e to the staff of a slender sapling. Wonota got out to help
Helen gather some of the more delicately fronded ferns. Ruth turned her
back upon them and began climbing what seemed to be a path among the
boulders and trees.

This was not a very large island, and it was well out from the American
shore, but inside the line between the States and Canada. Although the
path Ruth followed seemed well defined, she scarcely thought the island
was inhabited.

As they had paddled past it in the canoe there had been no sign of man's
presence. It had been left in the state of nature, and nothing, it
seemed, had been done to change its appearance from the time that the
first white man had seen it.

Some rods up the ascent Ruth came to an open place--a table of rock that
might really have been a giant's dining-table, so flat and perfectly
shaped it was. She could look down upon Helen and Wonota, and they looked
up and called to her.

"Look out for the pirates!" shouted Helen, with laughter.

Ruth waved her hand, smiling, and, crossing the rock, parted the brush
and stepped out of sight of her friends. Two steps she took through the
clinging bushes when a most surprising figure started up before her.

There was plenty of light, even if the sun had gone down. She was not
uncertain at all as to the nature of the figure that confronted her--that
of a man.

She saw almost instantly that the old man's brown eyes were more like a
child's in expression than like an angry man's. He grinned at her, but
the grimace was involuntary or meaningless.

"Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!"

Ruth remained both quiet and speechless, looking into his wrinkled old
face calmly. She thought he must be a beggar from his clothing, but she
could not imagine him a robber, nor even one of Helen's "pirates." As she
said nothing the old man repeated his sibilant warning:

"Hush!"

"I am 'hushing' just as hard as I can," whispered the girl in return, and
smiling a little now. "Why must I 'hush'?"

"Hush!" he said again, quite as earnestly. "You are in danger of your
life, young woman."

"Not from you, I am sure," she returned. "You would not try to hurt me."

"Hush!" he repeated, looking back over his shoulder into the thicker
wood. "They may come at any moment now. And although I am their king,
they would kill you. You see, kings aren't as powerful now as they used
to be before the war."

"So I understand," agreed Ruth soberly. "But who are you king of-