We were silent for fully a minute. It was staggering enough to have the history I had believed as gospel thus torn to shreds; but when I came to reflect that I, Ronald Mirlees, had stumbled into company with a man who was not only to penetrate this mystery but seemed to be himself so strangely involved in it, I had some difficulty in fetching a breath. 'Tell me, Kalliboas,' I said at length, 'what manner of man do you conceive our comrade to be? To us he is known as a traveller in the East--for my part I believe him to be of my own race, which the world calls British. For what reason have your people received him in such honour and placed him so high?' Kalliboas looked at me with surprise in which there was more than a hint of disdain. 'Can it be,' he said, 'that among those from whom you come there is so little knowledge of the great conqueror? Is there no statue, no carving upon metal or stone, which enables you to recognise our King?' 'You mean--' we cried together. 'I say,' broke in Kalliboas, 'that the man whom you call by your barbarian name of Philipson is no other than our own lost King who has returned to us after the years, Alexander of Macedon.' Nothing was said by anybody as we walked back to our quarters. Kalliboas, as it seemed, was quite content to let us believe his amazing statement or not as we chose. We were silent because we simply found no words to say. From that far-off day beside Yangtze River, when Poyning had addressed Philipson as Macedonian and justified his impertinent fancy by the fact that our comrade's features bore a striking resemblance to those of the great Grecian conqueror, I had pondered much in my mind upon the nature of Saunders Philipson. More than once already in this narrative I have recorded things which argued him to be far out of the common run of men. His astonishing physical beauty--not to be totally extinguished even by the very skilful native disguise I'd first seen him in--the force and intensity of his mind, his almost superhuman determination in following an object he had set his heart on, his strange power of inspiring affection and faith, his stupendous bodily strength--all had got me and kept me speculating in a vague, perhaps even fantastic strain about him. But that he should regard himself as the living incarnation of one of the greatest figures in history, and that the people most interested in such a reincarnation should promptly accept him as such--this set my brain whirling again. 'You have added enough to your knowledge of us for one day, strangers,' said Kalliboas, when at last we had reached the guest-house. 'Let me now learn something from you. What moved you to accompany our King hither?' It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out something which, as I now see, would have been extremely impolitic, but luckily Poyning broke in.