She Mt 
 0f the ffltckeb King 
 
 ^i^-^K 
 
 A Storu from the f felb 
 0f llackbfrbs 
 
 By 
 Ernest Bruncken 
 
 WASHINGTON. D.C. 
 
 HERMANN G. WINKLER 
 
 1915. 
 
Ihe Sale 
 
 af the Mltkth King 
 
 A ^lory frnm the Jirlh 
 of llackbirbs 
 
 By 
 
 Ernest Bruncken 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 HERMANN G. WINKLER 
 
 191S. 
 
Copyright 1915 
 
 by 
 
 Ernest Bruncken. 
 
 DEC 27 1915 
 
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 CI,A4192J9 
 
This is how Grandmother will tell the story, a hun- 
 dred years hence: 
 
 Once upon a time, there was a man whose father 
 had been a king but had been deposed because his 
 subjects thought him to be an unjust ruler. The man 
 lived in a far-away city, but every day he plotted and 
 schemed how he could recover the throne from which 
 his father had been cast. Finally he found some am- 
 bitious and wicked young men who promised to help 
 him. One dark night, they managed to get into the 
 castle of the new king, who was peacefully sleeping 
 with his queen. They broke into the chamber of the 
 royal couple and murdered both in their bed. Then 
 they threw the bodies out of the window, and forth- 
 with sent for the man in the far-off city. He had 
 been waiting for the news, and straightway came to 
 his native country, and for many years was king in 
 place of the murdered one. The young men who had 
 assassinated their true king were made generals and 
 counsellors, and one became prime minister, and all 
 were very rich and powerful, and the people of the 
 country were afraid; so they tolerated the wicked 
 king and his band of assassins over them. 
 
 The king made a war upon one of the neighboring 
 kingdoms, and took much land away from it, which 
 
was to be divided between himself and some other 
 kings who had helped him; but the wicked king was 
 faithless even to his friends. He set upon one of his 
 allies, and beat him sorely, and took most of the con- 
 quered land that should have gone to his friend for 
 himself. 
 
 Being prosperous, the wicked king became more 
 and more ambitious. His kingdom was not very 
 large, but he heard that there were some dissensions 
 in the country of the emperor who lived on the other 
 side of the Great River. So he told his son, who was 
 as faithless and wicked as the old king himself, to 
 persuade some of the emperor's people to betray their 
 country and join the wicked king's people. The 
 king's son succeeded in finding some men who were 
 as wicked as himself, and when the prince, who was 
 to be emperor when the old emperor should have 
 died, visited one of his cities near the boundary of 
 the wicked king, they threw a bomb at him and killed 
 both him and his beautiful wife. 
 
 Then the Aged Emperor brought together a great 
 army to punish the assassins, and his Brother-in-Arms 
 with all his people came to help him.. Thereupon the 
 assassin king was very much afraid, and he called on 
 the Emperor of the Frozen North to come to his res- 
 cue, for it was well known that he hated the Aged 
 Emperor and his Brother-in-Arms. He also sent for 
 help to the people of the Western Isles, who had more 
 
ships and more gold than anybody else in the world. 
 Both of these promised to help, and the people of the 
 Western Isles paid out quite a little money to hire 
 somebody to fight for the wicked king; for they did 
 not believe much in fighting themselves. 
 
 Then the Aged Emperor's army came across the 
 Great River, and took the palace and city of the 
 wicked king, and drove him farther and farther. And 
 the friend who had been robbed also came with his 
 soldiers to take back what belonged to him. Every 
 day the wicked king climbed upon some mountain 
 and looked to the east to see whether the armies of 
 the Emperor of the Frozen North were not coming to 
 help him. But nobody came. For the aged emperor 
 and his brother-in-arms had sent armies against the 
 Frozen North also, and the hosts of the North and 
 East were being beaten and had to flee for their lives. 
 For Justice with her scales and the bright star of 
 Right on her forehead marched ahead of the Aged Em- 
 peror's army. Then the wicked king looked to the 
 South for the hirelings of the people of the Western 
 Isles, but none of them came. Then he ran down 
 the hill, as fast as he could, for the enemy was ap- 
 proaching. He jumped into his motor wagon and 
 rode farther and farther, and the next day it was the 
 same, and the next, and the day after that. Of his 
 soldiers, some were killed by the enemy, some were 
 taken prisoners, and many more threw away their 
 
arms and went home. For a wicked ruler has no 
 friends except through fear or lust of gain, and no- 
 body longer feared the king, and he had nothing 
 more to give. 
 
 Finally, there were but a few soldiers left about the 
 king and his son. Then the motor wagon broke 
 down, and he had to get into a rickety wagon with a 
 sprained, half-starved horse that a poor peasant gave 
 him out of pity. So he kept on, as long as the horse 
 would go, ever farther into the snow-covered wilder- 
 ness of the mountains, until he was lost to human 
 sight. 
 
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