Shears.
“No, no!” cried the boy. “You must not! Give me the Shears! I must do it, for you do not love him, and I do! Only the hand of love! Give me the Shears!”
“No time for talking!” I cried. “This is no child’s play. Work for a man! And I trust no one but myself! Now for the shearing of the Eyebrow!”
The boy shrieked, as if in despair, and with a mighty snap of the Shears I cut in among the hairs of Babadag’s left eyebrow.
A spout of yellow smoke shot upward from his eyebrow, and whirled and spread outward in a cloud, thick, sickening, blinding, pierced with wriggling pencils of light, as if tiny snakes had been set riotously free. It covered us both, so that he was suddenly hidden from my sight. I gasped and choked. My eyes smarted with pain. I snapped blindly away at him through the smoke with my Shears, resolved not to be foiled. There was a sharp crack, as of the snapping of a whip; the Shears had cut,—alas, alas!—not the Eyebrow, but the thread around Babadag’s neck! Instantly the Shears were wrenched from my hand, I did not know how; and I felt them ripping through my smock, and I knew that some injury had been done to my doublet. A terrible voice bellowed, “Hither, accursed dogs, and bind me this peddler!” And the next moment I was lying on my back, with the thread fastened securely about my neck; and my strength was suddenly gone, and the smoke began to clear away.
I saw the old man put his arm tenderly about his son, and heard him say, “It’s all right now, my boy. I am not angry. You have put your father in great danger, but not from malice; I know it well. Don’t be grieved; we’ll laugh about it together, hereafter. All’s well again. Come, Figli, my son. Rascals, follow me!”
He stalked away with his son down the cypress alley, and the eight tailors lifted me and bore me after, followed by my daughter and my friend. I looked for the three blind ballad singers, but they were gone. I was in terrible danger, and I bitterly regretted my haste in refusing the Shears to the boy.
In the circular audience chamber they laid me down upon the floor. Babadag, grotesque and somber in the darkness, seated himself in the marble armchair on the daïs; and at the same time I heard, or fancied I heard, the voices of the ballad singers, afar off somewhere in the palace, singing away at one of their songs.
“Pluck out the hairs!” said Babadag.
“No, no!” said Figli, lying on the step of the daïs at his father’s feet.
“Quick, scoundrels!” said Babadag; and the eight tailors, kneeling around me, plucked out with tiny instruments all the hairs of my eyebrows, by the roots. Then, at a sign from their master, they stood me on my feet and removed the spider’s thread from around my neck. My strength returned, and I found myself able to stand alone.
“Gone is your power, maker of fables!” said Babadag. “The doublet is worthless. See!” And he held up what appeared to be the thread of a button. My smock was in strips, and the doublet was exposed to view. One button was missing. What had become of it? Babadag exhibited only the thread.
“Dog of a peddler,” said he, “it is your due that I give you to Goolk the Spider for his web.”
“Spare him! Spare him!” said Figli, in a kind of moan, rocking himself back and forth on the step of the daïs.
“But Babadag is merciful,” went on the old man, “and loves a tale; and never have I heard so amusing a tissue of lies as that tale of Bald-er-Dash the Peddler. For that, and for the pleasure I shall have in repeating that tale hereafter, I spare you. You are harmless. Go! and as you have chosen to darken your skin with juices, let it be darker still. Go! and be you henceforth as black as night. I will lead you to the palace gate, and speed you, with your daughter and your friend, on your journey away from Oogh. Return no more, peddler, for the web awaits you, and Goolk the Spider longs for a brother.”
He stepped down from his seat, and we others followed him in silence. I was conscious of no will to resist him further. We came to the court of the dry fountain, and there my daughter looked into my face in the moonlight. She screamed.
We followed mournfully through the dark rooms, and came out on the steps before the palace; and there we saw a sight both terrible and beautiful.
The city was in flames. From every roof, as far as we could see, rose sheets of fire, and sparks showered upward into a pall of black smoke; and as we watched, new tongues of flame blazed up from quarters dark before. The city was doomed.
