come a god.

Yes; Wah-wah was now a god. Unfound by the wailing Ainu and then forsaken, he had been given new life by a dreaming rogue, and mounted to all the skies. The uses of letters and the permutations of language had made his name Vodar, and as such his temples were wide over the known world. A thousand controversies had survived him; thousands of legends had been written; and many thousand wealths had been dedicated unto him. In his divine adventures were a retinue of inferior deities, upon whose genealogy many a battle had been waged and many a scepter stretched forth or taken. Yes the perfumed and gold-given temples of Vodar were the temples of Wah-wah, who became eternal for squatting before his cave and striking a spark from flint, persevering in his play until he brought forth fire. Still, he had been forgotten had not Lean-face been envious of Pobolo. Or even it may be said that poor, naked Wah-wah was forgotten in the glamour of his new name and fame.

Wansakalompo had taught his art to others; others had used their pictures to convey meaning; picture language was transformed into letters, which some genius had transferred to sounds. All of which followed Wah-wah's bringing fire into the lowlands with Ainu trailing the flames. What had followed had Wah-wah discovered some other secret, one unknown to this day, is a subject for speculation. Mankind developed with fire after making it necessary. Any other of Nature's myriad forces might have done as well for us.

However, Wah-wah and Ainu lived and died. And Wansakalompo and Red Lips lived and died. And Red Lips bestowed upon her son the sword of Wah-wah the Unseen. And on the flaked side of its blade were what Lean-face had always declared to be the visages of Wansakalompo as well as Wah-wah, Red Lips as surely as Ainu.

We find the descendants of these people in a large city near the sea-coast. They build temples in marble decorated with gold. Their ways are set with statues. They have music and festivals and silks and wine, wars, history, poetry, theatres,

sasination, tyrants, statesmen, demagogues, priests, fanatics, philosophers, physicians, sculptors, comedians, visions, miracles, prophecies. They are all the evolution of Wah-wah, Ugwuf, Pobolo, Lean-face and Wansakalompo, the aristocrats of their time.

Telles Eupator was writing in his garden. Ebony caryatids supported the inlaid wood upon which lay his roll of parchment. Beneath the table, the caryatids were laughing at the head of the god Jacchus, which was between them. The head of Jacchus and the teeth of the ebon caryatids were ivory.

It was summer, in a day for beauty to be still and listless, listless yet mayhap wistful, wistful but with thoughts coming and going like the butterflies and clouds that inspired them. Near Telles were two slaves, black as the ebony caryatids of the table. Ever and anon a pink petal, falling from a plum tree, attracted Telles' attention. Now his head, magnificently pink, would lift in survey of the scene, for Telles was a lover of beauty. The black slaves showed no curiosity, and turned not their heads, yet occasionally changed their gaze from one object to another as might be done with a rolling of the eyes.

Several free-born servants, under less decorous rules, idled about.

Near Telles Eupator sat a young man of that handsome degree that would have been less had it a more warlike intensity or a more sentimental or more pious, yet neither which beauty might have been his had he possessed none of these attributes at all. In his countenance mingled the light of a soldier dawdling over a poem, of the lover that was ready to leap to battle, of the student disturbed by day dreams of love.

"My dear nephew, is this not a beautiful world?" observed Telles, smiling in comfort. "Greatly do I abominate those

philosophers who entreat us meditate upon unpleasant matters."

"It is more a beauty than a delight," replied Ixander. "Joys come to me suddenly, and are forgotten surprisingly. Still I would not be a philosopher.' He changed his position.

"But," commented the elder one, "we must have some philosophy, in order to

appreciate the variety of arts. That you and I are in noble circumstance makes us duty-bound to reply with richest appreciation. The ripest plum for the reddest lips,' said your grandfather when he wooed your grandam; and this would would have meant nothing had she not responded, 'Kisses for flattery: the reddest for the wisest.' Thus, you see, riches for riches, with mutual duties. That you are a son of the king and I his brother should be facts remembered by each of us when we converse with the king's world. Angered or exhilarated we may be at times, and behave even as fools, as even the gods may do; but in the main, it is not that Ixander and Telles are speaking; they are prince and orator. As you rest that hand of yours on the ridge of the chair, you should be wary that it is a prince's hand that is resting and not let it rest awry.”

