y be not troubled with the trouble of rule'; you, who
have taken the king's rule from him and sit enthroned within his seat;
is his sin not yours today? If men should add but one hour to your day's
labour, or make but one fraction dearer the bread you eat, would you not
rise up as one man? Yet, what is dealt out to men beyond seas whom you
rule wounds you not. Nay, have you not sometimes said, as kings of old:
'It matters not who holds out our sword, marauder or speculator, so he
calls it ours, we must cloak up the evil it has done!' Think you, no
other curses rise to heaven but yours? Where is your sword? Into whose
hand has it fallen? Take it quickly and cleanse it!'"

Peter Halket crouched, looking upwards; then he cried: "Master, I cannot
give that message, I am a poor unlearn'd man. And if I should go to
England and cry aloud, they would say, 'Who is this, who comes preaching
to a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was
not his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?' and they would
laugh me to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not
well remember it; give me other work to do."

And the stranger said, "Take a message to the men and women of this
land. Go, from the Zambezi to the sea, and cry to its white men and
women, and say: 'I saw a wide field, and in it were two fair beasts.
Wide was the field about them and rich was the earth with sweet scented
herbs, and so abundant was the pasturage that hardly might they consume
all that grew about them: and the two were like one to another, for
they were the sons of one mother. And as I looked, I saw, far off to the
northward, a speck within the sky, so small it was, and so high it was,
that the eye scarce might mark it. Then it came nearer and hovered over
the spot where the two beasts fed:--and its neck was bare, and its
beak was hooked, and its talons were long, and its wings strong. And it
hovered over the field where the two beasts were; and I saw it settle
down upon a great white stone; and it waited. And I saw more specks to
the northward, and more and more came onward to join him who sat upon
the stone. And some hovered over the beasts, and some sharpened their
beaks on the stones; and some walked in and out between the beasts'
legs. And I saw that they were waiting for something.

"'Then he who first came flew from one of the beasts to the other, and
sat upon their necks, and put his beak within their ears. And