c records. Every detail connected
with the astonishing episode, from beginning to end, was romantic even
when it was most productive of realistic results. When it is related,
it always begins with the story of the tall and kingly Samavian youth
who walked out of the palace in the early morning sunshine singing the
herdsmen's song of beauty of old days. Then comes the outbreak of the
ruined and revolting populace; then the legend of the morning on the
mountain side, and the old shepherd coming out of his cave and finding
the apparently dead body of the beautiful young hunter. Then the
secret nursing in the cavern; then the jolting cart piled with
sheepskins crossing the frontier, and ending its journey at the barred
entrance of the monastery and leaving its mysterious burden behind.
And then the bitter hate and struggle of dynasties, and the handful of
shepherds and herdsmen meeting in their cavern and binding themselves
and their unborn sons and sons' sons by an oath never to be broken.
Then the passing of generations and the slaughter of peoples and the
changing of kings,--and always that oath remembered, and the Forgers of
the Sword, at their secret work, hidden in forests and caves. Then the
strange story of the uncrowned kings who, wandering in other lands,
lived and died in silence and seclusion, often laboring with their
hands for their daily bread, but never forgetting that they must be
kings, and ready,--even though Samavia never called. Perhaps the whole
story would fill too many volumes to admit of it ever being told fully.

But history makes the growing of the Secret Party clear,--though it
seems almost to cease to be history, in spite of its efforts to be
brief and speak only of dull facts, when it is forced to deal with the
Bearing of the Sign by two mere boys, who, being blown as unremarked as
any two grains of dust across Europe, lit the Lamp whose flame so
flared up to the high heavens that as if from the earth itself there
sprang forth Samavians by the thousands ready to feed it--Iarovitch and
Maranovitch swept aside forever and only Samavians remaining to cry
aloud in ardent praise and worship of the God who had brought back to
them their Lost Prince. The battle-cry of his name had ended every
battle. Swords fell from hands because swords were not needed. The
Iarovitch fled in terror and dismay; the Maranovitch were nowhere to be
found. Between night and morning, as the newsboy had said, the
st