erve us well,
and you will not be forgotten.' Then he suddenly asked: 'Did you fight
in the last South African War?'

'Yes, Sir,' I said. 'I was in the commando of that Smuts who has now
been bought by England.'

'What were your countrymen's losses?' he asked eagerly.

I did not know, but I hazarded a guess. 'In the field some twenty
thousand. But many more by sickness and in the accursed prison-camps
of the English.'

Again a spasm of pain crossed his face.

'Twenty thousand,' he repeated huskily. 'A mere handful. Today we
lose as many in a skirmish in the Polish marshes.'

Then he broke out fiercely. 'I did not seek the war ... It was forced
on me ... I laboured for peace ... The blood of millions is on the
heads of England and Russia, but England most of all. God will yet
avenge it. He that takes the sword will perish by the sword. Mine was
forced from the scabbard in self-defence, and I am guiltless. Do they
know that among your people?'

'All the world knows it, sire,' I said.

He gave his hand to Stumm and turned away. The last I saw of him was a
figure moving like a sleep-walker, with no spring in his step, amid his
tall suite. I felt that I was looking on at a far bigger tragedy than
any I had seen in action. Here was one that had loosed Hell, and the
furies of Hell had got hold of him. He was no common man, for in his
presence I felt an attraction which was not merely the mastery of one
used to command. That would not have impressed me, for I had never
owned a master. But here was a human being who, unlike Stumm and his
kind, had the power Of laying himself alongside other men. That was
the irony of it. Stumm would not have cared a tinker's curse for all
the massacres in history. But this man, the chief of a nation of
Stumms, paid the price in war for the gifts that had made him
successful in peace. He had imagination and nerves, and the one was
white hot and the others were quivering. I would not have been in his
shoes for the throne of the Universe ...

All afternoon we sped southward, mostly in a country of hills and
wooded valleys. Stumm, for him, was very pleasant. His imperial
master must have been gracious to him, and he passed a bit of it on to
me. But he was anxious to see that I had got the right impression.

'The All-Highest is merciful, as I told you,' he said.

I agreed with him.

'Mercy is the prerogative of kings,' he said sententiously, 'but for us
les