uffer no more. For the tigers, he does not fear them. He runs
in green woods now where there is none to hunt. He is up and away. The
Blessed One was once a deer as gentle as yours."

But still the child wept, and the Queen broke down utterly. "Oh, if life
be a dream, let us wake, let us wake!" she sobbed. "For evil things walk
in it that cannot live in the light. Or let us dream deeper and forget.
Go, little son, yet stay--for who can tell what waits us when the King
comes. Let us meet him here."

For she believed that Dwaymenau would certainly carry the tale of her
speech to the King, and, if so, what hope but death together?

That night, after the feasting, when the girls were dancing the dance
of the fairies and spirits, in gold dresses, winged on the legs and
shoulders, and high, gold-spired and pinnacled caps, the King missed the
little Prince, Ananda, and asked why he was absent.

No one answered, the women looking upon each other, until Dwaymenau,
sitting beside him, glimmering with rough pearls and rubies, spoke
smoothly: "Lord, worshipped and beloved, the two boys quarreled this
day, and Ananda's deer attacked our Mindon. He had a madness upon him
and thrust with his horns. But, Mindon, your true son, flew in upon him
and in a great fight he slit the beast's throat with the knife you gave
him. Did he not well?"

"Well," said the King briefly. "But is there no hurt? Have searched? For
he is mine."

There was arrogance in the last sentence and her proud soul rebelled,
but smoothly as ever she spoke: "I have searched and there is not the
littlest scratch. But Ananda is weeping because the deer is dead, and
his mother is angry. What should I do?"

"Nothing. Ananda is worthless and worthless let him be! And for that
pale shadow that was once a woman, let her be forgotten. And now, drink,
my Queen!"

And Dwaymenau drank but the drink was bitter to her, for a ghost had
risen upon her that day. She had never dreamed that such a scandal had
been spoken, and it stunned her very soul with fear, that the Queen
should know her vileness and the cheat she had put upon the King. As
pure maid he had received her, and she knew, none better, what the doom
would be if his trust were broken and he knew the child not his.
She herself had seen this thing done to a concubine who had a little
offended. She was thrust living in a sack and this hung between two
earthen jars pierced with small holes, and thus she was set afloat o