et them by accident, and we are too few to slay them,
or when one goes too close to their camp. But seldom do they hunt us,
for they find what food they need among the deer and wild cattle, and,
too, we make them gifts, for are we not intruders in their country?
Really we live upon good terms with them, though I should not care to
meet one were there not many spears in my party."

"I should like to visit this Camp of the Lions," I said.

"Oh, no, you must not!" cried the girl. "That would be terrible. They
would eat you." For a moment, then, she seemed lost in thought, but
presently she turned upon me with: "You must go now, for any minute
Buckingham may come in search of me. Long since should they have
learned that I am gone from the camp--they watch over me very
closely--and they will set out after me. Go! I shall wait here until
they come in search of me."

"No," I told her. "I'll not leave you alone in a land infested by
lions and other wild beasts. If you won't let me go as far as your
camp with you, then I'll wait here until they come in search of you."

"Please go!" she begged. "You have saved me, and I would save you, but
nothing will save you if Buckingham gets his hands on you. He is a bad
man. He wishes to have me for his woman so that he may be king. He
would kill anyone who befriended me, for fear that I might become
another's."

"Didn't you say that Buckingham is already the king?" I asked.

"He is. He took my mother for his woman after he had killed Wettin.
But my mother will die soon--she is very old--and then the man to whom
I belong will become king."

Finally, after much questioning, I got the thing through my head. It
appears that the line of descent is through the women. A man is merely
head of his wife's family--that is all. If she chances to be the
oldest female member of the "royal" house, he is king. Very naively
the girl explained that there was seldom any doubt as to whom a child's
mother was.

This accounted for the girl's importance in the community and for
Buckingham's anxiety to claim her, though she told me that she did not
wish to become his woman, for he was a bad man and would make a bad
king. But he was powerful, and there was no other man who dared
dispute his wishes.

"Why not come with me," I suggested, "if you do not wish to become
Buckingham's?"

"Where would you take me?" she asked.

Where, indeed! I had not thought of that. But before I could