It was an uncanny sight, and though it might certainly be as the wise Mira Khabur had stated, the purely natural effect of purely natural causes, still those natural causes were not as yet explained satisfactorily.  An earthquake or land-slip would perhaps account sufficiently for everything,—­but then an inquiring mind would desire to know where the earthquake or land-slip occurred,—­ and also why these supposed far-off disturbances should thus curiously affect the river surrounding Al-Kyris?  Answers to such questions as these were not forthcoming either from Professor Mira-Khabur or any other sagacious pundit,—­and Theos was therefore still most illogically and unscientifically puzzled as well as superstitiously uneasy.

Turning up a side street, he quickened his pace, in order to overtake a young vendor of wines whom he perceived sauntering along in front of him, balancing a flat tray, loaded with thin crystal flasks, on his head.  How gloriously the sunshine quivered through those delicately tinted glass bottles, lighting up the glittering liquid contained within them!—­why, they look more like soap-bubbles than anything else! ... and the boy who carried them moved with such a lazy, noiseless grace that he might have been taken for a dream-sylph rather than a human being!

“Hola, my lad!” called Theos, running after him..  “Tell me,—­is this the way to the palace of the King’s Laureate?”

The youth looked up,—­what a beautiful creature he was, with his brilliant, dark eyes and dusky, warm complexion!

“Why ask for the King’s Laureate?” he demanded with a pretty scorn,—­“The people’s Sah-luma lives yonder!”—­and he pointed to a mass of towering palms from whose close and graceful frondage a white dome rose glistening in the clear air,—­“Our Poet’s fame is not the outgrowth of a mere king’s favor, ’tis the glad and willing tribute of the Nation’s love and praise!  A truce to monarchs!—­they will soon be at a discount in Al-Kyris!”

And with a flashing glance of defiance, and a saucy smile, he passed on, easily sauntering as before.

“A budding republican!” though Theos amusedly, as he pursued his course in the direction indicated.  “That is how the ’liberty, equality, fraternity’ system always begins—­first among street-boys who think they ought to be gentlemen,—­then among shopkeepers who persuade themselves that they deserve to be peers,—­then comes a time of topsey-turveydom and fierce contention and by and by everything gets shaken together again in the form of a Republic, wherein the street-boys and shopkeepers are not a whit better off than they were under a monarchy—­they become neither peers nor gentlemen, but stay exactly in their original places, with the disadvantage of finding their trade decidedly damaged by the change that has occurred in the national economy!  Strange that the inhabitants of this world should make such a fuss about resisting tyranny and oppression, when each particular individual man, by custom and usage, tyrannizes over and oppresses his fellow-man to an extent that would be simply impossible to the fiercest kings!”