and Taingda ministers and others. | in this matter?" and the minister bent You know the chamber in the palace, forward on his knees and spoke : Thakin, with the pillars all gilded to the top and golden bosses on the red ceiling. It looks out on the white courtyard where the water-tassel leaps in a basin, and all about the floor of the chamber were rugs and mats of many colors from France, and on the walls were great mirrors in which you see reflected half the room itself, and the ministers in their state robes, and the king. The king and queen sat on the dais at one end, and the ministers shekoed before them, hiding their feet in their silks, as is the court custom. "The king my lord knows that I, his slave, have travelled to far lands, and have seen India and France and the country of the English. I, his slave, have seen the armies of the English and of India, and my lord's army cannot fight them. Let my lord, therefore, keep peace for yet a few years till his army is better trained and there are more cannon, and till my lord has allies among the nations of the West. If my king would send an answer to these English that their requests shall be fulfilled, then, if it be necessary to fulfil them, if it can be done slowly, and meanwhile preparations can be made, and in a few years there may be war and success, but not now." The queen was very angry with the Kinwun Mingyi for his advice. She always hated the Kinwun, and if he had not received an order from the old king giving him exemption from the ninetynine forms of death, the queen would have tried to kill him long ago. She was very angry, and as I sat behind her cigarette went out because she breathed so fast she could not smoke it, and she reached back to me for another. The king did not say anything; he only listened to what the ministers said. The queen was very angry when she read the letter, and she wanted the king to decide at once to make war; but the king said he must have a Council, and consider of the matter in due form. So the letter was read aloud to the Council by one of the clerks, and the king asked the Council what the answer should be. The Taingda Mingyi,1 who was a fierce old man — he is now a prisoner in India, Thakin — said it was necessary to make war upon the foreign devils, and drive them into the sea. "Has not the king," | I could see her shiver all over, and her he said, "many thousands of brave soldiers who can defeat these heretics and destroy them? Have not these English taken from the king the kingdoms of Arracan and Pegu, and shall not our mighty lord, the ruler of all elephants, Then the Hlethin-atwinwun and other the king of kings, reconquer those ministers spake and urged the king to countries which the great Alompra make war. They spoke of the Immoradded to the kingdom of Ava? Has tals of the King's Guard, who were not the king's army been trained by tattooed with charms and made proof foreigners, and is not the king's palace against bullets and sword-cuts, and that full of guns and ammunition ? Let not they could withstand the English troops the great king allow these animals to with ease and destroy them. They told impose conditions upon his power. Let the king how a Chinaman had invented the king issue his orders, and the En- a mirror with which the sun's rays glish devils shall be utterly destroyed!" could be reflected on the enemy and their army utterly burnt up. So they all pressed the king to make war, but the king only listened, and the talk went on for the time it would take the sun to sink from the zenith to that roof. Each minister as he spake raised his head and looked up, and as he finished dropped it on his hands. Then at the end the Kinwun Mingyi spoke again, and advised the king to keep peace. He said a great deal more than this, Thakin, but this is the meaning of it all. The queen was glad when the Taingda spoke, for her mind and his mind were one, and she smiled at the king. Then the king said to the Kinwun Mingyi, "What does the Kinwun Mingyi advise 1 Mingyi (minister). "Did not one of my lord's ancestors | bent her head on her hands and she who has now returned to heaven make war upon the English, and he lost Arracan? And another of my lord's ancestors made war and lost the kingdom of Pegu. Let my lord hearken to his servant, and not make war lest he lose Ava." The king's mind was bent towards the Kinwun Mingyi, for he was a very clever old man, and the king knew that his advice was good. But when the queen looked in the king's face and saw he was inclined to listen to the Kinwun Mingyi, she was very wroth, and she bent forward and put her hand on the king's sleeve and spoke, and her voice was clear like a silver gong in the great chamber. "I, too, the king's wife, have something to say to the king my lord on this matter. Is my king a servant of these foreigners, that he should suffer this thing?" She stopped a moment, and when she went on the words came slowly from her lips as drops that fall from a tree after rain. "Better it were to lose the Golden Kingdom than to listen to orders like a slave. Is my lord in his palace to be but as the governor of a province who does this and that at the command of a greater than he? My lord is a great king, and his sword is sharp. He shall reply with its edge to those who contemn him. Sooner shall we die with our soldiers than live with chains of words about our necks. But there is nothing to fear. The brave soldiers, the Immortals, shall soon conquer the enemy, and drive him into that black sea whence he came. Let the Taingda Mingyi command and he shall prevail." Then she turned from the king and looked at the Kinwun Mingyi, and her voice grew full of scorn and hate. "As to the Kinwun Mingyi, he is old and afraid. He is not a man, a minister, but a woman-an old, old woman. Look! my maidens shall bring even now a petticoat, that he may dress as becomes his words, and when he goeth forth from the king's presence the world shall know him for what he is." The queen stopped speaking, and she was silent for a moment, and then she cried, and the tears ran down through Then the king rose from the dais and turned towards his own apartments, and the queen followed, and we