For one pulsing second the two men stood and looked at each other; and
to a looker-on it might have appeared that, however laconic and
indifferent their attitude, their relationship was not solely that of
officer and subordinate. The elder man, in his gruff way, was the
friend of the man under him. The younger had acquired a respect that
held something deeper than casual liking, and his face showed it now
as he hesitated before breaking his news. Then he said, very simply:

"The King is dead."

A quick, incredulous expression filled Carew's eyes.

"The King?..." he repeated. "Not ... surely not ..." He paused,
leaving his sentence unfinished.

"Yes. King Edward. After a few days' illness."

The man's mouth grew rigid. He stood like a figure of bronze, staring
with unseeing eyes to the far horizon. Stanley drew in his breath a
little sharply. Yes, he had been right, the news had hit Carew very
hard.

"When?..." came at last, abruptly.

"A fortnight ago. Just after you left. The funeral took place
yesterday."

Carew made no comment. Evidently it was true. Little else mattered.
Nearly all through this trek of his round those distant kraals his
King had been lying dead, and he had not known it. Such a man as he is
not stunned by tidings; but he recedes still further into his shell,
if possible. There is no comment, no discussion, just a grim silence
sealing a deep pain that cannot express itself.

He stayed a moment longer, while Stanley told him a few details, and
then he went away into his hut and shut his door to the sunlight--one
of those exiles for whom the news had, as it were, an added sorrow,
because during the first shock he had remained in ignorance, and had
thus been prevented joining in the loyal homage of grief that had been
offered by his countrymen from the four corners of the earth.

It was thus with many of the far-off Empire-builders. They heard so
late, so unpreparedly, so suddenly; and in the first shock, an exile
which had been a calmly accepted condition, became almost a menace,
seemed swiftly to develop a force. The men in the far places _felt_
their aloofness; knew that their souls were beating vainly against
prison bars, for the longing to annihilate space and stand beside the
beloved dead. That quiet band of men whom we sometimes call "The
Pathfinders," and who go away across the world to bring the wilderness
into line; to smooth the rough, link the severed, subdue the untamed,
and car