"I've got some sort of an idea," he said at length ([page 122])

GLORIA

BY

G. FREDERIC TURNER, M.A.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

BY C. M. RELYEA

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published, March, 1910

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I [The Patient and His Doctor]
II [The City of the Plain]
III [A Proposition]
IV [The Thiergarten]
V [The King's Cup]
VI ["Wein, Weib, und Gesang"]
VII [Confidences in a Wine-Shop]
VIII [The Bargain]
IX [The King's Breakfast]
X [A Ski-ing Expedition]
XI [The Iron Maiden]
XII [The Simple Policy]
XIII [On the Warpath]
XIV [Music and the Mob]
XV [The Temptation of Ulrich]
XVI [King and Canaille]
XVII ["Captain" Trafford]
XVIII [The First Council]
XIX [The Chapel Royal]
XX [Bernhardt Disturbed]
XXI [Dreams]
XXII [The War on the Wine-Shop]
XXIII [The "Bob" Run]
XXIV [Rival Influences]
XXV [The Opening Bars]
XXVI [The Parley]
XXVII [Trafford and the Trench]
XXVIII [Meyer at Work]
XXIX [News from the Capital]
XXX [Recruits]
XXXI ["A Surprise"]
XXXII [The Conquering King]
XXXIII [The Lost Sheep]
[Epilogue]

ILLUSTRATIONS

["I've got some sort of an idea," he said at length] ([page 122]) ... Frontispiece

["The lady wants to be seen home—and I'm going to do it if I swing for it!"]

["If I see so much as an inch of blade, this little hand-grenade of mine will play havoc with your handsome features"]

["I drink to our success to-night, I drink to the devil in the devil's own tipple"]

CHAPTER ONE
THE PATIENT AND HIS DOCTOR

Christmas Eve in New York! Broadway crowded with happy playgoers, gay promenaders, and belated shoppers! Fifth Avenue resplendent with an abundance of commercially-conceived festivity in the overstocked windows of its fashionable shops! In other and less pretentious localities, gaunt lines of assassinated turkeys exhibiting their sallow nudities in indecent profusion to a steady stream of ever-changing faces! In short, everywhere throughout the big city, the people holding high carnival—even cynicism forgetting itself in the prospect of gallinaceous food and crude sweetmeats. And Central Park West and the Circle, in particular, scintillating with electrical display and wreaths of red-ribboned holly.

In the New Theatre a gala performance of Antony and Cleopatra was nearly over; the last lines of the tragedy were being spoken. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that in another moment the folds of the red velvet curtains would descend on the Egyptian scene, an occupant of one of the stalls, no longer able to control his impatience, hastily left his seat and started up the adjoining aisle.

To say that this young man gave every physiognomical indication of being a soul in distress would be putting it not a bit too strongly. Nor would it have required exceptionally brilliant intuitive faculties to conjecture that someone—presumably in a box across the theatre, on which, all through the evening, his eyes had been riveted—had shamelessly robbed him of his heart. Moreover, judging from his evident haste and the keen anxiety with which all the way up the aisle he followed every movement of the parties in the box, it would seem that he had determined to intercept them on their way out. And, indeed, such was his determination. Life had concentrated itself into a question of hearing from the lips of the woman,—the woman to whom he had offered, and who had refused, the worship of a life,—a word that he could interpret as meaning that there was still a faint possibility of her changing her mind.

To his vexation, however, he found that others likewise had left their seats. In fact, the general exodus had already set in before, even, he had reached the top of the aisle. And yet, despite his being thoroughly aware that any attempt to pass from one side of the house to the other was sure to be resented,—so delirious is the haste in which a metropolitan audience takes leave of the theatre for the invariable restaurant-supper after the play,—he continued to make strenuous efforts to cut his way through, until realising, finally, that it was useless, he let himself be borne along by the crowd. But his chance came when the carriage-vestibule on Sixty-Fifth Street was reached. And there, quick to take advantage of an almost imperceptible cessation of the onward movement—consequent upon the people searching the ingeniously-devised board to ascertain whether the desired motors or carriages headed the long line—he again started in to elbow his way through the crush; and so successfully this time that presently comparatively few persons separated him from an undeniably blond and dashing young woman, in a magnificent opera-cloak of Russian sables, who was laughing and chatting with half a dozen or more vapid youths while following the lead of a portly and somewhat red-faced old gentleman.