followed the queen. I saw her face as she went, and it was quite white; but her eyes were red, and there were blots of tears on her scarlet dress. She looked glad and yet sorry. I looked back as we went out and saw the Kinwun Mingyi going away. His face was very sad, and he was ashamed; but the other ministers were merry, and laughed at him as he went. Ah, Thakin! I shall always remember that Council, but I cannot tell it you all word for word. How can a child remember everything? All I have told you is true, but I fear I tell it badly. Very soon after that the war began, and the queen went often to Councils with the king, and troops were sent from Mandalay down to the frontier; but of this the Thakin knows much more than I do, for I only know what I heard in the palace, and a great deal of this I forget, and a great deal was not true. There was a great stir in the palace in those days, and many ministers and others went away, but the Taingda Mingyi did not go. Then came news of the fighting, and one evening a messenger came to the palace from Minhla with a letter for the Council, and I heard that there had been a great fight between steamers below Minhla, and that the English steamers were defeated and two of them taken. The Thakin knows this was not true; but every one in the palace believed it, and the queen told us of it herself and said it was true. A great pwè was ordered in the palace on account of this victory. It was held in the porch before the southern face. The king and queen and princes and ministers sat up on the space before the large room whose walls are of glass panels enclosing flowers. The Thakin knows the room, for it was afterwards the mess room where the generals messed, and the Thakin has played whist where we sat. It was a great puè, and the actors in the play made speeches on the greatness of the king and queen and the army, and that the English would soon be driven away. It was very beautiful to see the dancers dancing dressed in wonderful clothes of silver and gold that the queen had given them, and to see the crowds of the soldiers and the other lower people of the palace sitting below round the actors listening to the songs. Down below it was very bright, with all the torches and other lights; but where the king and queen sat there were not many lights, only you could see the diamonds glitter round the queen's neck, and the golden bangles shine as she moved. When the best actress had danced, and had sung a beautiful song to the queen of how great and gracious she was, like the full moon beside the king, her sun, and how the people loved and feared her, and of how the foreigners were like the night that wished to darken the kingdom, the actress was called to the front of the steps where the queen sat, and the queen sent her by me a golden bangle and a message to say that the actress had sung well, but that soon there would be more to sing about than the capture of two ships. I went down and gave her the bracelet, and repeated the queen's message aloud, so that all might hear it. When all the people round saw the bangle and heard the message a murmur ran through them as when the wind blows in the trees. The king too gave a present to the chief actor, and money to be divided among the other actors; and all night long the music sounded in the palace, and the light of torches was so bright outside that you could see almost to the top of the great golden spire with its seven roofs, the centre of the universe. After that for two or three days came more messengers. Sometimes they spoke of victory, and sometimes they said that the foreigners were being allowed to ascend the river some way, so that the river might be blocked behind them, and thus they might be caught in a trap and utterly destroyed. There were all sorts of rumors in the palace, Thakin rumors of defeat and loss, and that our forts had been taken and many men killed; but no one dare tell the queen of these rumors, and always she spoke of victory, and declared that the foreigners were being destroyed, and she told us all to look glad and rejoice in the glories of the army, and she gave us new dresses to wear. But sometimes when the queen thought no one could see she did not smile, but looked sad and old, ah! much older than before; and sometimes she would be cross, and speak to us angrily, and suddenly change again and laugh. When she was with the king she always looked happy and con 1 fident, and spoke to him merrily of how | fear, that the queen wished to give her they would go in state to Rangoon when a present, so the child stood with me it was conquered, and see the ships and before the queen. the vast ocean. One morning early the queen went out to walk in the gardens on the north of the palace, and she called only one maid of honor, myself, to follow her, and forbade the rest; so I went behind her with the golden box of tobacco and the cigarette-papers. You know the gardens, Thakin, where there were canals and ponds of water, and long avenues of trees that wound to and fro, and you crossed the canals by little bridges, and climbed up little hills where there were rocks and ferns. It was very cool there in the early morning in November, when the mist hung like a soft veil on the water, and the flowers were covered with dew, and the queen was fond of walking along the canals and watching the fish swim to and fro. From the garden you could look at the palace with its red and golden walls, and the curved roofs of the audience-chambers, and above all the great tower gleaming in the early sunlight, and throwing out a myriad sparkles from the tiny mirrors let into the gilding. By the gardens at one end is the white Bôddhi pagoda, and there is some open ground there where the children of the palace officials used to play. The queen went to this end walking slowly under the trees, and stopped behind a great tamarind-trunk, and beckoned me to her side; and she looked beyond, and there were many children playing by the water, running and laughing, and the little boys at football. Then she ordered me to go and call one of the children to come to the tamarind-tree, but not to say the queen was there. Then Mebya, the queen, told