“Ah!” said Babadag with a groan. “My city, my city!”
“What have I done? What have I done?” cried Figli, wringing his hands in anguish.
“You, my son? What have you to do with this?” said his father, never taking his eyes from the burning city.
“It’s my work!” cried the boy. “But I never dreamed of this! I set fire to the shop, our shop, before I left,—to burn up all the black secrets in my father’s house, and to kill Goolk the Spider, to kill him, kill him, so that he would never get the Blind Bowler, nor any one else! So that all the old riches and wickedness might be burned up forever! And now, and now, I haven’t destroyed the Eyebrow, and I’ve burned up the city! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“My son, my son,” said Babadag, quietly, never taking his eyes from the burning city.
I recalled now the spark of fire I had seen through the window as we had left the tailor’s shop that night.
The flames of the furnace below us shot higher and higher, and spread wider and wider in every direction.
“The Book of the Shavian Magic,” said Babadag, as if to himself. “That must be saved.”
He ran down the steps and started across the park.
“Father! father! where are you going?” cried Figli, but his father paid no attention. The boy sped after him, and we others followed.
Out at the park gate and down the hill ran Babadag, and straight into the blazing ruin which was once his city. Nothing could stop him. Flames roared on both sides of him; sparks showered around him; walls toppled behind him; smoke swallowed him; but he kept on. We paused in terror; only his little boy continued to follow him, calling to him to come back.
A wall of flame shot out behind the running boy, and a house fell crashing behind him into the street; and father and boy were no longer to be seen.
I turned away, and leaving the eight tailors wailing, I made my way with my daughter and my friend back to the palace; and there, on the palace steps, we sat all night long, watching the great fire burn itself out.
The sun rose on a city of smoking ruins; and with its first rays there came plodding in through the park gate a blind man, who called aloud as he reached the steps. It was the Blind Bowler.
“I am here,” said I, “Figli’s friend; and my daughter too, and the governor whom once you tried to help. What news?”
“Ten strikes still lacking!” said the Blind Bowler. “But it makes no difference now. Figli has saved me, and all the rest of us too. Come with me.”
He led us out into the street and down into the city, where the homeless people were standing as if bewildered. We came into the street where once had been the shop of Babadag the Tailor. It was there no longer; but by some chance there yet remained the wall which held the doorway, and above it the yardstick and the shears; and across the sill lay Figli, on his face.
My daughter ran to him and put her arm about him. He was alive, and he shook his head and moaned, “I want my father. I want my father.”
“Yes,” said she, “your father. Is he—?”
“In there,” he whispered.
“Ah! He is—”
“Under the wall. I saw it fall on him. He is in there.”
“Oh, my poor boy!”
“I killed him. And all I wanted was to make him good.”
She put her arm under him and raised him, and he stood up.
“Come with me, dear boy,” said she.
“I can’t go away. I can’t leave him in there. Can’t you help me to see him?”
“Not now, but later, perhaps. Come with me now, and we will talk of him together.”
“He loved me, too. He did, didn’t he? And I killed him.”
“Yes, he did, he did. But you mustn’t say that you—”
“It wasn’t because I meant to harm him, was it? I wouldn’t have harmed him, would I?”
“No, no. It was just because you loved him, that was all.”
“Yes, that was it. That was all it was.”
He suffered her to lead him away, and he said nothing more, but repeated to himself, once or twice, “That was all it was.”
On my part, I spoke at length to the Blind Bowler, and gave him many directions; and he, having received at my hands a purse of gold, for use as I had instructed him, went his way; and we others then walked slowly back to the palace, where we rested on the steps, waiting, and Figli fell asleep with his head on my daughter’s shoulder.
When the sun was high in the east, people began to come in at the park gate, and the Blind Bowler, his first duty done, joined us on the palace steps. More people came, and the park began to be filled with them; they came before long in a steady stream, and at length the park was crowded with a great multitude, from the steps to the gate.