"I believe you are making me too vain, though I accept the responsibility," said

He

"I have never faltered," said Ixander. Telles continued: "It is duty to our possessions that makes us brave. Behold the place of man. He is surrounded with wealth, luxuries, servants and manifold inventions to gratify his senses. awakes in the morning to pleasant colors and perfumed airs, music and dancing. He passes the day in the midst of costly objects. He has but to say, 'I desire this,' and servants open his coffers to exchange his gold for the gold of an artist's lifetime. He is fed by strange countries; he is clothed by men of rare skill; he is bathed amid fantasies in marble. The mountain quarries come to him in statues; gardens are brought to him in an odorous vial. There is not anything whose feet come not to his feet. And then, in addition to these things, is man's greatest possession, the poor. Were it not for the poor, we should all be poor indeed. These meagre creatures toil for our welfare and build up our splendors, demanding little

in return save their humble appanage and a modest cot."

Ixander absent-mindedly picked up two white pebbles and struck one against the other. Then he tossed them away. "I am listening, my dear Telles," he averred, and put one hand to the side of his bronze-red hair.

Telles resumed: "Mankind has a resplendent history. At times it has dazzled the gods and given them human emotions. We have had wars and kingdoms, honors. treasures, thrones, the golden embellishments of state, jeweled emblems of power, ancient dynasties, bloody maintenance of privilege. And throughout it all, the poor have remained, for the most part loyal to

us.

They have fought our wars, fed our nobility, paid for our superiority and shouted in our honor. They have bled in distant lands and brought the plunder to our thrones. They have given us their sons and scattered us with jewels. Therefore is man not only to be thankful for his riches but not to forget that his most prolific riches are the meritorious if ignoble. poor."

"I think I have performed your instructions and teachings in advance. I have profited by your example more than by your words," rejoined Ixander. "Even the pretender to my father's throne, the misguided Harpakus, and Gorlius the demagogue, are to me but creatures to prove and test our stability."

"Harpakus, that long-nosed scavenger of hopes," laughed Telles Eupator. "If he could wear his ambition at the end of his nose, the nose would give it greater prominence than does his tongue. Besides, he might find that his ambitions, like some cheese, have a smell worse than their taste."

"I saw Gorlius in the street today. He was haranguing a mob on the unesteemed virtues of mechanics. I believe they were the same fellows that listened to him when I was a boy; if not, they are equally as ugly."

"And that is just why I commend the intelligence of the lower classes," returned Telles. "They are quite logical in their dim way. Harpakus claims the throne by right of having been kicked off it. His life was. spared through the avarice of a friendly jailor. He becomes pompous of

his escape and would try Fate again, relying entirely on the affinity between jailers and purses. They say that his home contains a royal adviser, ten slaves and an army of fifteen bowmen, with five other mercenaries who promise to mobilize at the word of command."

"He has also a daughter," said Ixander. Telles performed the ancient and witty gesture of nudging the other in the ribs. "I believe," he laughed, "that you would slaughter Harpakus and his fifteen bowmen for the sake of bearing off the lovely Anori."

"Perhaps I shall, some day, when the wine advises. You know, that to some, wine gives a loose tongue; with me it makes a loose sword."

"It would give Gorlius a new topic for his mob," remarked Telles. "Consider with what foam he would proclaim the deeds of princes that for a drunken spree go forth and slay a whole political party and abduct its lonely maiden, its priestess, the pledge of its wine-cups. I do believe that Gorlius would cogitate it a most arrogant prerogative. I do believe. Why, when I taxed my farmers half of their crops to pay for your cousin's wedding, Gorlius was eruptive of diatribes and adjectives for a week afterwards. He would have kept on it for a month had not your father thoughtfully increased the number of his mercenaries and thus infused the champion of cobblers with fresh rhetoric." "She is descended of the gods," quoth Ixander.

"Who? Ah! Anori! So the family once proclaimed. But I never heard the gods elucidate the subject."

"I have never told you what Pyro the priest once related to me," vouchsafed the prince.

"Pryo is a priest of dead gods and glittering nonsense."

"A fanatic, perhaps, it is true," muttered Ixander. "Yet listen! He led me to his temple one night, and on the way asked me, with a darkness in his manner darker than the darkness of night, 'Seest thou the moon?" "Truly,' I answered, smiling in the night; 'what of it?' He made no reply, but a little further on inquired, 'Seest thou the moonlight?' 'Yes,' I said, and again we went on in silence. 'Seest thou the moonlight on the laurel

trees?' he asked me, and I answered as before. At the gates of his temple he spoke again. Seest thou the moonlight on the marble, and the moonlight next to all the shadows. Even so is the obscure light mingled in the shadows of the past. Some can see.'

