ere
breaking, shouldering their way at the door--a rabble of terrible faces.
Their fury was partly checked when only a sleeping child and two women
confronted them, but their leader, a grim and evil-looking man, strode
from the huddle.

"Where is the son of the King?" he shouted. "Speak, women! Whose is this
boy?"

Sundari laid her hand upon her son's shoulder. Not a muscle of her face
flickered.

"This is his son."

"His true son--the son of Maya the Queen?"

"His true son, the son of Maya the Queen."

"Not the younger--the mongrel?"

"The younger--the mongrel died last week of a fever."

Every moment of delay was precious. Her eyes saw only a monk and a boy
fleeing across the wide river.

"Which is Maya the Queen?"

"This," said Sundari. "She cannot speak. It is her son--the Prince."

Maya had veiled her face with her hands. Her brain swam, but she
understood the noble lie. This woman could love. Their lord would not be
left childless. Thought beat like pulses in her--raced along her veins.
She held her breath and was dumb.

His doubt was assuaged and the lust of vengeance was on him--a madness
seized the man. But even his own wild men shrank back a moment, for to
slay a sleeping child in cold blood is no man's work.

"You swear it is the Prince. But why? Why do you not lie to save him if
you are the King's woman?"

"Because his mother has trampled me to the earth. I am the Indian
woman--the mother of the younger, who is dead and safe. She jeered at
me--she mocked me. It is time I should see her suffer. Suffer now as I
have suffered, Maya the Queen!"

This was reasonable--this was like the women he had known. His doubt was
gone--he laughed aloud.

"Then feed full of vengeance!" he cried, and drove his knife through the
child's heart.

For a moment Sundari wavered where she stood, but she held herself and
was rigid as the dead.

"Tha-du! Well done!" she said with an awful smile. "The tree is broken,
the roots cut. And now for us women--our fate, O master?"

"Wait here," he answered. "Let not a hair of their heads be touched.
Both are fair. The two for me. For the rest draw lots when all is done."

The uproar surged away. The two stood by the dead boy. So swift had been
his death that he lay as though he still slept--the black lashes pressed
upon his cheek.

With the heredity of their different races upon them, neither wept. But
silently the Queen opened her arms; wide as a woman that entrea