become by conquest commonplace?
Must Mr. Mead, the grocer, talk as high as he? Lord! what a strange
world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble
to go mad!"

And he went dreamily out of the shop.

He paused outside the next one almost precisely as the Provost had
done two decades before.

[Illustration: "A FINE EVENING, SIR," SAID THE CHEMIST.]

"How uncommonly creepy this shop looks!" he said. "But yet somehow
encouragingly creepy, invitingly creepy. It looks like something in a
jolly old nursery story in which you are frightened out of your skin,
and yet know that things always end well. The way those low sharp
gables are carved like great black bat's wings folded down, and the
way those queer-coloured bowls underneath are made to shine like
giants eye-balls. It looks like a benevolent warlock's hut. It is
apparently a chemist's."

Almost as he spoke, Mr. Bowles, the chemist, came to his shop door in
a long black velvet gown and hood, monastic as it were, but yet with a
touch of the diabolic. His hair was still quite black, and his face
even paler than of old. The only spot of colour he carried was a red
star cut in some precious stone of strong tint, hung on his breast. He
belonged to the Society of the Red Star of Charity, founded on the
lamps displayed by doctors and chemists.

"A fine evening, sir," said the chemist. "Why, I can scarcely be
mistaken in supposing it to be your Majesty. Pray step inside and
share a bottle of sal-volatile, or anything that may take your fancy.
As it happens, there is an old acquaintance of your Majesty's in my
shop carousing (if I may be permitted the term) upon that beverage at
this moment."

The King entered the shop, which was an Aladdin's garden of shades and
hues, for as the chemist's scheme of colour was more brilliant than
the grocer's scheme, so it was arranged with even more delicacy and
fancy. Never, if the phrase may be employed, had such a nosegay of
medicines been presented to the artistic eye.

But even the solemn rainbow of that evening interior was rivalled or
even eclipsed by the figure standing in the centre of the shop. His
form, which was a large and stately one, was clad in a brilliant blue
velvet, cut in the richest Renaissance fashion, and slashed so as to
show gleams and gaps of a wonderful lemon or pale yellow. He had
several chains round his neck, and his plumes, which were of several
tints of bronze and gold, hung down to