He stopped and let me think.  Soon I saw it clearly enough; a time must come when the increasing warmth of the sun would stifle all forms of vegetable life, and that would mean the choking of mankind.  It might take untold centuries; yet, plainly enough, the world must some day become too small for even those who now remained upon it.

Suddenly I leaped to my feet and strode the room in my excitement.  “Ye are right, Maka!” I shouted, thoroughly aroused.  “There cannot always be the two empires.  In time one or the other must prevail; Jon has willed it.  And—­” I stopped short and stared at him—­“I need not tell ye which it shall be!”

“I knew thou wouldst see the light, Strokor!  Thou hast thy father’s brains.”

I sat me down, but instantly leaped up again, such was my enthusiasm.  “Maka,” I cried, “our emperor is not the man for the place!  It is true that he were a brave warrior in his youth; he won the throne fairly.  And we have suffered him to keep it because he is a wise man, and because we have had little trouble with the men of Klow since their defeat two generations agone.

“But he, today, is content to sit at his ease and quote platitudes about live and let live.  Faugh!  I am ashamed that I should even have given ear to him!”

I stopped short and glared at the old man.  “Maka—­hark ye well!  If it be the will of Jon to decide between the men of Klow and the men of Vlamaland, then it is my intent to take a hand in this decision!”

“Aye, my lad,” he said tranquilly; and then added, quite as though he knew what my answer must be:  “How do ye intend to go about it?”

“Like a man!  I, Strokor, shall become the emperor!”

III

THE THRONE

A small storm had come up while Maka and I were talking.  Now, as he was about to quit me, the clouds were clearing away and an occasional stroke of lightning came down.  One of these, however, hit the ground such a short distance away that both of us could smell the smoke.

My mind was more alive than it had ever been before.  “Now, what caused that, Maka?  The lightning, I mean; we have it nearly every day, yet I have never thought to question it before.”

“It is no mystery, my lad,” quoth Maka, dodging into his chariot, so that he was not wet.  “I myself have watched the thing from the top of high mountains, where the air is so light that a man can scarce get enough to fill his lungs; and I say unto you that, were it not for what air we have, we should have naught save the lightning.  The space about the air is full of it.”

He started his engine, then leaned out into the rain and said softly:  “Hold fast to what thy father has taught thee, Strokor.  Have nothing to do with the women.  ’Tis a man’s job ahead of thee, and the future of the empire is in thy hands.

“And,” as he clattered off, “fill not thy head with wonderings about the lightning.”