At a signal from myself, my party on the steps arose, and I addressed the people of Oogh. I told them who I was, and how my skin had come to be black; I told them that I was going away, and that their governor was resolved to go with me; that I meant to leave a governor who would help them rebuild their city, and lead them in the ways of goodness and mercy; that the person whom I had selected for that office was the boy known as Figli Babadag, whose soundness of heart was worth to them more than the wisdom of years; and that such wisdom as was necessary would be supplied by him who was called the Blind Bowler, a man who had known how to be cheerful under affliction. And I asked them to say whether they would have the boy Figli for their governor, and the Blind Bowler for his aide.
A shout of approval went up from the multitude.
“And will you,” said I, turning to Figli, “lead these people in the ways of goodness and mercy, and help them to forget?”
“If you think I can,” said Figli, standing up very straight, “I will try.”
“And will you,” said I to the Blind Bowler, “keep faithfully at his right hand, and never fail him?”
“That I will!” said the Blind Bowler. “Keep everlastingly at it, that’s the motto!”
“The great King, my father,” said I, turning again to the people, “will build your city ten times fairer than it was. I have given directions for your help already, and food and shelter will soon be at hand. Farewell! I leave you in the care of a blind man and a child! A sound heart and a cheerful mind, my friends, are better than an army. Farewell!”
The multitude shouted back farewell, and my friend Urban and myself each kissed Figli on the cheek; but my daughter kissed him on both cheeks and hugged him to her heart; and then we went down the steps, leaving the pale and beautiful boy and the blind man alone, and passed out across the park through a lane opened in the crowd, down into the city toward the city gate.
As we came to the last street corner before reaching the city wall, my daughter pulled forth a handful of figs from her pocket and divided them laughingly with Urban and myself; and at that moment a party of eight men filed solemnly from around the corner, and came to a stop before us in a row. It was the eight tailors. They bowed gravely, and the first one of them said:
“Excellency, we implore you to take pity upon us. Our master is gone, our occupation is gone, we are friendless and alone; we can live no longer in the city of Oogh.”
“What do you wish me to do?” said I.
“We beseech you to take us with you, to be your servants, your slaves, anything. We can sew, we can knit, we can—”
“But I am going into exile,” said I. “I am going to hide my hideous face from the eyes of the world.”
“Listen, most merciful one! It is known to us that the missing button needs only to be sewn on the doublet by a tailor, with the proper thread, in order that your skin may be white again. Nine tailors are allowed for the trial, and here are eight!”
“But I have neither the button nor the thread.”
“No matter! We will search until we find them, or else turn black ourselves in the trial. Have pity upon us, Prince!”
“Oh, father,” said my daughter, “do let the poor things come along with us.”
“Very well,” said I, whereupon we walked on, and the eight tailors gave a faint cheer and fell into line behind us.
As we passed through the city gate, a loud singing struck up just outside the wall, and we beheld the three blind ballad singers, in the midst of a dozen idlers, prancing up and down in their ridiculous dance. They were shouting out one of their ballads, as follows:
My daughter laughed aloud, and at the sound of her voice one of the ballad singers cried out, “Ho! master blackface! Ballads or buttons, what will you buy?”
The idlers laughed, and the other two vagabonds sang out:
“Ballads or buttons! Buy, master blackface! Ballads or buttons!”
“What will you give for a button?” shouted the first, and he held up in my view a large ivory button, the identical one, beyond a doubt, which was missing from the doublet.
“A fig for a button!” I said, and held out one of the figs in my hand.
“A button for a fig! A bargain!” cried the first ballad singer, and taking the fig from me placed the button in my hand.
The idlers laughed at this nonsense, and we turned to go.
“Farewell, farewell!” cried the first ballad singer. “What do we say to the breaker of hearts who forgets her promise to marry?” The other two laughed, and began to sing.
We moved on down the road, followed by the tailors marching by fours, and as we departed we heard behind us the voices of the blind ballad singers for the last time, shouting out a song in this wise: