have to ask only two favours, my
lord,' she answered. 'I grant them beforehand. Name them,' he cried. But
she said she wished for nothing at that time, but would make her request
in due course. She waited twenty years. Then she repaired to her husband
on the morning of Karmos' coronation and boldly requested that the prince
should absent himself for fourteen years, and that her son Fausalya
should be crowned instead."

"She was artful," I observed, laughing.

"Yes," he went on. "The words fell like a thunder-bolt upon the king, the
light faded from his eyes and he fainted. Nevertheless, Zulnam's wish was
granted, and Karmos' departure was heartrending. To soften the
austerities of forest life, Prince Matrugna tore himself from his
newly-married bride to accompany Karmos. But the hardest was to be the
latter's wrench from his devoted Naya. The change from a most exuberant
girlish gaiety to quivering grief, and the offer of the
delicately-nurtured wife to share with her lord the severities of an
exile's life are often told by every wise man in Mo. Fourteen long years
Karmos spent in exile with his beautiful wife as companion, until at last
they were free to return. The home-coming was one long triumph. The
people were mad with delight to welcome their hero Karmos and their
beloved Naya. Karmos was crowned, and then began that government whose
morality and justice and love and purity have passed into the proverbs of
my race. There was, however, one blemish upon it. Poor Naya's evil genius
had not yet exhausted his malevolence. A rumour was spread by evil
tongues that she was plotting to possess the crown, and Karmos,
sacrificing the husband's love, the father's joy, to his kingly duty,
while standing on that spot we have visited to-day--then his summer
palace surrounded by lovely gardens--pronounced sentence of exile upon
her. But in an instant, swift as the lightning from above, the terrible
curse of Zomara fell upon him, striking him dead, his magnificent palace
was swept away and swallowed up by a mighty earthquake, and from the
barren hole, once the fairest spot in the land, there have ever since
belched forth fumes that poison every living thing. It is Zomara's
Wrath."

"And what became of Naya, the queen?" I asked, struck with the remarkable
story that seemed more than a mere legend.

"She reigned in his stead," he answered. "Whenever we speak of the Nayas
we sum up all that is noble and mighty and queenly in gov