so that one thought first of his
age. His beard and hair were not all grey, but he had grotesquely
brown and wrinkled flesh. His stuff robe hung in straight folds
about his singularly erect figure, and there was in his bearing the
dignity of one who has understood all fine and gentle things, all
things of quietude. But his look was vacant, as if the mind were
asleep.

"Why have you not waited?" he repeated almost wonderingly. "Why have
you not sent for me?" and his eyes questioned one and another, and
rested on the face of the prince upon the dais, with Olivia by his
side. The guard, whom in some fashion the strange old man had
eluded, hurried from the borders of the room. But he broke from them
and was off up half the length of the hall toward the prince's seat.

"Do you not know?" he cried as he went, "I am Malakh. Read one
another's eyes and you will know. I am Malakh."

As the guards closed about him he tottered and would have fallen
save that they caught him roughly and pressed to a door, half
carrying him, and he did not resist. But as speech was renewed
another voice broke the murmur, and with great amazement St. George
knew that this was Olivia's voice.

"No," she cried--but half as if she distrusted her own strange
impulse, "let him stay--let him stay."

St. George saw the prince's look question her. He himself was unable
to account for her unexpected intercession, and so, one would have
said, was Olivia. She looked up at the prince almost fearfully, and
down the length of the listening table, and back to the old man
whose eyes were upon her face.

"He is an old man, your Highness," St. George heard her saying, "let
him stay."

Prince Tabnit, who gave a curious impression of doing everything
that he did in obedience to inertia rather than in its defiance,
indicated some command to the puzzled guards, and they led old
Malakh to a stone bench not far from the dais, and there he sank
down, looking about him without surprise.

"It is well," he said simply, "Malakh has come."

While St. George was marveling--but not that the old man spoke the
English, for in Yaque it was not surprising to find the very madmen
speaking one's own tongue--Balator explained the man.

"He is a poor mad creature," Balator said. "He walks the streets of
Med saying 'Melek, Melek,' which is to say, 'king,' and so he is
seeking the king. But he is mad, and they say that he always weeps,
and therefore they pretend to believe tha