Stretching away from the foot of the hill lay a great rolling valley, up which the road ran as straight as a ribbon. Far away, at the end of the road, against a dark wooded mountain, stood a great city, walled around with a high wall, and shining in the sun with white and gold domes and turrets and towers. The rear of the city rose along the lower slope of the mountain, and on the top of the mountain, concealing its peak, lay a cloud; black below, and glittering with sunlight at the edges. It hung there motionless during the time when the watchers sat watching the scene. Directly under the cloud, on the slope where the farthest portion of the city lay, was an open space among the buildings, like a great garden or park, and in the midst of it a vast white building with a flat roof, great enough for the palace of a king. That which struck the strangers most, at their first look, was the great number of towers which rose at all points in the city; surely so many towers had never been gotten together in one place before; and the most remarkable one of them was the tower which rose from just behind the great white building in the park. It was dull in colour, and doubtless of brick; it was round in shape, tapering gradually upwards. It rose to a height which none of the strangers would have thought possible, had they not seen it with their own eyes; it rose straight to the cloud which hung motionless upon the mountain; it pierced the cloud, and its top was lost to view in the cloud or above it. "The City of Towers!" said the Third Vice-President, waving his arm in that direction. "The Gate of Wanderers is before us, at the end of the road." The party urged their animals forward down the hill-side, and pressed on until noon, when they halted for rest and refreshment in a wood beside the road. There they sat at their ease on the grass, and the Third Vice-President looked from one to another, and spoke as follows: "My friends, I must tell you the story of the Towers. Our King, you must know, is a handsome and amiable man, in appearance about thirty years of age. When I tell you that he has been our king for more than forty years, you will be surprised. His wife was a princess of some few years less than his own, and of a beauty unequalled in the kingdom. Her wedding ring, the gift of her husband, was a single ruby in a plain gold band, and this ring she was never known to remove from her wedding-finger for a single moment. She was blessed with three beautiful children, two boys and a girl, the oldest of whom was nearly nine years of age.