He was a very young man, in a uniform. He was boyish, and
smiling. There was a dog beside him, and its head was on his
knee. Wherever one stood in the room, the eyes of the photograph
gazed at one. The King knew this, and because he was quite old,
and because there were few people to whom a king dares to speak
his inmost thoughts, he frequently spoke to the photograph.

The older he grew, the more he felt, sometimes, as though it knew
what he said. He had begun to think that death, after all, is
not the end, but only the beginning of things. This rather
worried him, too, at times. What he wanted was to lay things
down, not to take them up.

"If they've got him," he said to the picture, "it is out of my
hands, and into yours, my boy."

Much of his life had been spent in waiting, in waiting for a son,
in waiting for that son to grow to be a man, in waiting while
that son in his turn loved and married and begot a man-child, in
waiting, when that son had died a violent death, for the time
when his tired hands could relinquish the scepter to his
grandchild.

He folded his old hands and waited. From across the corridor
came the low tones of the Council. A silent group of his
gentlemen stood in the vestibule outside the door. The King lay
on his bed and waited.

Quite suddenly the door opened. The old man turned his head.