Scarce had this news been received, when the plane itself appeared, and soon settled softly into the middle of the arena. Thereat there was much waving of the red pennant of Cupia from the stands, and even a few of the black pennants of Formia showed themselves. Cabot vaguely wondered how any of his people had happened to bring with them the flag of their late enemies. But doubtless it was just so as to be prepared to receive politely such a visitation as this. Out of the airship disembarked an officer of the Cupian air navy, and four ant men. It was over a year since Cabot had seen one of these creatures, who once had been his only companions, and he noted with surprise that they now seemed almost as strange to his eye as they had on his first day on this planet. Huge shiny black ants they were, the size of horses, with no other adornment than their green folding umbrellas slung at their sides, in readiness for use if the blasting sunlight should happen to shine through a rift in the silver clouds, and the white paint-marks on their backs giving their own serial numbers and the numbers of their fellow countrymen whom they had killed in the duels so common among them. Three of them had the trim shipshape look of members of the Formian aristocracy, and the fourth was very old—as indicated by the quantity of duel numbers which he bore—and walked with difficulty. * * * * * Side by side the ants approached the foot of the throne and made obeisance to the king, a pleasing sight indeed to those who had long been accustomed to see Cupia bow before Formis! Then one of their delegation sent up a scroll of parchment by a page. Kew’s brow darkened as he read it to himself. Finally Kew spoke. “One of your requests is impossible,” he thundered. “Prince Yuri is a traitor. If we had been sure he were still alive, his surrender to us would have been one of the conditions of the treaty. Now that you have revealed his whereabout, know you that Cupia will consider no propositions from Formis until Yuri is in our hands. I have spoken.” Then suddenly the eyes of the whole multitude shifted from their ruler to the aged ant man. To the horror of all, the entire upper half of his body was opening as if on a hinge! And in the cavity thus exposed, there lay a Cupian! The aged ant man had not been an ant man at all, but merely a clever piece of mechanism, like the wooden horse at Troy. The Cupian now sprang to his feet and approached the throne. It was Prince Yuri himself! “Is that so, my uncle?” he shouted. “Know then that Yuri is no traitor, but rather is King of Poros!”