“It was thus, gentlemen, that I acquired, by right, as I think, my title which I assumed—­awfter acting for a time as Viceroy for her Britannic Majesty—­as the King of Gee-Whiz.  For a while I lived there alone.  Awfterwards, in some way, which I do not quite call to mind at present, I appear to have been discovered.  It was shortly awfter that I received my decoration—­I beg your pardon.”  He flushed a dull red.  “It was nothing, of course,” said he.  “As to saving Sir Harry, it was only what any other fellow would have done in the Army or the Navy—­I don’t remember which.

“So, gentlemen, I’ve told you my story as a gentleman should.  I’ve been deucedly down on my luck ever since then, and I cawn’t tell you, really I cawn’t, how I happened to be here and in this business as you found me.  There’s many a younger son, in the Army or the Navy, who knocks about and gets a bit to the bad.  I hope you’ll not lay it up against me, I do indeed!” His head dropped forward on his chest.  “I was stone broke,” he whispered, “and I’d not a friend on earth.”

“And so you drifted here,” said Curly.  “Well, it’s about the right place.  Heart’s Desire’s wide open.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand across his forehead; “it wasn’t so bad down here for a time.  I didn’t mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on the island for so long.  But the trouble was that I was followed all the time—­have been for more than a year now—­by that cursed King—­that damned fiend that I thought I’d left long ago!  I’d go out into the sunshine, and there he’d be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along, anyway I’d look!  He’d follow me like a—­look! look! there he is now.  See!”

He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open door.  A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.

“Look!” cried the King of Gee-Whiz.  “He’s there!  He’s there!” He slipped and sank to the floor, rolling over into an utter insensibility.  Curly put on his hat and stood looking down at him.

“Sand, sunshine, and sheep herdin’,” said he, “will do up any man in time.  I’d ‘a’ made a good cow puncher out of this fellow, too, if I’d got him in time.  By Golly!  I’ll do it anyhow.  I’ll have Mac get him a horse and saddle and put him to work.  Any feller that kin shoot and lie as good as him has got the makin’ of a good cow puncher in him.”

They turned over the King of Gee-Whiz gently, that he might rest more easily, where he lay.  His coat and waistcoat fell open.  Underneath them, upon the left side of his chest, appeared a small, dull-colored cross of metal.

“For Valor”; Curly read the inscription with difficulty.  “I knowed it; I knowed he’d been a cow puncher sometime, and just went wrong.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Uncle Jim Brothers, “that’s the Victoria Cross!  This here’s a V. C. man!”