troubled with the trouble of rule'; you, who have taken the king's rule
from him and sit enthroned within his seat; is his sin not yours today? If
men should add but one hour to your day's labour, or make but one fraction
dearer the bread you eat, would you not rise up as one man? Yet, what is
dealt out to men beyond seas whom you rule wounds you not. Nay, have you
not sometimes said, as kings of old: 'It matters not who holds out our
sword, marauder or speculator, so he calls it ours, we must cloak up the
evil it has done!' Think you, no other curses rise to heaven but yours?
Where is your sword? Into whose hand has it fallen? Take it quickly and
cleanse it!'"

Peter Halket crouched, looking upwards; then he cried: "Master, I cannot
give that message, I am a poor unlearn'd man. And if I should go to
England and cry aloud, they would say, 'Who is this, who comes preaching to
a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was not
his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?' and they would laugh me
to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not well remember
it; give me other work to do."

And the stranger said, "Take a message to the men and women of this land.
Go, from the Zambezi to the sea, and cry to its white men and women, and
say: 'I saw a wide field, and in it were two fair beasts. Wide was the
field about them and rich was the earth with sweet scented herbs, and so
abundant was the pasturage that hardly might they consume all that grew
about them: and the two were like one to another, for they were the sons
of one mother. And as I looked, I saw, far off to the northward, a speck
within the sky, so small it was, and so high it was, that the eye scarce
might mark it. Then it came nearer and hovered over the spot where the two
beasts fed:--and its neck was bare, and its beak was hooked, and its talons
were long, and its wings strong. And it hovered over the field where the