And there he left them, because perforce he could do nothing else. And
there, too, we leave them, curled up side by side in the darkness and
safety, reconciled, and a happy couple at last.

X

THE KING'S SON

They found the king's son lying in a bed of reeds with his sister, the
king's daughter, and although the prince and princess fought royally,
as befitted their rank, they were smothered up roughly in sacks and
carried speedily--the queen might return at any moment and want the
captors--to the Governor of all the Provinces, and the Governor spake
thus:

"Oho! A royal pair, eh? They shall be sent to the capital, but first
we must put them in an inclosure while we knock up some kind of a cage."

And into "an inclosure" were they, therefore, cast, and it was small
and bare, but for one box with dried grass in it; and the walls of the
place were of corrugated iron nine feet high, so that escape looked
impossible. Ransom was out of the question, and rescue a wild, but
still faintly possible, dream--they could even then hear their father
speaking in a mighty voice very far away, but their mother, they knew,
would be following their trail in terrible silence.

Meantime they were king's children, and it behooved them to carry
themselves as such in the presence of the enemy. Wherefore did they
neither cry nor grieve (outwardly), nor sulk, nor cast themselves down
or about with despair or rage. They just sat down side by side, and
put their heads together, and stared with haughty insolence at the
common crowd, "the lesser breeds without the law," who gathered to
inspect them. It is not every day men get a chance to spit at and make
mock of a king's son, whose father, as like as not, killed one's mother
or little brother with no more thought than you or I would kill a
rabbit, and the crowd made the most of that chance.

But luckily night, who was their godfather, came stalking swiftly
westward, as he does in those wild parts, and flung his protecting
cloak over them, and the crowd melted to its fleshpots, and the magic
of the dark settled down over all.

One by one the little lights twinkled out in the huts and tents of
their captors, and the deep bass drone of men's voices within mingled
with the shrill cackle of women, and the high song of the mosquitoes
without; and the smell of cooking and tobacco together came to them, so
that they sniffed aloofly and stirred from their places.

A pariah dog, lea