y! yet everybody might not have been born to your
position. Only you could have been given the heritage that is yours! My
Boy, yours is a mission, a responsibility, from the Creator of Life
Himself. Everybody can follow--but only God's chosen few can lead! And
you--oh, Boy! yours is a birthright above that of all other princes--if
you only knew!"

The young prince looked wistfully upward into the eyes of the elder man.

"Tell me, Uncle Paul! Dmitry always speaks of my birth with a reverence
and awe quite out of proportion to its possible consequence--poor old
man. And once even the Grand Duke Peter spoke of my 'divine origin'
though he could not be coaxed or wheedled into committing his wise self
any further. Now you, yourself the most reserved and secretive of
individuals when it pleases you to be so, have just been surprised into
something of the same expression. Do you wonder that I long to unravel
the mystery that you are all so determined to keep from me? I can learn
nothing at home--absolutely nothing! They glorify my mother--God bless
her memory! Everyone worships her! But they never speak of you, and they
are silent, too, about my father. They simply won't tell me a thing
about him, so I don't imagine that he could have been a very good king!
_Was_ he, Uncle Paul? Did you know him?"

"I never knew the king, Boy!--never even saw him!"

"But you must have heard--"

"Nothing, Boy, that I can tell you--absolutely nothing!"

Verdayne had risen again and was once more pacing back and forth under
the trees, as was his wont when troubled with painful memories.

"But my mother--you knew _her_!"

"Yes, yes--I knew your mother!"

"Tell me about her!"

A dull, hopeless agony came into the eyes of the older man. And so his
Gethsemane had come to him again! Every life has this garden to pass
through--some, alas! again and yet again! And Paul Verdayne had thought
that he had long since drained his cup of misery to the dregs. He knew
better now.

"Yes, I will tell you of your mother, Boy," he said, and there was a
strained, guarded note in his voice which his companion's quick ear did
not fail to catch. "But you must be patient if you wish to hear what
little there is, after all, that I can tell you. You must remember, my
Boy, that it is a long time since your mother--died--and men of my age
sometimes--forget!"

"I will remember," the Boy said, gently.

But as he looked up into the face of his friend, something