by the King, started to walk through
the city.

Wherever they went the people bowed low to the conqueror, although a
few, remembering Inga's terrible strength, ran away in fear and
trembling. They had been used to severe masters and did not yet know how
they would be treated by King Gos's successor. There being no occasion
for the boy to exercise the powers he had displayed the previous day,
his present helplessness was not suspected by any of the citizens of
Regos, who still considered him a wonderful magician.

Inga did not dare to fight his way to the mines, at present, nor could
he try to conquer the Island of Coregos, where his mother was enslaved;
so he set about the regulation of the City of Regos, and having
established himself with great state in the royal palace he began to
govern the people by kindness, having consideration for the most humble.

The King of Regos and his followers sent spies across to the island they
had abandoned in their flight, and these spies returned with the news
that the terrible boy conqueror was still occupying the city. Therefore
none of them ventured to go back to Regos but continued to live upon the
neighboring island of Coregos, where they passed the days in fear and
trembling and sought to plot and plan ways how they might overcome the
Prince of Pingaree and the fat King of Gilgad.

[Illustration]

A Present for Zella

[Illustration]

CHAPTER 9

Now it so happened that on the morning of that same day when the Prince
of Pingaree suffered the loss of his priceless shoes, there chanced to
pass along the road that wound beside the royal palace a poor
charcoal-burner named Nikobob, who was about to return to his home in
the forest.

Nikobob carried an ax and a bundle of torches over his shoulder and he
walked with his eyes to the ground, being deep in thought as to the
strange manner in which the powerful King Gos and his city had been
conquered by a boy Prince who had come from Pingaree.

Suddenly the charcoal-burner espied a shoe lying upon the ground, just
beyond the high wall of the palace and directly in his path. He picked
it up and, seeing it was a pretty shoe, although much too small for his
own foot, he put it in his pocket.

Soon after, on turning a corner of the wall, Nikobob came to a dust-heap
where, lying amidst a mass of rubbish, was another shoe--the mate to the
one he had before found. This also he placed in his pocket, saying to
himself:

"