but too late. As soon as the animal
reached the rocky bed below he fell upon his side.

He continued to breathe a few moments only, then expired.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CITY IN THE CLOUDS.

"THERE is a strange story connected with this place known to us as
Zomara's Wrath," Omar said, when together we turned away and mounted our
horses to ride back to the camp.

"Relate it to me," I urged eagerly.

"To-night. After we have eaten at sundown I will tell you about it," he
answered, and spurring our horses we galloped quickly forward.

When we had eaten that evening and were seated aside together, I reminded
him of his promise.

"It is a story of my ancestors, and it occurred more than a thousand
years ago," he said. "Ruler of the great kingdom of Mo, King Lobenba had
no children. The three queens observed fasts, kept vows, made offerings
to the fetish, all to no effect. By a lucky chance a great hermit made
his appearance in our capital. The King and queens received the visitor
at the palace, and treated him with the most generous and sincere
hospitality. The guest was very pleased; by a prompting of the fetish he
knew what they wanted, and gave them three peppercorns, one for each
queen. In due time three sons were born, Karmos, Matrugna, and Fausalya,
who when they reached a suitable age married by the ceremony of 'choice,'
daughters of a branch of the royal family. When the brides arrived at
their husbands' family and were disciplined in their wifely duties, King
Lobenba, who was growing old, thought the time had arrived for him to
make over the royal burden to younger shoulders, and to adopt a hermit's
life preliminary to death. So in consultation with the royal fetish-man,
a day was appointed for the coronation of Prince Karmos, who had married
a beautiful girl named Naya. But the fates had willed it otherwise. Long
before the children were born, when King Lobenba, in his younger days,
was subduing a revolt in this region where we now are he once fell from
his chariot while aiming an arrow, and got his arm crushed under the
wheel. The three queens had accompanied their royal husband to the
battlefield to soften for him the hardships of his camp life, and during
the long illness that followed the wound, Queen Zulnam, who afterwards
became mother of Fausalya, nursed him with all the devotion of a wife's
first young love. 'Ask me anything and thou shalt have it,' said the
monarch during his convalescence. 'I