There was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for some years to come -- in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few--peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't get anything for it, either.
But I explained it to the king myself.

I said it was done with a dynamite bomb.

This information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before.

However, it was a noble miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin.

I thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right.