Now, though unusual—for want of a better word—as was the young man's behaviour, few people in this scene of orderly confusion, babel of voices and distant humming of motors, gave more than momentary attention to it except the young woman's escort. To these wondrous wise young gentlemen, however, the meaning of his frantic exertions to reach her side was all too plain, no less her feelings towards him; and, exchanging significant glances, they began to nudge one another to watch for the dénouement of the little comedy which was rapidly developing before their eyes.

But alas for the futility of his brave resolutions...!

So far his task had been easy enough. But at the fateful moment, face to face with his divinity, and doubtless for the first time perceiving that no relenting glance softened the faultless contours of her carven features, that no spark of warmth glinted in her big, blue eyes,—eyes that, on the contrary, were brimful of scornful laughter,—his indomitable spirit failed him utterly, was crushed, for once, at least, and he stood gaping at her, to everyone's surprise, more like a country yokel than the man-of-the-world that he undoubtedly was. For the briefest of intervals he remained thus. And then, apparently pulling himself together, he suddenly wheeled round on his heel, and shouldering his way through the press,—heedless alike of a friendly hail, which came in an unmistakably English accent from someone back in the crowd, and of the protesting looks, if not words, of the people he jostled,—he left an ostentatiously, almost vulgarly, ornate limousine to slam its door and move rapidly away with its fair occupant and her admirers.

Into Central Park West the young man turned and walked north. Despite a heavy fur overcoat, his gait was extraordinarily fast, and his face appeared white, almost ghastly, in the thin, yellow fog that was pushing its way under his eyelids, into the penetralia of nose and ears, and depositing superfluous matter on his lungs, larynx, and reckless expanse of linen. A few blocks above the theatre he came to a small apartment-hotel, mounted at a run to the first floor, and quickly entering the sitting-room of the suite, he carelessly tossed his irreproachable high hat on to a lounge. Then he went over to a window and stood gazing out at the sea of fog before drawing the curtain against the gamboge of the December evening. And his countenance was at once savage and inexpressibly sad.

This savageness was habitual, the resultant of bold features: a straight nose which made a sharp angle with the steep brow, bushy eyebrows and a wiry, brush-backed moustache that sprouted aggressively from his upper lip. Strictly speaking it was not a handsome face, though, perhaps, a striking one. Nor in other respects was there anything remarkable about George Trafford—"Nervy" Trafford they had called him at Harvard, and the appellation had always clung to him. As to occupation he had none. Inheriting a modest fortune at an early age, his life had differed little from that of the majority of young Americans in like circumstances, if we except the fact that—before he took up the difficult task of killing time—he had added an Oxford degree to that of Harvard.

Throwing off his coat, Trafford fumbled in his waistcoat for a key. A moment later he was opening a small mahogany medicine-cupboard that was fixed against the wall over his book-case. His searching hand groped about in its recesses and then brought out—something. For a second he held this "something" at arms length, conning it with curious eyes, as a dilettante might study a precious cameo, or a bit of rare porcelain.

Then he put it carefully on the table. The electric light shone on a small, compact object, dark of colour and sinister of shape—a revolver!

Nervy Trafford took pen and paper and wrote; and as he wrote the curious light grew in his wild eyes, and a sad smile played about his sensitive mouth.

"Dearest," he began:—"You say you can never love me. I say that I can never cease to love you. You have spoken a lie, even as I have spoken the truth, for when the mists of life are dispelled by the glorious radiance beyond the grave, you will love me as I love you, perfectly, entirely, with the triple majesty of soul, mind and spirit. Till then, farewell.

Yours, as you are mine,
GEORGE TRAFFORD."

