the rebels had been signal and complete, the queen herself was safe and
sound, and Dick was disposed to think that, under the circumstances, he
would have no great difficulty in stamping out the smouldering remains
of the rebellion.

Nor was he mistaken, as circumstances soon proved. He proclaimed the
missing nobles outlaws, announced the confiscation of their property,
and offered a substantial reward for their persons, dead or alive,
which, with the terrible threats against all who should dare to harbour
or help them directly or indirectly, produced such a wholesome effect
that, within four days, every one of the missing men had been
ignominiously brought in and surrendered. And now, each man anxious
only to save his own skin, not only did the five--of whom Nimri,
Sachar's brother-in-law was one--proceed to lay the blame of the whole
affair upon Sachar, accusing him of influencing them by alternate bribes
and threats, but they also testified against certain other nobles who,
but for this, might have gone scot free and unsuspected; so that
ultimately no less than eleven of Ulua's most powerful and ambitious
nobles found themselves in danger of losing their heads in consequence
of their ambition having o'erleaped itself.

And now, Dick and Earle found themselves confronted with a difficulty,
for there were no such things as civil or criminal courts of justice in
Ulua, criminals being in the usual course haled before the _shiref_ of
the particular district in which the crime was committed, and summarily
sentenced by him to such punishment as he, in his wisdom, might deem
meet and adequate; while, if the crime was of a specially serious
character--as in the present case--it was the monarch who pronounced
judgment and determined the nature of the punishment.

But the two white men felt that it would never do to permit the young
queen to be saddled with the responsibility of judging eleven rebels
against her sovereign authority, and with the onus of personally
determining what amount of punishment they should receive; they
therefore put their heads together and, without very much difficulty,
drafted a scheme for the establishment of courts of justice, somewhat
similar in character to those in England, wherein criminals could be
tried and sentenced by duly qualified judges; though they decided that
the Uluans were not yet ripe for the introduction of the jury system.
This scheme they first submitted to Lyga, who, after