"He invited me within, and there stared at me by the light of a close torch. Peering into my eyes, he declared, 'Yes; you are he. Ixander, thou art body of the body of gods, as thy father knows. But this much I tell thee more: thou comest from the boldest, the highest of them all, and which is Vodar. And this much I tell thee more. There is one man alive today who knows the secret, the olden, name of Vodar. It is I that know, and I say it; he was first called by the name of Wah-wah, a word barbarian to our ears; and his first wife was Ainu. O prince, Wah-wah lived on earth many days, and Ainu was with him. These two had mortal spirits for the terrestrial existence. When they left the earth, they confided their earthly spirits to two others, man and woman, who were called Wansakalompo and Red-Lips; and these two died and left their spirits to two great others. And the divine truth I tell you their descendants are alive. One of them is Ixander, son of Cambysantes; the other is Anori, daughter of Harpakus. Great prince with an ancient soul, these two are the living forms of Wah-wah and Ainu.'

"He then showed me a broad sword made of flint-stone; upon it were the roughened forms of a man and woman, chipped thereon with some artless instrument. This sword he asserted to be more ancient than anything else preserved in the world. Pryo is of a traditional priesthood whose meeting-place and very name were secret. They worshipped fire and the sun. And it was weird to be shown this weapon of mysterious age and be told that my features had been lapidaried upon it by myself, thousands of years ago."

Ixander waited for the portentious uncle to respond. That ornate aristocrat, gave an abdominal sigh of some sentimental intent, and then uttered: "Tell your father nothing of this. His royal bosom has enough to vex it in this arrowy weather. Discontent is a flower that blooms overnight. There are some who

let not their lutes nor their swords remain long unplayed; and who knows when the war-flutes will frighten the shepherds' pipes on yonder hills?" "Then you do not believe this?"

"If Anori were in a more magnificent state, I might be prevailed on to credit the story. But it is not the will of the gods that Ixander, prince of Cecropolias, be fated for the daughter of a pretender. Now, were it the princess Artemesia, I should be in a more credulous mind."

Telles arose to his feet with protracted though not ungainly effort. Departing, he admonished the prince: "Do thy remembering from the future amid all that you wish it to hold. Forget all that might be troublous to a future king."

Ixander remained beneath the trees. He had appointed to meet Pryo that night. Pryo was eloquently uncertain as only a fanatic can be. His words were abstract and general, the bait only of his motive. "Come and know thy fate," he had said. "Fate is a marvel for those that are worthy."

Ixander meant to comply; it was out of curiosity, soul-adventure, the lure of the marvelous. Fate never bit the kisses of a more willing suitor. No more handsome face ever dreamed near the clouds of chance.

He

His was that mingled expression of mien in which delicacy and rigor made superb one the other. It was that countenance that seemed disappointed with the world without holding grudge against it. He looked upon wine as a feat of swallowing a liquid magic that supplies and mocks the demand for satisfaction. walked in battle as another display of futility. He beheld women as to say, Thou most beautiful disappointer of all. Yet with the goblet, the sword and the myrtlewreath, he was most courageous. It was his carelessness in the work of all that showed him fascinating, yet caused himself to be viewed finally as he viewed, a disappointment. Many a woman found Ixander's smile to be vexing: it predicted passion; its passion was loveless. His lips parted in bewildering gaiety. The same smile at the end was found cruel where it had been fancied innocent.

All this he knew and deplored, and unto the same he imputed the worldliness of the

world; blamed it for the gibbous grandeur of its emptiness. What he demanded of woman was romance; she gave him love. It is therefore plain why women desired his love and found only romance.

Notwithstanding, his life was not repressed. His natural spirits enlivened to the very whisper of pleasure. It was his expert knowledge of the time when that whisper would grow to a laugh and then sink to a gasp, that made him incredulous, cruel, enchanting. A prince may be enchanting without accusation of immasculinity. It is a term applied by men to women, and by women bestowed upon princes. For, in Ixander's day, princes were princes in stature as well as rank. Then (and in Ixander's case especially) it required no armor and silks to make him royal. In the nakedness of a god, he might have been mistaken for more, not less, than a prince.