Having read this curious epistle twice, he put it in an envelope and addressed it to Miss Angela Knox, St. Regis Hotel. A moment later he took up the object from the table, looking into vacancy as he did so.

So this was to be his end!—an ending, he well knew, that none of his friends had ever dreamed of. A man on whom advice was thrown away, who seldom if ever thought twice, in other words, a creature of impulse, yes—they would admit all that; but on the other hand would they not recall many instances of his extricating himself from tight places through nothing else but this very impulsiveness and nerve of his? Inevitably, then, they would refuse to believe that a man like that, however hopeless his infatuation, would take his own life. All of which merely goes to show how ridiculous it is for our best friends to scoff at the notion that an affair of the heart may be taken seriously.

Trafford's face was literally bloodless; his pupils infinitesimal black dots, gazing searchingly through the walls of his room into the great beyond, where all questions are answered, all doubts set at rest. For a moment he stood thus in vibrant silence. Then,—as if his mute searching had received its dumb response,—his lips breathed a woman's name, the muzzle of the revolver was raised head high, there was a click—and nothing more than a click!

Trafford's arm fell limp to his side, and a look of sick pain shuddered across his face. Then, an idea, a wafted air of recollection, fanned the light of understanding into his dull eyes. A ghost of a smile hovered at the corner of his lips, and again the cold hand raised the deadly mechanism to his pulsing temple. Even as it did so the door of his room was opened, and with a gesture of annoyance Trafford tossed the unused weapon on to the table and facing the intruder burst out with:

"Who on earth——"

"Hullo, Nervy, old chap!" was the familiar greeting that came from a big and genial man, clean-shaved, about thirty years of age, and dressed seasonably in a dark, astrachan-trimmed overcoat. In a word, the speaker was a faultlessly attired Englishman, whose great frame and smiling features seemed to bring into the tragic atmosphere a most desirable air of commonplace.

"Bob Saunders!" ejaculated Trafford.

"The same," affirmed the other, throwing off his overcoat and sinking lazily into the most comfortable chair he could find; "Robert Saunders, old cricket blue, devoted husband of a peerless wife, the friend of kings and the king of friends—voila!"

By this time Trafford had composed himself sufficiently to ask:

"What in the deuce are you doing over here? How did you find——"

"Been camping on your trail, old man,—as you Yankees say," interrupted the Englishman. "In the first place, the wife and I have been doing the States. To-night, as we were leaving the New Theatre, I caught sight of you—sung out to you—but you were off like a shot. I put Mrs. Saunders—divine creature!—into a taxi and sent her to the hotel. Then I gave chase. I tracked you here, and your door being open, took the liberty to walk in. But you don't look well, old chap!" he went on, noticing at length the exceptional pallor of his friend's face. "You look rotten! What's up, Nervy? Liver? Money?"

Trafford pointed silently to the table; at the sight of the revolver Saunders' face grew grave.

"As bad as that?" he asked. He was genuinely shocked, but his tone was commonplace, almost casual.

"As bad as that," breathed Trafford.

Saunders caught sight of the envelope, glanced at the address and at once proceeded to open it.

"Stop!" cried Trafford imperiously. "That is not for your eyes."

"Oh, yes it is," returned Saunders bluntly, extracting the letter from its envelope. "Sit down, sick man, and wait until I have diagnosed your case."

Trafford watched the Englishman with fascinated eyes. In his hour of deep darkness this smiling, confident, almost too well-dressed embodiment of prosperity seemed strangely comforting and reposeful. For the briefest of moments his present surroundings were blotted out, and his mind rushed back through the intervening years to the glorious days when they were both undergraduates at Oxford. But the illusion was of short duration, the awakening bitter. For as Saunders read, a smile eloquent of contemptuous astonishment spread over his face.

"Angela Knox!" he exclaimed. "My dear, demented friend, what a bétisse!"

