In a moment he was beside it and raising in his arms a man still young, but so bowed and emaciated by illness and trouble, that he seemed scarcely able to stand.
“Leave me! leave me!” he cried, as the Ugly Prince held him in the grasp of his strong arms. “What brings you here? Have you, too, come for the plant—the magic plant?”
“I have,” said the Prince firmly.
The unhappy man dropped his hands. “Then I am too late,” he cried, “and I must die—for what can I do against you?” And he glanced from his own trembling form to the straight, strong limbs of the Ugly Prince.
And he bowed his head and wept till the Prince’s heart bled to hear him.
“I beseech you, stop your tears,” he said kindly, “and tell me what has brought you here?”
As he spoke these words his breath almost stopped, for he foresaw, dawning on the very horizon of his mind, the vague outlines of a possible sacrifice, so great, so overwhelming, that he hardly dared to put it into thoughts, and yet—it was there.
“I have come,” said the stranger, “from a long, long distance and crossed the desert on foot. See my feet, how they are bruised. My journey has taken two years (for I am a poor man and must travel as best I may) and, at times, I have hardly hoped to live to the end; for I am suffering from a slow, fatal disease. I have tried every cure in vain, and have been told by a learned magician to seek out this plant as a last hope of life. I have a wife whose whole heart is bound up in mine, and little children. Their hopes have been centred in me through these sad years since I left them to begin my journey. I shall never see them again, and they will go on, day by day, hoping for my return. But that will never be now. That is my history. And you, why are you here? What is yours?”
For answer, the Prince drew off his mask. “That is mine,” he said.
His companion recoiled from him, shuddering.