ke upon your ruler!"

"Hold!" cried Thurid, and springing forward before I could guess
his intention, he had grasped my beard and ripped the whole false
fabric from my face and head, revealing my smooth, tanned skin
beneath and my close-cropped black hair.

Instantly pandemonium reigned in the audience chamber of Salensus
Oll. Warriors pressed forward with drawn blades, thinking that I
might be contemplating the assassination of the Jeddak of Jeddaks;
while others, out of curiosity to see one whose name was familiar
from pole to pole, crowded behind their fellows.

As my identity was revealed I saw Dejah Thoris spring to her
feet--amazement writ large upon her face--and then through that
jam of armed men she forced her way before any could prevent. A
moment only and she was before me with outstretched arms and eyes
filled with the light of her great love.

"John Carter! John Carter!" she cried as I folded her to my breast,
and then of a sudden I knew why she had denied me in the garden
beneath the tower.

What a fool I had been! Expecting that she would penetrate the
marvelous disguise that had been wrought for me by the barber of
Marentina! She had not known me, that was all; and when she saw
the sign of love from a stranger she was offended and righteously
indignant. Indeed, but I had been a fool.

"And it was you," she cried, "who spoke to me from the tower! How
could I dream that my beloved Virginian lay behind that fierce
beard and that yellow skin?"

She had been wont to call me her Virginian as a term of endearment,
for she knew that I loved the sound of that beautiful name, made a
thousand times more beautiful and hallowed by her dear lips, and as
I heard it again after all those long years my eyes became dimmed
with tears and my voice choked with emotion.

But an instant did I crush that dear form to me ere Salensus Oll,
trembling with rage and jealousy, shouldered his way to us.

"Seize the man," he cried to his warriors, and a hundred ruthless
hands tore us apart.

Well it was for the nobles of the court of Okar that John Carter
had been disarmed. As it was, a dozen of them felt the weight of
my clenched fists, and I had fought my way half up the steps before
the throne to which Salensus Oll had carried Dejah Thoris ere ever
they could stop me.

Then I went down, fighting, beneath a half-hundred warriors; but
before they had battered me into unconsciousness I heard that from
the lips o