"The purest, most perfect specimen of womanhood——"

"Angela Knox!" repeated Saunders cruelly. "Ye gods! Oh, yes, I know the lady. We met her at Newport—a big, buxom blonde, with the intellect of a sparrow. Tissue, tissue, my boy, and no soul! Features, millions also, I concede, but no sense of humour. In six weeks she would bore you; in six months you would bore her; in a year the machinery of the law—your obliging American divorce courts——"

"Silence!" roared Trafford. "You would poke fun at the holiest corner of a man's heart. I tell you, Bob, I so love this woman that had it not been for a miracle, I should have died five minutes ago with her name on my lips."

"And I'm the miracle?" questioned Saunders, tapping himself lightly on his faultless waistcoat.

"Miracle number two," replied the American, sinking into a chair. "That gun was kept for burglars. To preclude the possibility of an accident through some fool of a servant's mishandling, I kept the first chamber empty. Idiot that I am!—I forgot the precaution. But a second and doubtless more conclusive attempt would have been made had not you butted in——"

"And for Angela Knox!" cried Saunders with an unfeeling grin. "Now had it been a brunette——"

"This is no joking matter. For Heaven's sake, do be serious!"

Saunders brushed a speck of mud off his patent-leather boots.

"So I'm to take you seriously, Nervy? Well, then, listen, my dear, irresponsible, melodramatic friend. Love is a wonderful thing. It is rightly considered the beginning and the end of all things. I say so, moi qui vous parle, though I've been married nearly two years. But this infatuation—this calf-love of yours for a hypertrophied blonde with the conversational powers of a turnip, is, ipso facto, ridiculous. You will love some day, friend of my youth, but if your love is unrequited you will not turn to the revolver for solace."

"What are you letting me in for?" asked the bewildered Trafford. A powerful reaction had left him weak—weak in voice and weak in spirit.

"I mean," went on Saunders with slow emphasis, "that if you demand what your heart really desires and the response is 'no,' you will, in the words of the prehistoric doggerel, try, try again. Love that accepts defeat is an unhealthy passion; Love that tries to find relief in death is a disease. You are diseased, cher ami. Buck up! and listen to the words of your good doctor."

"I'm listening," said Trafford somewhat sheepishly.

"Good! To begin with, you are sound physically. Muscles firm, energy splendid, and your tongue would probably shame a hot-house geranium. But your psychic self is out of gear. Wheels are racing in your poor old brain! Little troubles become great tragedies! Vital things seem small and insignificant! You need a potent remedy."

"Let it come over speedy then!" the American replied with some show of interest.

For a moment the Englishman looked mystified. Presently he answered:

"You need to live in the open—plenty of sunshine and perfect air."

"All kibosh—buncombe!" broke forth Trafford petulantly.

"No, not buncombe, but Grimland—a little country on the borders of Austria and Russia. Visit it," went on Saunders in rousing tones. "Its highlands furnish the finest scenery in Europe. The air of its mountains is sparkling champagne! Its skies are purest sapphire, its snows whiter than sheets of finest lawn! To dwell there is to be a giant refreshed with wine, a sane man with a sane mind, and a proper contempt for amorous contretemps. Come, pack up your traps to-night and catch the Lusitania to-morrow. What's more, I do not advise, I command."

The American appeared half persuaded by the other's mastery. He sat upright, and looked more or less alive again.

"But I should be bored to death," he objected feebly.

"Not a bit of it! Why, old man, you'll forget the very meaning of the word boredom. You're a skater?—well, then, why not enter for the King's Cup which is skated for on the King's birthday—the second Saturday of the New Year at Weidenbruck. If you're beaten, as is probable,—for the Grimlanders are a nation of skaters,—there is tobogganing, curling, ski-ing and hockey-on-the-ice to engross your mind. All are exhilarating, most are dangerous. Furthermore, you will have my society—as my wife and I will be guests of King Karl at the Neptunberg. However, for you, since you have not my advantages, I recommend the Hôtel Concordia. You will sail with us to-morrow?" he wound up confidently.

Trafford made a gesture of impatience.

"Honestly," he said, ignoring the question, "when the hammer of that gun clicked against my forehead, something also seemed to click inside my brain. Up to that point I had love framed up as all there was to this world and the next. Now I feel there is no meaning in anything."

