shared with the elder an absorbing
love of nature in all her varied and glorious forms; and in February,
always in February, Verdayne found time to steal away from England for a
brief visit to that far-off country in the south of Europe from which
the Boy came. Many remembered that Verdayne, like an uncle of his, Lord
Hubert Aldringham, had been much given to foreign travel in his younger
days and had made many friends and acquaintances among the nobility and
royalty of other lands, and although it was strange, they thought it was
not at all improbable that the lad was connected with some one of those
great families across the Channel.

As for Paul and the Boy, they knew not what people thought or said, and
cared still less. There was too strong a bond of _camaraderie_ between
them to be disturbed by the murmurings of a wind that could blow neither
of them good or ill.

And the Boy was now twenty years of age.

Suddenly Paul Zalenska broke their long silence.

"Do you know, Uncle, I sometimes have a queer feeling of fear that my
father must have done something terrible in his life--something to make
strong men shrink and shudder at the thought--something--_criminal_! Oh,
I dare not think of that!" he went on hastily. "I dare not--I dare not!
I think the knowledge of it would drive me mad!"

His voice sank to a half-whisper and there was a note of horror in his
words.

"But, what a king he must have been!--what a miserable apology for all
that royalty should be by every law, human or divine! Why isn't his name
heralded over the length and breadth of the kingdom in paeans of praise?
Why isn't the whole world talking of his valor, his beneficence, his
statesmanship? What is a king created a king for, if not to make
history?"

He fought silently for a moment to regain his self-control, forcing the
hideous idea from him and at last speaking with an air of finality
beyond his years.

"No, I won't think of it! May the King of the world endow me with the
strength of the gods and the wisdom of the ancient seers, that I may
make up by my efficiency for all my father's deplorable lack, and become
all that my mother meant me to be when she gave me to the world!"

He stretched out his arms in a passionate appeal to Heaven, and Paul
Verdayne, looking up at him, realized as he had never before that the
Boy certainly had within him the stuff of which kings should be made.

The Boy was not going to disappoint him. He was goi