“We’ve found more gold in Yonder Kingdom.”

“Hell seize your gold!” blurted the princess.

“No,—­it’s mine,” he maintained stolidly.

She raised her eyes.  “It belongs,” she said, “to the Empire of the Sun.”

“Nay,—­the Sun belongs to us,” said the king calmly as he glanced to where Yonder Kingdom blushed above the sea.  She glanced, too, and a softness crept into her eyes.

“No, no,” she murmured as with hesitating pause she raised her eyes above the sea, above the hill, up into the sky where the sun hung silent and splendid.  Its robes were heaven’s blue, lined and broidered in living flame, and its crown was one vast jewel, glistening in glittering glory that made the sun’s own face a blackness,—­the blackness of utter light.  With blinded, tear-filled eyes she peered into that formless black and burning face and sensed in its soft, sad gleam unfathomed understanding.  With sudden, wild abandon she stretched her arms toward it appealing, beseeching, entreating, and lo!

“Niggers and dagoes,” said the king of Yonder Kingdom, glancing carelessly backward and lighting in his lips a carefully rolled wisp of fragrant tobacco.  She looked back, too, but in half-wondering terror, for it seemed—­

A beggar man was creeping across the swamp, shuffling through the dirt and slime.  He was little and bald and black, rough-clothed, sodden with dirt, and bent with toil.  Yet withal something she sensed about him and it seemed,—­

The king of Yonder Kingdom lounged more comfortably beside the silver throne and let curl a tiny trail of light-blue smoke.

“I hate beggars,” he said, “especially brown and black ones.”  And he then pointed at the beggar’s retinue and laughed,—­an unpleasant laugh, welded of contempt and amusement.  The princess looked and shrank on her throne.  He, the beggar man, was—­was what?  But his retinue,—­that squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and viciousness—­was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked like Death, and the twisted woman whom men called Pain.  Yet they all walked as one.

The King of Yonder Kingdom laughed, but the princess shrank on her throne, and the king on seeing her thus took a gold-piece from out of his purse and tossed it carelessly to the passing throng.  She watched it with fascinated eyes,—­how it rose and sailed and whirled and struggled in the air, then seemed to burst, and upward flew its light and sheen and downward dropped its dross.  She glanced at the king, but he was lighting a match.  She watched the dross wallow in the slime, but the sunlight fell on the back of the beggar’s neck, and he turned his head.