"Wait till you've got a pair of skates on your feet and the breath of zero air in your nostrils! Wait till you've had a toss or two ski-ing, and a spill on the 'Kastel' toboggan run! There will be meaning enough in things then."

"It's a go, then!" declared Trafford, but without enthusiasm. "I'll make a getaway."

Saunders rose, a look of genuine relief on his face.

"The Lusitania to-morrow," he said in far heartier tones than he had yet employed. "Till then——" He held the other's hand in a long grip.

"And you don't balk at leaving me with that?" Trafford pointed with a pale smile at the revolver on the table.

"Not in the least," laughed Saunders. "Take it abroad with you. Only, get out of the habit of leaving the first chamber empty. Such a practice might be fatal in Grimland."

CHAPTER TWO
THE CITY OF THE PLAIN

"I can't see that this is such a vast improvement on little old New York!" was Trafford's growling comment as he strolled the streets of Weidenbruck the evening of his arrival.

"Ah, but Weidenbruck is the city of the plain!" returned Saunders, who was accompanying him in his perambulations. "As soon as this skating competition is over——"

"It will be back to Broadway for mine, I think!" interrupted the American, and then went on with despondent logic: "If it is cold here, what will it be five thousand feet higher up?"

"Hot," retorted the other. "At Weissheim the sun shines unobscured by mist. The air there is dry and bracing. The thermometer may stand at zero, but your warm gloves will be a mockery, your great coat an offence."

A gust from a side street blew a whirl of powdered snow in the faces of the two men. Trafford buried his chin in the warm collar of his overcoat; he swore, but without undue bitterness. The cold indeed was poignant, for the unfrozen flood of the Niederkessel lent the atmosphere a touch of moisture that gave malice to the shrill frost, a penetrating venom to the spiteful breeze that swept the long length and broad breadth of the straight, prosaic Bahnofstrasse. The trams that rushed noisily up and down this thoroughfare were the only things that still moved on wheels. Cabs, carriages, omnibuses, perambulators even, had discarded wheels in favour of runners; and arc-lamps shone coldly from an interminable line of iron masts, while a cheerier glow blazed from the windows of innumerable shops which still displayed their attractive wares for the benefit of the good citizens of Weidenbruck, who have raised the science of wrapping up to the level of a fine art.

"But then why come to this cellar of a town?" grunted Trafford.

Saunders shot a glance at his companion. He was genuinely fond of Trafford, had been genuinely shocked at the narrowness of his escape from tragic ruin, and was genuinely glad when his morbid companion began to take intelligent interest in his surroundings,—even though that interest manifested itself in irritable comments and deprecatory grunts. The Englishman had chaffed the would-be suicide, had poured cruel scorn on his inamorata, and preached the cold gospel of worldliness and selfish pleasure; but if he had spoken cynically it had been because cynicism had seemed the right remedy, rather than because his own nature was bitter. Beyond having a rather high opinion of his own abilities and a predilection for new clothes, Saunders was a man of much merit.

"Because this skating competition happens to be held here," he answered, "and the King's Cup is the important event in the sporting calendar of Grimland. The winner—who may be yourself—is looked upon as a king among men, a demi-god to be honoured with the burnt offerings of the rich and the bright glances of the fair."

"The latter I can dispense with. Cut it out!" the American exclaimed with much bitterness, and then went on: "I did not come to Grimland merely for sport, as you well know, but because you hinted at political troubles. Moreover, I have taken your advice literally, and have brought my gun along."

"Keep it loaded then," said Saunders curtly. "I hear Father Bernhardt has returned."

"Who in thunder is Father Bernhardt?"

"A renegade priest. In the troubles of 1904 he eloped with the Queen, who had been plotting her husband's downfall with the Schattenbergs."

"His Majesty's opposition," put in Trafford, who knew something of the country's turbid history.

"Yes, kinsmen of King Karl's who have always cherished a secret claim to the throne. They very nearly made their claim good, too, in 1904."

