Prologue

The Path of the King

by John Buchan

The three of us in that winter camp in the Selkirks were talking
the slow aimless talk of wearied men.

The Soldier, who had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby
of the Civil War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last
Wilderness struggle. I said something about the stark romance of
it--of Jeb Stuart flitting like a wraith through the forests; of
Sheridan's attack at Chattanooga, when the charging troops on the
ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of Leonidas Polk, last
of the warrior Bishops, baptizing his fellow generals by the light of
a mess candle. "Romance," I said, "attended the sombre grey and blue
levies as faithfully as she ever rode with knight-errant or
crusader."

The Scholar, who was cutting a raw-hide thong, raised his wise
eyes.

"Does it never occur to you fellows that we are all pretty mixed
in our notions? We look for romance in the well-cultivated
garden-plots, and when it springs out of virgin soil we are
surprised, though any fool might know it was the natural place for
it."

He picked up a burning stick to relight his pipe.

"The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the
last places to look for masterful men. They began strongly, but they
have been too long in possession. They have been cosseted and
comforted and the devil has gone out of their blood. Don't imagine
that I undervalue descent. It is not for nothing that a great man
leaves posterity. But who is more likely to inherit the fire--the
elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with his fortune to
find? Just think of it! All the younger sons of younger sons back
through the generations! We none of us know our ancestors beyond a
little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins. The dago
who blacked my boots at Vancouver may be descended by curious byways
from Julius Caesar.

"Think of it!" he cried. "The spark once transmitted may
smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will
come, and it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste.
And we fools rub our eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of
the gutter. It didn't begin there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare
was the son of a woolpedlar, and Napoleon of a farmer, and Luther of
a peasant, and we hold up our hands at the marvel. But who knows what
kings and prophets they had in their ancestry!"

After that we turned in, and as I lay looking at the frosty
stars a fancy wove itself in my brain. I saw the younger sons carry
the royal blood far down among the people, down even into the kennels
of the outcast. Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings,
but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and
daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there
is a fierce stuff of life in it. It sinks and rises again and
blossoms at haphazard into virtue or vice, since the ordinary moral
laws do not concern its mission. Some rags of greatness always cling
to it, the dumb faith that sometime and somehow that blood drawn from
kings it never knew will be royal again. Though nature is wasteful of
material things, there is no waste of spirit And then after long
years there comes, unheralded and unlooked-for, the day of the
Appointed Time....

This is the story which grew out of that talk by the winter
fire.