ed; I
begged for information as to the three wearers; and the king entered
with gusto into the details already given. Here was a strange thing,
that he should have talked so much of his family, and not once mentioned
that relative of whom he was plainly the most proud. Nay, more: he had
hitherto boasted of his father; thenceforth he had little to say of him;
and the qualities for which he had praised him in the past were now
attributed where they were due,--to the uncle. A confusion might be
natural enough among islanders, who call all the sons of their
grandfather by the common name of father. But this was not the case with
Tembinok'. Now the ice was broken the word uncle was perpetually in his
mouth; he who had been so ready to confound was now careful to
distinguish; and the father sank gradually into a self-complacent
ordinary man, while the uncle rose to his true stature as the hero and
founder of the race.

The more I heard and the more I considered, the more this mystery of
Tembinok's behaviour puzzled and attracted me. And the explanation, when
it came, was one to strike the imagination of a dramatist. Tembinok' had
two brothers. One, detected in private trading, was banished, then
forgiven, lives to this day in the island, and is the father of the
heir-apparent, Paul. The other fell beyond forgiveness. I have heard it
was a love-affair with one of the king's wives, and the thing is highly
possible in that romantic archipelago. War was attempted to be levied;
but Tembinok' was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brother
escaped in a canoe. He did not go alone. Tembinatake had a hand in the
rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for a weakling brother
was banished by that brother's son. The fugitives came to shore in other
islands, but Tembinok' remains to this day ignorant of their fate.

So far history. And now a moment for conjecture. Tembinok' confused
habitually, not only the attributes and merits of his father and his
uncle, but their diverse personal appearance. Before he had even spoken,
or thought to speak, of Tembinatake, he had told me often of a tall,
lean father, skilled in war, and his own schoolmaster in genealogy and
island arts. How if both were fathers, one natural, one adoptive? How if
the heir of Tembaitake, like the heir of Tembinok' himself, were not a
son, but an adopted nephew? How if the founder of the monarchy, while he
worked for his brother, worked at the same time for t