m and possessions sufficient to keep thee
in comfort for the rest of thy days."

"I desire naught but to serve thee," Pedro answered, "I wish to remain
the faithful attendant of one who will follow nobly in the footsteps
of thy father."

So everybody was satisfied.

[Illustration: He crouched on his throne and imagined he saw
angels and demons and fairies. (_Page 241_).]

The Paradise in the Sea

Hiram, king of Tyre, was a foolish old man. He lived so long and grew
to such a venerable age that he absuredly imagined he would never die.
The idea gained strength daily in his mind and thus he mused:

"David, king of the Jews, I knew, and afterward his son, the wise King
Solomon. But wise as he was, Solomon had to appeal to me for
assistance in building his wondrous Temple, and it was only with the
aid of the skilled workmen I sent to him that he successfully
accomplished the erection of that structure. David, the sweet singer
in Israel, who, as a mere boy slew the giant Goliath, has passed away.
I still live. It must be that I shall never die. Men die. Gods live
for ever. I must be a god, and why not?"

He put that question to the chief of his counselors, who, however, was
much too wise to answer it. Now the counselors of the king had never
yet failed to answer his queries, and so Hiram felt sure he had at
last puzzled them by a question beyond the power of mortal man to
answer. That was another proof, he told himself, that he was different
from other men and kings--that, in short, he was a god.

"I must be, I must be," he muttered to himself, and he repeated this
to himself so regularly that he came to the conclusion it was true.

"It is not I, but the voice of the Spirit of God that is in me that
speaks," he said to himself, and he thought this remark so clever that
he regarded it as still further proof. It is so easy to delude one's
self.

Then he decided to make the great secret known to the people, and the
doddering old man thought if he would do this in an unusual way, his
subjects would have no doubts. He did not make a proclamation
commanding everybody to believe in him as a god; he whispered the
secret first to his chief counselor and instructed him to tell it to
one person daily and to order all who were informed to do likewise. In
this way the news soon spread to the remotest corners of the country,
for if you work out a little sum you will discover that if you take
the figure one and d