"It was in just that way," said the stranger, "that I discovered my own natural bent towards it." "How very odd! Do you know, there's something about your face that I seem to recognise?" The stranger decided to be frank. "I owe this face to you," he said simply. Merriwig looked startled. "In short," said the other, "I am the late King of Barodia." Merriwig gripped his hand. [Illustration: _He was a pleasant-looking person, with a round clean-shaven face_] "My dear fellow," he said. "My very dear fellow, of course you are. Dear me, how it brings it all back. And--may I say--what an improvement. Really, I'm delighted to see you. You must tell me all about it. But first some refreshment." At the word "refreshment" the late King of Barodia broke down altogether, and it was only Merriwig's hummings and hawings and thumpings on the back and (later on) the refreshment itself which kept him from bursting into tears. "My dear friend," he said, as he wiped his mouth for the last time, "you have saved me." "But what does it all mean?" asked Merriwig in bewilderment. "Listen and I will tell you," He told himself of the great resolution to which he had come on that famous morning when he awoke to find himself whiskerless. Barodia had no more use for him now as a King, and he on his side was eager to carve out for himself a new life as a swineherd. "I had a natural gift," he said plaintively, "an instinctive feeling for it. I know I had. Whatever they said about it afterwards--and they said many hard things--I was certain that I had that feeling. I had proved it, you know; there couldn't be any mistake." "Well?" "Ah, but they laughed at me. They asked me confusing questions; niggling little questions about the things swine ate and--and things like that. The great principles of swineherding, the--what I may call the art of herding swine, the whole theory of shepherding pigs in a broad-minded way, all this they ignored. They laughed at me and turned me out with jeers and blows--to starve." Merriwig patted him sympathetically, and pressed some more food on him. "I ranged over the whole of Barodia. Nobody would take me in. It is a terrible thing, my dear Merriwig, to begin to lose faith in yourself. I had to tell myself at last that perhaps there was something about Barodian swine which made them different from those of any other country. As a last hope I came to Euralia; if here too I was spurned, then I should know that----" "Just a moment," said Merriwig, breaking in eagerly. "Who was this swineherd that you talked to----" "I talked to so many," said the other sadly. "They all scoffed at me." "No, but the first one; the one that showed you that you had a bent towards it. Didn't you say that----" "Oh, that one. That was at the beginning of our war. Do you remember telling me that your swineherd had an invisible cloak? It was he that----" Merriwig looked at him sadly and shook his head.