of exile.

Agaric met the Prince on the road driving in a motor-car with two young
ladies at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. When the monk saw him he
shook his red umbrella and the prince stopped his car.

"Is it you, Agaric? Get in! There are already three of us, but we can
make room for you. You can take one of these young ladies on your knee."

The pious Agaric got in.

"What news, worthy father?" asked the young prince.

"Great news," answered Agaric. "Can I speak?"

"You can. I have nothing secret from these two ladies."

"Sire, Penguinia claims you. You will not be deaf to her call."

Agaric described the state of feeling and outlined a vast plot.

"On my first signal," said he, "all your partisans will rise at once.
With cross in hand and habits girded up, your venerable clergy will lead
the armed crowd into Formose's palace. We shall carry terror and death
among your enemies. For a reward of our efforts we only ask of you,
Sire, that you will not render them useless. We entreat you to come and
seat yourself on the throne that we shall prepare."

The prince returned a simple answer:

"I shall enter Alca on a green horse."

Agaric declared that he accepted this manly response. Although, contrary
to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he adjured the young prince,
with a sublime loftiness of soul, to be faithful to his royal duties.

"Sire," he cried, with tears in his eyes, "you will live to remember
the day on which you have been restored from exile, given back to your
people, reestablished on the throne of your ancestors by the hands of
your monks, and crowned by them with the august crest of the Dragon.
King Crucho, may you equal the glory of your ancestor Draco the Great!"

The young prince threw himself with emotion on his restorer and
attempted to embrace him, but he was prevented from reaching him by
the girth of the two ladies, so tightly packed were they all in that
historic carriage.

"Worthy father," said he, "I would like all Penguinia to witness this
embrace."

"It would be a cheering spectacle," said Agaric.

In the mean time the motor-car rushed like a tornado through hamlets
and villages, crushing hens, geese, turkeys, ducks, guinea-fowls, cats,
dogs, pigs, children, labourers, and women beneath its insatiable tyres.
And the pious Agaric turned over his great designs in his mind. His
voice, coming from behind one of the ladies, expressed this thought:

"We must have mone