The Keepers of the People

952His son Raleigh ruled after him, born of the same strong nature, and wrought into the same fine temper. He had brought back from his wanderings a beautiful English girl, his cousin Dorothy Falcon, to share his throne, and bear him a fitting heir; and if the Varandals owed to his father the great waterways that carried, on mile upon mile of arches, the pure water from the mountains, and freed the land of fever, they owed to him their knowledge of the working of metals, that lessened the labour and perfected the work of the husbandman and the craftsman. He called his son Ralph, after his father, and trained him as he had been trained himself: all manly exercises hardened his body; the vigils of the hunter, and the responsibilities of the captain hardened his soul to bear the burden of sovereignty. In him too the ruling passion was the building and keeping of the people: it had been inspired into him in his boyhood, when his reading was the Book of the Wisdom of Ralph, Prince of Varandaleel, and the unfinished Book of the Wisdom of Prince Raleigh; every faculty had been fostered which could aid its fullest expression; every desire which conflicted with it, had been abased before it.

953Rarely indeed was a voice raised against the Princes. Even in time of pestilence, drought, or famine, the Varandals did not grow discontented with their rule, or rail against them; for the raiders whom they led forth from time to time, brought back word that beyond the hills, under other rulers, there were always famine and pestilence among the peoples. Moreover, loyalty to their Princes had grown their strongest sentiment, the Princes were their keepers; the worship of the Princes had become a part of their religion soon after the massacre of the priests by the first Prince, and had grown to be the greatest part of it, so that any one who railed against them was like to be stoned for a blasphemer. Above all, life ran too easily for discontent to rankle to revolt: it was too full of fine and pleasant things for them to waste thought on acquiring a share in the government. The Princes had dealt carefully with the few strangers who had made their way through the pass into the country, who might have taught the people inexpedient things. In the years there had come a score of Europeans, missionaries and travellers; the missionaries had been slain, there was no use for them; the travellers had lived at the palace, entertaining the Princes with their talk, and helping the life of the people with their knowledge. Only one of them had ever gone forth from Varandaleel, slipping away in the night, when the roaming fit was on him; and he was crushed by a rock, falling or hurled from the cliff above him, even as he stood at the further foot of the pass, casting back his eyes up the steep descent.