beard--a fairish brown--and his eyes match
them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son
of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a
Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish
Viking, he said.'

'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir
Rupert.

'A fine type,' said the Duke pensively, and Mr. Selwyn caught him up
with 'The finest type in the world. The sort of men who have made our
empire what it is;' and he added somewhat confusedly, for his wife's
eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt afraid that he was overdoing his
part, 'Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, Rodney, you know.'

'But,' said Helena, who had been very silent, for her, during the
interrogation of Hiram, 'I do not feel as if I quite know all I want to
know yet.'

'The noble thirst for knowledge does you credit, Miss Langley,' said
Soame Rivers pertly.

Miss Langley laughed at him.

'Yes, I want to know all about him. He interests me. He has done
something; he casts a shadow, as somebody has said somewhere. I like men
who do something, who cast shadows instead of sitting in other people's
shadows.'

Soame Rivers smiled a little sourly, and there was a suggestion of
acerbity in his voice as he said in a low tone, as if more to himself
than as a contribution to the general conversation, 'He has cast a
decided shadow over Gloria.' He did not quite like Helena's interest in
the dethroned Dictator.

'He made Gloria worth talking about!' Helena retorted. 'Tell me, Mr.
Borringer, how did he happen to get to Gloria at all? How did it come in
his way to be President and Dictator and all that?'

'Rebellion lay in his way and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested,
whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on
the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr.
Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and
as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be forgiven to him.

Hiram, always slightly bewildered by the quotations of Mrs. Selwyn and
the badinage of Soame Rivers, decided to ignore them both, and to
address himself entirely to Miss Langley.

'Sorry to say I can't help you much, Miss Langley. When I was in Gloria
five years ago I found him there, as I said, running for President. He
had been a naturalised citizen there for some time, I reckon, but how he
got so much to the fro