up his
triumph.

"I sympathize with you," he spoke gently, "and my sympathy and word
shall help you. We do not welcome strangers among us, for strangers have
usually proved themselves our enemies and have done us wrong. But to you
I give the freedom of our kingdom. Search where you will, at what hours
you will, and when you have found a single proof that your stolen
property is among my people--when you have seen a face that you
recognize as one of the robbers, return to me and I shall make
restitution and punish the evil-doers."

So intensely he spoke, so filled with reason and truth were his words,
that Nathaniel thrust out his hand in token of acceptance of the king's
terms. And as Strang gripped that hand Captain Plum saw the young girl's
face over the prophet's shoulder--a face, white as death in its terror,
that told him all he had heard was a lie.

"And when you have done with my people," continued the king, "you will
go among that other race, along the mainland, where men have thrown off
the restraints of society to give loose reign to lust and avarice; where
the Indian is brutified that his wife may be intoxicated by compulsion
and prostituted by violence before his eyes; where the forest cabins and
the streets of towns are filled with half-breeds; where there stalk
wretches with withered and tearless eyes, who are in nowise troubled by
recollection of robbery, rape and murder. And _there_ you will find whom
you are looking for!"

Strang had risen to his feet. His eyes blazed with the fire of smothered
hatred and passion and his great voice rolled through his beard,
tremulous with excitement, but still deep and rich, like the booming of
some melodious instrument. He flung aside his hat as he paced back and
forth; his shaggy hair fell upon his shoulders; huge veins stood out
upon his forehead--and Nathaniel sat mute as he watched this lion of a
man whose great throat quivered with the power that might have stirred a
nation--that might have made him president instead of king. He waited
for the thunder of that throat and his nerves keyed themselves to meet
its bursting passion. But when Strang spoke again it was in a voice as
soft and as gentle as a woman's.

"Those are the men who have vilified us, Captain Plum; who have covered
us with crimes that we have never committed; who have driven our people
into groups that they may be free from depredation; who watch like
vultures to despoil our women; wild wifel