the rain beating unnoticed
on his gray hair.

"They've gone to tell the King," said Stedman; "but you'd better get
something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to present you
properly."

"The King," said Captain Travis, with some awe; "is there a king?"

"I never saw a king," Gordon remarked, "and I'm sure I never expected
to see one sitting on a log in the rain."

"He's a very good king," said Stedman, confidentially; "and though you
mightn't think it to look at him, he's a terrible stickler for
etiquette and form. After supper he'll give you an audience; and if
you have any tobacco, you had better give him some as a present, and
you'd better say it's from the President: he doesn't like to take
presents from common people, he's so proud. The only reason he borrows
mine is because he thinks I'm the President's son."

"What makes him think that?" demanded the consul, with some shortness.
Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and
said that he guessed some one must have told him.

The consul's office was divided into four rooms with an open court in
the middle, filled with palms, and watered somewhat unnecessarily by a
fountain.

"I made that," said Stedman, in a modest, offhand way. "I made it out
of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring. And now I'm making one
for the King. He saw this and had a lot of bamboo sticks put up all
over the town, without any underground connections, and couldn't make
out why the water wouldn't spurt out of them. And because mine spurts,
he thinks I'm a magician."

"I suppose," grumbled the consul, "some one told him that too."

[Illustration: "I never saw a king," Gordon remarked.]

"I suppose so," said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.

There was a veranda around the consul's office, and inside the walls
were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated papers, and there
was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool-looking
beds. The place was as clean as a kitchen. "I made the furniture,"
said Stedman, "and the Bradleys keep the place in order."

"Who are the Bradleys?" asked Albert.

"The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me," said Stedman; "they
deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped here for coal, and
they act as my servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the other Bradley,
Jr."

"Then vessels do stop here occasionally?" the consul said, with a
pleased smile.

"Well, not often," said Stedman. "Not so very often; about on