id it."

The King still held his hand, but he said nothing. There were many
things he wanted to say. He had gone crooked where this boy must go
straight. He had erred, and the boy must avoid his errors. He had
cherished enmities, and in his age they cherished him. And now-- "May I
ask you a question, sir?"

"What is it?"

"Will you tell me about Abraham Lincoln?"

"Why?" The King was awake enough now. He fixed the Crown Prince with
keen eyes.

"Well, Miss Braithwaite does not care for him. She says he was not a
great man, not as great as Mr. Gladstone, anyhow. But Bobby--that's the
boy I met; I told you about him--he says he was the greatest man who
ever lived."

"And who," asked the King, "do you regard as the greatest man?"

Prince Ferdinand William Otto fidgeted, but he answered bravely, "You,
sir."

"Humph!" The King lay still, smiling slightly. "Well," he observed,
"there are, of course, other opinions as to that. However--Abraham
Lincoln was a very great man. A dreamer, a visionary, but a great man.
You might ask Miss Braithwaite to teach you his 'Gettysburg Address.'
It is rather a model as to speech-making, although it contains doctrines
that--well, you'd better learn it."

He smiled again, to himself. It touched his ironic sense of humor that
he, who had devoted his life to maintaining that all men are not free
and equal, when on that very day that same doctrine of liberty was
undermining his throne--that he should be discussing it with the small
heir to that throne.

"Yes, sir," said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. He hoped it was not very
long.

"Otto," said the King suddenly, "do you ever look at your father's
picture?"

"Not always."

"You might--look at it now and then. I'd like you to do it."

"Yes, sir."

CHAPTER XXV. THE GATE OF THE MOON

A curious friendship had sprung up between old Adelbert and
Bobby Thorpe. In off hours, after school, the boy hung about the
ticket-taker's booth, swept now to a wonderful cleanliness and adorned
within with pictures cut from the illustrated papers. The small charcoal
fire was Bobby's particular care. He fed and watched it, and having
heard of the baleful effects of charcoal fumes, insisted on more fresh
air than old Adelbert had ever breathed before.

"You see," Bobby would say earnestly, as he brushed away at the floor
beneath the burner, "you don't know that you are being asphyxiated. You
just feel drowsy, and then, poof!--you're dead