wall, stop grinding the faces of the poor and charging famine prices
for your grain."

Then the miller grew red in the face, and took up his bags of gold and
went away. But next day everyone bought wheat at a lower price than it
had been for many a long year, so that people knew the Wizard's words had
taken effect. This made him very popular, and when he again proclaimed
the danger of war and the necessity of building an invisible wall nearly
all the village came forward to ask him what they could do to insure a
stone in that guarding structure. Some of them whispered in his ear,
because they hated to have their secret faults proclaimed to their
neighbors.

Old Peter was among those who made inquiry as to what sacrifice they
should offer to avert the threatening danger. "I have," said he, "a pet
bird that pines in his cage. If I give him his liberty will that help
build up the wall?"

"Yes, Peter," said the Wizard. "For no good man keeps anything captive
that has the desire for freedom."

Some people paid their debts to help build the wall. Others began to go
to church after staying away for years and years. Others made up
long-standing quarrels with their relatives and old-time friends, and
these stones of reconciliation were, the Wizard proclaimed, the strongest
of all, since unity and love are the only impregnable fortresses.

Of course, there was some doubt about the wall, since nobody could prove
that it really existed. But the Wizard declared he saw it to the eastward
growing ever stronger and wider; and he traveled up and down the land