"Only one Robert Saunders intervened," interjected Trafford with an envious glance at his companion.

"Providence upheld the ruling dynasty with a firm hand," Saunders went on to explain, "and the rebellious family, the Schattenbergs, were pretty well wiped out in the process. Two alone survived:—Prince Stephan,—who was too young to participate in the trouble, and who subsequently died of diphtheria at Weissheim,—and the Princess Gloria,—a girl of one-and-twenty, who escaped over the Austrian frontier."

"And what is she doing?" inquired Trafford with some approach to curiosity.

"No one exactly knows. Unless she has altered in three years, she is a beautiful young woman. She lives in the public imagination partly because she is a possible alternative to King Karl, who has the demerit of being a respectable middle-aged man. If,—as is rumoured,—she is in alliance with Father Bernhardt, there will certainly be trouble, for the ex-priest is a man of energy and resource. Moreover, he was once a religious man, and believed himself damned when he ran away with King Karl's fickle consort; and a man who is looking forward to eternal damnation is as dangerous in his way as a Moslem fanatic seeking Paradise."

Trafford said nothing, but breathed a silent prayer that the renegade priest might indeed be in Grimland. For Trafford was one of those curiously constituted people—rarer now than they used to be—who value excitement without counting the cost. At Oxford he had always regarded Saunders with a deep, if unmalicious envy. The Englishman had captured the highest honours, had won his cricket blue, performing prodigies at Lord's before enthusiastic men and women; and, later, had played a conspicuous, almost heroic, part in the Grimland troubles of 1904. On the other hand, he, Trafford—Nervy Trafford—had to be content both at Harvard and Oxford with only limited athletic successes, these being achieved by sheer pluck and infectious energy. But men had always loved him, for he could sing a rousing song, dance a spirited war-dance, and kindle bonfires in unexpected places with the most expensive furniture. In a word, his was an ardent, effervescent nature, and now that the tragedy of a tumultuous but misplaced passion had robbed life of its normal interest and savour, his ideas of a diverting holiday were of a distinctly reckless nature.

Wandering down the Bahnhofstrasse they purchased a few picture-postcards at a stationer's, a meerschaum pipe at an elegant tobacconist's where they sold Hamburg cigars in Havana boxes, and finally halted before a big corner shop where all the paraphernalia appertaining to winter sports were displayed in interesting and attractive profusion.

"I thought you had a good pair of skates," said Saunders.

"So I have," returned the other. "But there are two styles of skating, the English and the continental; and I am one of those rarely gifted Americans who can skate both styles equally well,—a fact I intend to take advantage of at this competition. But I need a different pair of skates for each style."

"Do you think you're really any good?" asked Saunders, smiling. He was accustomed to refer to his own abilities in eulogistic terms, but was not used to his companion doing so.

"If you were to ask that question in Onondaga, New York, U.S.A.,—where I was born and bred,—they'd laugh at you," was Trafford's serious reply.

"All right, let's go in and buy something from Frau Krabb," said Saunders, leading the way into the shop.

Within was a jumble of wooden luges, steel-framed toboggans, and granite curling stones; from the low ceiling hung numberless pairs of skis, like stalactites from a cavern roof; while bunches of skates adorned the balusters of the deep staircase leading to the upper floor.

Frau Krabb, the proprietress, was being accosted by another customer. The customer in question was a young officer in the shiny shako and a fine fur-trimmed sur-coat of grey-blue, frogged with black. He was a sufficiently attractive object in his picturesque uniform, but though his carriage was energetic and manly, the face that showed beneath the military headgear was by no means that of a typical soldier. It was a dark, oval face with a wisp of a black moustache, big lustrous eyes, and a small, pretty mouth, adorned with the whitest and most regular of teeth. It was a proud, sensitive face, more remarkable for its beauty than its strength, but for all that, good to behold for its intelligence, refinement, and glow of youthful health.

"Good-evening, Frau Krabb," began the soldier, genially saluting. "Are my skates ready yet?"