He departed the banquet early that night and sought out Pryo. Pryo had completed his supplication and was dining on bread, roots, honey and water. He was not an accredited priest. It was not known how much influence he had with the gods. His following was a few; yet was he frequently harkened to, in sequestered circumstance, when other mystics were non-plussed.

In his garden was a walled space where he was wont to do divine rites, the extent of which he did not boast. Here was an oak tree, whose roots in the night seemed like great serpents; and branches, like the seats of the mighty dead. A low, moaning sound was in the leaves.

Thither proceeded the dark figures of Pryo and Ixander. The prince was tall, and the priest taller, but not as valiant in outline. He was lean, with deeper shad

OWS.

"The trees died and the men died; the acorns fell, and the men gave their loves. The trees sprouted again, and the children of men grew strong. These fell and those died again. There were many witherings and many deaths. And here is the mortal of the god; perhaps here is tree of his very tree. Wah-wah is come, and Ainu is come. They will come forever." So repeated Pryo the message he had previously given the prince.

Ixander climbed the oak, for among

its branches he perceived a woman. "Who are you?" he asked, supporting himself on the bough before her.

"Ainu," she replied, for so Pryo had instructed Anori.

In a crutch of the tree, beside them, lay the sword of Wah-wah. At this dull thing, shining out of the centuries, well might Time have become incarnate, to witness his oldest curiosity among men. And well had he not, for Time would have snatched his grim prize and thrust it into the deepest store-house of oblivion. Now, it lay among men.

"Take up the sword," came the deep voice of Pryo, below.

"What wonder is this?" Ixander murmured. Sparkling in the shadows of the flint still were its pristine indications of man and woman.

He glared as a lover at her before him. Moonlight and the shadows of branch were like a lace over her.

"Who would be so poor of heart as not to believe this!" he cried. "You have been mine for thousands of years. Our bodies lie like pressed ghosts upon that stone."

"Descend," said the priest.

Ixander was about to assist the maiden, when, filled with sudden fervor, he shoved the sword into his girdle, and, grasping the form of his ancient mate, steadied himself with free hand and carried her to a footing on the lowest branch, whence, . swinging with gigantic ease, he released her standing on earth.

Pryo lay hold of the sword and bade them rest their hands upon it.

"By this token," he intoned, "that was once and many times in your sacred possessions, and that bears the mark of your antique lives, I recognize, declare and sanctify you as prince and princess of love, king and queen of the world, god and goddess of time."

"Holy man, you command an obedient spirit," said Ixander.

"Joy and fear is with me," said Anori. "But this mystic marriage is short and ill-prepared," said Pryo. "Go your separate ways, each of you, until Vodar and his gods give their sign that the wedding has taken place in heaven. Keep the sword, Ixander. And Anori, back to thy father's house I conduct thee."

CHAPTER VI.

Pryo was a glorious mystic, and it was the vaguer faculties of men's minds that he was fond to control. He beheld in governments crude expositions of righteousness; he observed in religion obnoxious portrayals of divinity.

He belonged to a secret order whose beginning was prehistoric to themselves. They had possessed the sword of Wah-wah and wished to confer it upon the winner of a set of championship games, assuming that Wah-wah would abet his favorite. Pryo was not an unswerving believer in the divine attendance on championship struggles, and, one night, gaining access to the shrine of the sword, abstracted it and informed the king that the order was given to philosophies insidious, impious and dangerous to the reign. Cambyzantes thereupon banished them all, having them escorted by cavalry out of the city, parts of the way on the run, and received Pryo in high favor, to the high jealousy of other oracular devotees.

This was a hasty act of royal self-defense. Kingships are not ordinarily secure. The supreme office is a bold occupation and likely to be coveted by others of the bold. It has, likewise, necessary enemies, always awaiting their opportunity to assail. The inherited kingship in the mind of every dignified man is eventually disastrous to the lord of all.

In opposition to this, monarchs are brave. The dangers of reigning are not deemed more than the casual perils which many men undergo picturesquely.

Cambyzantes had a royal will, but no other ideal of government. He felt that the monarchical duty is to govern. Unto him, such government was but a function of himself. He was king. The fact included certain prerogatives. Who would steal this would be acting upon the same possessory instincts as if filching the meat from a lion. Discoursing on the lion's or the king's manner of originally having obtained the subject of dispute was not to the point. The meat was under his paw. The pretender might rage, and the demagogue rant; Cambyzantes would rule.

The pretender, Harpakus, was a good man and sincere, even though Telles Eupator had observed that the virtue of pre