'Did you come alone?' asked Gyp, puffing a long whiff of smoke up towards the ceiling.
'Ah-h-h! Silvia sometimes leads the best of men astray. But you got here at last, and that is more than many do. And you were but just in time. The King prints his placards to-night.'
'What placards?' asked Yellow-cap innocently.
'Announcing his "successor"--a farce in one act.'
'Who would you like him to be?' inquired Gyp, smiling.
At this all the Brethren looked at one another and winked mysteriously. Yellow-cap, who was fast becoming wise, and who knew more about this matter than he cared to admit, could not help wondering at his queer position--the Head of a Secret Society hostile to the very monarch who had offered him his kingdom that same afternoon. The thought of it made him feel quite hot; and he was so far forgetting himself as to be on the point of taking off his cap to cool his forehead, when Gyp caught his arm, and a murmur of horror ran through the assembly.
'Forbear! as you value your credit!' cried Ruba.
'It is against the first law of the Brotherhood,' added Ruba.
'We couldn't live without them,' declared Dubsix.
'Would you commit suicide?' demanded Menin.
'Be guilty of treason?' hiccoughed Atub, who had swallowed some smoke the wrong way.
'Good gracious!' was all that poor Yellow-cap was able to reply.
'Allow me to explain,' interposed Gyp courteously. 'The Seven Brethren are the outcome of an artificial civilisation. It is our strength and also our weakness that we never seem to be what we are. Our laws are binding because they are irrational. Our power is great because it is an imposition. Our respectability is perfect because it is a fraud. We gain our ends because our ends are ourselves. Our union is strong because it depends on mutual distrust. In a word, we are the Everlasting Unreality! Have you understood me?'
''Tis well. No one of us understands either himself or his brother. He who understands or is understood is anathema.'
'You have heard of the cap of invisibility?'
'The yellow cap is more wondrous yet--it is only when you put it on that you can be seen--at all events by the world.'
Hereupon all the Brethren twisted their moustachios, knocked the ashes out of their pipes, refilled them, lighted them, and smoked in silence.