"They were ready at four o'clock, as promised, Herr Captain," replied the woman, a plump person with more fat than features.

The Captain passed his finger critically along the edge of the newly-ground blades, and expressed himself satisfied.

"And you will win the King's Cup, Herr Captain, of course?" continued Frau Krabb, smiling a fat smile into her customer's face.

"I'm going to have a good try at it," was the guarded reply. "I'd sooner win the King's Cup than the Colonelcy of the Guides. No one has practised his 'rocking turns' and 'counters' so assiduously as I, and I'm feeling as fit as a fiddle—which counts for more than a little in a skating competition."

"You look it," said the woman admiringly.

"I've got to meet Franz Schmolder of Wurzdorf," went on the soldier musingly, "and Captain Einstein of the 14th, so it does not do to be too confident. There's an American, too, competing; but I don't fear him. He doubtless skates only in the English fashion, and their style of skating is too stiff and stilted to be of any use in elaborate figures, though it is pretty enough for big, simple movements and combined skating. Schmolder's the man I fear, though Einstein's a big and powerful skater, with the nerve of a demon."

"Herr Schmolder has a strained knee," said the woman, "and Captain Einstein's nerve is not so good as it was. He is too fond of Rhine wine and Kirschwasser, and though he has a big frame it is not full of the best stuffing."

"I'd like to win better than anything in the world," said the young officer in tones of the deepest earnestness, his eyes lighting up wonderfully at the golden prospect.

"You will win," said Frau Krabb simply; "I have two kronen with my man on you, and you have my prayers."

"God answer them!" said the soldier piously. Then in a moment of enthusiasm he bent down and kissed the comical upturned face of the old shopwoman. "Pray for me with all your soul," he said, "for I want that cup, Mother of Heaven! I must have that cup." And, slinging his skates over his shoulder the officer was about to leave the shop, when Saunders accosted him.

"Hullo, Von Hügelweiler!" said the latter.

The soldier's eyes brightened with recognition. He had met the Englishman at Weissheim a few years previously, and was proud of the acquaintance, for Saunders was a name to conjure with in Grimland.

"Herr Saunders!" he cried, "I am charmed to meet you again. You are his Majesty's guest, I presume."

"I am at the Neptunburg, yes. Permit me to present my friend, Herr Trafford, of New York. Trafford, my friend, Ulrich Salvator von Hügelweiler, Captain in his Majesty's third regiment of Guides."

The two shook hands.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance," said the Grimlander. "But what are you requiring at Frau Krabb's?"

"Some skates for to-morrow's competition," replied Trafford.

"Himmel!" ejaculated Hügelweiler, "so you are the American competitor. You had better not ask me to choose your skates, or I should certainly select a faulty pair."

Trafford laughed.

"You are indeed a dangerous rival," he said.

"I wish to succeed," said the soldier simply. "Perhaps success means more to me than to you; but I don't think I am a bad sportsman."

"I will not tempt your probity," said Trafford. "I will select my own wares."

Von Hügelweiler waited till the purchase was complete,—expressing his approval of the other's choice,—and then the three men sallied forth into the nipping air of the Bahnhofstrasse.

"Where are you going?" asked Saunders of the Grimlander.

"Back to barracks," replied the Captain. "Will you accompany me?"

Saunders consulted his watch.

"Trafford and I are dining in an hour's time," he said, "but we will walk part of the way with you. I wish to show my friend a bit of the town."

Turning to the left, they entered one of the numerous lanes which proclaim the city's antiquity with gabled front and mullioned window. Ill-lit, ill-paved under the trampled snow, and smelling noticeably of garlic, bouillon, and worse, the thoroughfare—the Schugasse—led to the spacious Soldatenplatz, wherein was situated the fine barracks of the King's Guides. They had been walking but a few minutes, when a tall figure, heavily muffled in a black coat, strode rapidly past them. Trafford had a brief vision of piercing eyes shifting furtively under a woollen cap, as the man cast a lightning glance behind him. Then as the figure vanished abruptly into a mean doorway, Saunders and Von Hügelweiler exchanged glances.

