Adventure Magazine Cover — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WIFE OF FLA The Third Tale in the series “The Path of a King.” SDERS . John 2 %ag Each story complete in itself. The Story behind the Stories S90 THAT the general ‘idea of this series of stories may be more visible in each issue, two of them.each timeappear together. For in the stories themselves there is practi- cally nothing concrete to indicate any connection between one of them and any of the others, Each story stands entirely on its own feet, complete in itself and differing from all the others in place and timeand plot. Yet through them all runs a Path—a Path of a thousand years—“The Path of a King.” As expressed in the author’s focewtid to the series, it is not for nothing that a great man eee posterity. The spark once transmitted may smolder for generations under ashes, but at the appointed time it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. Yet we fools ruibour eyes and wonder when we see genius come out of the gutter. We none of us know our aneestors beyond a little way, We all of us may have king’s blood in our veins. The dago who blacked your boots may be descended by curious byways from Julius Cesar. “{ saw the younger sons carry the royal blood far down among the people, down even into the kennels of the outeast. Generations follow, but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure. The:sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce sbuff of life in it. Some rags of greatness always cling to it, and somehow the blood drawn from kings it never knew will be royal again. After long years, unheralded and unlooked for, there comes the day of the Appointed Time.” You will note that practically the only surface suggestion of any kind of connection between ene story and any. . introduced in the first story, is more or less casually mentioned in following stories and of course is always in possession of some one descended from that king, though the king of the others is that the king’s ring of the old Norse viking, © himself has long since faded from human memory. ROM the bed set high on a dais _ ‘came eery spasms of laughter, a time. “Ts that the last of them, Anton?” . A little serving-man with an apple-hued face bowed in reply. He bowed with dif- ficulty, for in his arms he held a huge gray cat, which still mewed with the excitement of the chase. Rats had been turned loose on the floor and it had accounted for them to the accompaniment of a sbrill urging from the bed. Now the sport was over, and the domestics who had crowded round the door to see it had slipped away, leavy- ing only Anton and the cat. harsh cackle like fowls at feeding- 47 “Give Tib a full meal of offal,’ came the order, ‘‘and away with yourself. Your rats are a weak breed. Get me the stout gray monsters like Tuesday se’en- night.” The room was empty now save for two figures, both wearing the habit of the re- ligious. Near the bed sat a man in the full black robe and hood of the monks of Cluny. He warmed plump hands at the brazier and seemed at ease and at home. By the door stood a different figure in the shabby clothes of a parish priest, a curate from the kirk of St. Martin’s who had been a scandalized spectator of the rat-hunt. He shuffled his feet as if uncertain of his next 000) (E@) (E(0)