nt view, not only of the entire island, but also of the lake
and the encircling hills. The Elder who installed the newcomers in this
sumptuous suite of apartments having enquired whether their lodging was
to their liking, and received a reply in the affirmative, informed them
that, that being the case, the belongings which they had brought with
them to the island would at once be placed in their new lodging. Then,
having asked whether he could do anything more for their immediate
comfort, and being answered in the negative, he indicated an immense
copper gong on the landing outside their door, informed them that a
single stroke upon it would at once bring the attendant who had been
appointed to wait upon them, and so bowed himself out.

Meanwhile, Malachi, the chief Elder, was having a rather difficult time
with the self-willed young Queen. First of all she positively refused
to grant him an audience at all; and when at length he succeeded in
obtaining admission to her apartments by his persistent representations
that the matter upon which he desired to see her was of the most vital
importance, she at once angrily ordered him out again as soon as she
understood that he had found a new physician whom he desired her to see.
But if the Queen was self-willed, Malachi was the very incarnation of
pertinacity; he protested, wheedled, entreated, and was indignant by
turns, but all to no purpose until he happened to mention that the
physician in question was a stranger from a far country beyond the Great
Water; when, first commanding him to repeat his statement all over
again, she suddenly developed a sweet reasonableness, that caused the
astonished Malachi to doubt the evidence of his senses, by announcing
that she would see the stranger, who was to be brought into her presence
forthwith.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

DICK AND PHIL PROSPER.

Determined to afford Her Majesty neither time nor opportunity to repent
of her sudden decision, Malachi hastened out of the palace as speedily
as his poor old limbs would carry him, and, making the best of his way
back to the enormous building in which the strangers were lodged,
presented himself in their apartment, which he found them in the act of
returning to by way of the window after a stroll round the roof garden
outside. Almost incoherent from want of breath and his eagerness to
impress upon the pair the necessity to seize the present favourable
opportunity, the Elder hastily explai