He came out banging the door again, and sick like a man coming on shore.
As he strode along the streets he found himself suddenly opposite Cicconani's restaurant, and for some reason there rose up before him the green fantastic figure of the Spanish General, standing, as he had seen him last, at the door, with the words on his lips, "You cannot argue with the choice of the soul." The King came out from his dancing with the air of a man of business legitimately tired.

He put on an overcoat, lit a cigar, and went out into the purple night.
[Illustration: "I'M KING OF THE CASTLE."] "I will go," he said, "and mingle with the people." He passed swiftly up a street in the neighbourhood of Notting Hill, when suddenly he felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat.

He paused, put up his single eye-glass, and beheld a boy with a wooden sword and a paper cocked hat, wearing that expression of awed satisfaction with which a child contemplates his work when he has hit some one very hard.

The King gazed thoughtfully for some time at his assailant, and slowly took a note-book from his breast-pocket.
"I have a few notes," he said, "for my dying speech;" and he turned over the leaves.

"Dying speech for political assassination; ditto, if by former friend--h'm, h'm.