suppose it will," said the king gloomily; "but you must remember
you are the only friend I have, and I have reached an age when a man
does not pick up friends readily."

Cromwell stopped in his walk, and grasped the king by the arm. "And
are not you the only friend I have?" he said. "And why can you not
abandon this ghastly sham and come with me, as I asked you to at
first? How can you hesitate when you think of the glorious freedom of
the African forest, and compare it with this cribbed, and cabined, and
confined business we are now at?"

The king shook his head slowly, and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
He seemed to have some trouble in keeping it alight, probably because
of the prohibition on the wall.

"As I said before," replied the king, "I am too old. There are no
'pubs' in the African forest where a man can get a glass of beer when
he wants it. No, Ormond, African travel is not for me. If you are
resolved to go--go, and God bless you; I will stay at home and
carefully nurse your fame. I will from time to time drop appetizing
little paragraphs into the papers about your wanderings, and when you
are ready to come back to England, all England will be ready to listen
to you. You know how interest is worked up in the theatrical business
by judicious puffing in the papers, and I imagine African exploration
requires much the same treatment. If it were not for the press, my
boy, you could explore Africa till you were blind and nobody would
hear a word about it; so I will be your advance agent, and make ready
for your home coming."

At this point in the conversation between these two historical
characters, the janitor of the theatre put his head into the room and
reminded the celebrities that it was very late; whereupon both king
and commoner rose with some reluctance and washed themselves--the king
becoming, when he put on the ordinary dress of an Englishman, Mr.
James Spence, while Cromwell, after a similar transformation, became
Mr. Sidney Ormond; and thus, with nothing of royalty or dictatorship
about them, the two strolled up the narrow street into the main
thoroughfare, and entered their favorite midnight restaurant, where,
over a belated meal, they continued the discussion of the African
project, which Spence persisted in looking upon as one of the maddest
expeditions that had ever come to his knowledge. But the talk was
futile--as most talk is--and within a month from that time Ormond was
on the ocean, he