me to ask the child what she heard her parents talking about in the evenings before the lights were lit, and I coaxed her, and she said her parents talked of the fighting, and how our soldiers had run away, and that the foreigners had taken Minhla and killed many Burmese, and that they were advancing up the river. She also said that her parents talked last night that it would be necessary to bury all their gold and silver, and that her mother had told her she would have to give up her gold bangles to be buried, for that wicked foreigners were coming to Mandalay, and would steal them all. You will understand, Thakin, that the child did not tell it all like this; but bit by bit, with coaxing and care, she told all she knew, and she cried a little at the end, because she did not wish to give up her bangles to be buried. While little Ma Than was speaking the queen did not say anything. She only listened, and her face grew white and her eyes grew large in her face. When the girl had finished the queen gave her a gold jewel from her wrist, and bade her tell no one of what the queen had asked her, only to say that the queen called her and gave her a jewel. And she ran back to her friends, and I called another. Altogether I called four children, and they all told the queen the same — that their parents talked of defeat and loss, and two said that their parents were going to run away from Mandalay when the English came in a few days. When they had finished, the queen went away slowly, and I followed her. As she left the tree she said to me: I went and called a little girl I knew," You hear what the children have about eight years old, the daughter of one of the secretaries, and the child came to me and took my hand, and we went to where the queen was standing alone behind the tamarind-tree in the shadow. When the little girl saw the queen she was much afraid, and wished to run away, but I told her there was no said. They are too young to have learnt how to lie. It must be all true. It is the ministers and generals who dare not tell me the truth. But you who have heard what they said, forget it, and dare not to say a word to any one of it." Then she went down the garden, and she looked so sad, ah, so sad! It is terrible, Thakin, that when an enemy and again. I did not know what it was, and as I could not see what was the matter, for my window only looked on the gardens, I lay down again, and soon my mother came in. I asked her what the trouble was, and said I had looked out of the window but could see nothing. My mother asked if I had heard no sound, and I said, yes; a sound as of thunder far away. Then my mother told me it was the great guns of the English steamers firing at Ava, which, as you know, Thakin, is not far away from Mandalay, down the Irrawaddy. The king and the queen did not know till they heard the guns that the English were so near, and now there was terrible confusion. is advancing to destroy a great kingdom the queen can only hear the truth from children who are too young to have learnt how to lie. Of all the ministers and generals she had raised into power, of all her thousand servants, whose lives lay in her hand, there was not one to tell her truly of the ruin coming up the river. She, the great queen who had through her husband the king ruled the Burmese nation and the Shan princes, who had sent hundreds to death and given to hundreds power and wealth, whose palace was full of gold and silver and precious stones, had no one to help her in her trouble. I was only a little girl, Thakin, and I could not understand so well then as I can now, looking back. but I was very sorry for the queen. The queen walked back through the arches of the trees, and near the west entrance she saw the king come out and go towards the garden pavilion. When she saw him she walked on quickly, and came up to him and asked him aloud if there were any new victories of the troops reported this morning. Her voice sounded gay, and she laughed, and all the sad look had gone from her face. All that day and the next I had fever, and could not go to attend on the queen; but the third day in the morning, as I was lying in my room sick and hot, and my mother, who had come to the palace when she heard I was sick, was bathing my forehead, there was suddenly a great commotion in the palace, and the sound of people running to and fro and talking. My mother went out to see what had happened, and left me alone. I was frightened, for I could not tell what had happened in the palace. Perhaps there was a rebellion or some one being killed outside. I dragged myself to the window and looked out into the gardens. I could not see any one in the gardens, for the day was hot; but as I stood there and listened at the window there came up on the breeze a low, soft sound like thunder far away in the Shan Mountains, and after a minute it came again All that night there was no rest in the palace. When I woke up now and then I could hear men shouting and moving in the guards, and my room companion did not return save for a few minutes, when she told me the king and queen and the ministers had been sitting long in Council, and the Taingda Mingyi tried to persuade the king and queen to flee to Shwebo, but the Kinwun Mingyi persuaded the king it would be better to remain in Mandalay and await the arrival of the English. I asked Ma Shwe Tha what she would do if the English came, and she said she would stay with the queen. Early in the morning, while it was not yet light, Ma Shwe Tha came again and said she was so tired she wanted to sleep, and she asked me to go to the queen, and as my fever was now gone, I got up and went to the queen. She was sitting in one of her rooms looking out on the garden, where it was still dark. There were but few maids of honor there, and I thought they must have gone to sleep; but another girl said they had left the palace in the night, for there was great disorder, and the guards were not kept as before. I sat behind the queen for a long time and she made no sign. She was thinking, Thakin, of all that was to happen when the sun that was now sending little ripples of light across the sky should have reached the zenith, and |