“Your mother said he was not to do so.”

“Bless my heart, how they have duped me all round.  But why would not my mother let your father tell me?  Oh yes—­she was afraid I should tell the King about it, as I certainly should, when I told him all the rest.”

“Tell the King?” said I, “what have you been telling the King?”

“Everything; except about the nuggets and the sovereigns, of which I knew nothing; and I have felt myself a blackguard ever since for not telling him about these when he came up here last autumn—­but I let the Mayor and my mother talk me over, as I am afraid they will do again.”

“When did you tell the King?”

Then followed all the details that I have told in the latter part of Chapter XXI.  When I asked how the King took the confession, George said—­

“He was so much flattered at being treated like a reasonable being, and Dr. Downie, who was chief spokesman, played his part so discreetly, without attempting to obscure even the most compromising issues, that though his Majesty made some show of displeasure at first, it was plain that he was heartily enjoying the whole story.

“Dr. Downie shewed very well.  He took on himself the onus of having advised our action, and he gave me all the credit of having proposed that we should make a clean breast of everything.

“The King, too, behaved with truly royal politeness; he was on the point of asking why I had not taken our father to the Blue Pool at once, and flung him into it on the Sunday afternoon, when something seemed to strike him:  he gave me a searching look, on which he said in an undertone, ‘Oh yes,’ and did not go on with his question.  He never blamed me for anything, and when I begged him to accept my resignation of the Rangership, he said—­

“’No.  Stay where you are till I lose confidence in you, which will not, I think, be very soon.  I will come and have a few days’ shooting about the middle of March, and if I have good sport I shall order your salary to be increased.  If any more foreign devils come over, do not Blue-Pool them; send them down to me, and I will see what I think of them; I am much disposed to encourage a few of them to settle here.”

“I am sure,” continued George, “that he said this because he knew I was half a foreign devil myself.  Indeed he won my heart not only by the delicacy of his consideration, but by the obvious good will he bore me.  I do not know what he did with the nuggets, but he gave orders that the blanket and the rest of my father’s kit should be put in the great Erewhonian Museum.  As regards my father’s receipt, and the Professors’ two depositions, he said he would have them carefully preserved in his secret archives.  ‘A document,’ he said somewhat enigmatically, ’is a document—­but, Professor Hanky, you can have this’—­and as he spoke he handed him back his pocket-handkerchief.