t have
dreamed of making any row if they had shot him or hanged him, for the
matter of that.'

'You can never tell,' said the Duke. 'Somebody might have raised the
Civis Romanus cry----'

'Yes, but he wasn't any longer Civis Romanus,' Soame Rivers objected.

'Do you think that would matter much if a cry was wanted against the
Government?' the Duke asked, with a smile.

'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Sir Rupert. 'But whatever their reasons, I
think the victors did the wisest thing possible in putting their man on
board their big ironclad, the "Almirante Cochrane," and setting him
ashore at Cherbourg.

'With a polite intimation, I presume, that if he again returned to the
territory of Gloria he would be shot without form of trial,' added Soame
Rivers.

'But he will return,' Helena said. 'He will, I am sure of it, and
perhaps they may not find it so easy to shoot him then as they think
now. A man like that is not so easily got rid of.'

Helena spoke with great animation, and her earnestness made Sir Rupert
smile.

'If that is so,' said Soame Rivers, 'they would have done better if they
had shot him out of hand.'

Helena looked slightly annoyed as she replied quickly, 'He is a strong
man. I wish there were more men like him in the world.'

'Well,' said Sir Rupert, 'I suppose we shall all see him soon and judge
for ourselves. Helena seems to have made up her mind already. Shall we
go upstairs?'

'My great deed was too great' held possession that day of the mind and
heart of Helena Langley.

CHAPTER VI

'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'

London, eager for a lion, lionised Ericson. That royal sport of
lion-hunting, practised in old times by kings in Babylon and Nineveh, as
those strange monuments in the British Museum bear witness, is the
favourite sport of fashionable London to-day. And just at that moment
London lacked its regal quarry. The latest traveller from Darkest
Africa, the latest fugitive pretender to authority in France, had
slipped out of the popular note and the favours of the Press. Ericson
came in good time. There was a gap, and he filled it.

He found himself, to his amazement and his amusement, the hero of the
hour. Invitations of all kinds showered upon him; the gates of great
houses yawned wide to welcome him; had he been gifted like Kehama with
the power of multiplying his personality, he could scarcely have been
able to accept every invitation that was thrust upon hi