ors, and they met without any sign of
constraint or enmity.

"Well, Mr. Prime Minister, how are things going?" inquired the King.

"Very well, indeed, sir," replied the minister, "now that your Majesty
has taken the necessary step to relieve us of all anxiety. And, though I
have not come on this occasion to intrude politics, it may interest you,
sir, to hear that on the question of the Spiritual Chamber, the
Archbishop and I have come to an arrangement, and the necessary
legislation is to be carried through by the consent of both parties."

"Very gratifying, I am sure," said the King. "How did it come about?"

The Prime Minister hesitated. "Well, sir," he said, "there were several
contributing causes: I need not go into them all. The one thing,
however, which made some modification of our plans clearly necessary was
the death of the Archimandrite of Cappadocia. After that our proposed
consecration of Free Churchmen to the new bishoprics ceased to be
possible. No doubt your Majesty will feel relieved."

"Yes, I am," murmured the King mildly.

And so was the Prime Minister; for that event, happening so fortuitously
at the right moment, had saved his face; his political retreat was
covered, partly at any rate, by the death--in a queer odor of sanctity
all his own--of that exiled patriarch of the Eastern Church.

His exit, though opportune, had not been dramatic; attention being at
the moment otherwise directed. His two wives nursed him devotedly to the
end, and wrapped him for burial in the magnificent cape which in his
brief day of political importance the Prime Minister had given him. Very
quietly and unostentatiously he was laid to rest under the rites of an
alien Church--for his own would have none of him; nor was there any one
left to say of him now, in the land of his exile and temporary
adoption, "Ah, Lord," or "Ah, his glory!" Only in his duplicated
domestic circle was he in anywise missed; polities had shifted the
ground from under him, and he had become negligible.

II

The King's recovery was the event of the new year, not only giving it an
auspicious send-off, but lending thereafter a peculiar flavor to the
whole social calendar. For months, addresses of congratulation kept
coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and
at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part
during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and
focussed the applau