"So he is back," said the former. "Then there is certain to be trouble."

"Nothing is more certain," said the Captain calmly.

"Who is back?" demanded the puzzled Trafford.

"Father Bernhardt," replied his friend.

And the American heaved a sigh of thankfulness.

CHAPTER THREE
A PROPOSITION

When the two friends left him, Captain von Hügelweiler fell into something of a reverie. He had told Frau Krabb that he desired to win the King's Cup more than anything on earth. That was not, strictly speaking, the case, for there was one thing that he desired even more than the coveted trophy of the skating rink. Yet that thing was so remote from reach that it was more of a regret now than a desire. Years ago,—when he was a sub-lieutenant stationed at Weissheim,—he had fallen desperately in love with the youthful Princess Gloria von Schattenberg. Her high spirits and ever-ready laughter had captivated his poetic but somewhat gloomy temperament, and he had paid her a devotion which had been by no means unreciprocated by the romantic young Princess. And the courtship was not so impossible as might appear, for Ulrich von Hügelweiler belonged to the old aristocracy of Grimland, and his father owned an ancient Schloss of considerable pretensions, and a goodly slice of valley, vineyards, and pine forests fifty miles northwest of Weidenbruck. But the Princess's father,—the Grand Duke Fritz,—was an ambitious man, already seeing himself on the throne of Grimland, and poor Hügelweiler had been sent about his business with great celerity and little tact. To the young officer the blow had been a crushing one, for his whole heart had been given, his whole soul pledged, to the vivacious Princess, and,—though years had rolled by,—time had done little to soften the bitterness of his deprivation. To his credit, be it said, that he had never sought consolation elsewhere; to his discredit, that he regarded his misfortune as a personal slight on the part of a malicious and ill-natured fate. For his was a self-centred nature that brooded over trouble, never suffering a bruise to fade or a healthy scar to form over an old wound. Even now his excitement at the glorious prospect of winning success and fame on the skating rink was marred and clouded by the hideous possibility of defeat. He desired,—with the intense desire of an egotistical mind,—to win the Cup, but he feared to lose almost more than he hoped to win.

On arriving at his modest quarters in the huge building in the Soldatenplatz, the Captain was surprised at seeing a visitor seated and awaiting his arrival. A man of medium height was reclining comfortably in his big armchair; his legs, high-booted and spurred, were thrust out in negligent repose, an eyeglass was firmly fixed in his right eye, a half-consumed cigarette smouldered beneath his coldly smiling lips. Von Hügelweiler drew himself up to the salute. His visitor was no less a personage than the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Grimland, General Meyer, the most intimate friend of his Majesty King Karl.

"Your cigarettes are excellent, Captain," began the General.

Von Hügelweiler regarded the cynical Jewish face in silence. General Meyer was a man whom few understood and many feared. The greatcoat,—thrown open at the breast,—half revealed a number of famous Orders, none of them won by prowess on the field of battle. The spurred boots and the riding whip that occasionally flicked them suggested the horseman, though all knew that General Meyer was never so ill at ease as when on horseback. The dreamy eye, the slothful pose, the drawled speech, suggested anything but the ruler of a fiery soldiery, but for all that Meyer had won his way and held his post by something more formidable than a courtly tongue and a capacity for epigrammatic badinage. Those who served Meyer well were served well in return; those who flouted the Jew,—even in secret,—had a curious habit of being superannuated at an early period in their career.

"Pray be seated, Captain," pursued the visitor suavely.

Von Hügelweiler drew up a chair, and sat stiffly thereon, awaiting developments.

"You are competing for the King's prize on the Rundsee to-morrow?"

"Yes, General."

"Ah! I happen to be judge of the competition."

To this the Captain offered no comment. He was wondering what on earth was coming.

"You are exceedingly keen, of course, on winning this very important trophy?" pursued the elder man, with a swift glance.

"Yes, General—exceedingly keen," admitted Von Hügelweiler.

"As a lad," went on the Commander-in-Chief dreamily, "I once entered an examination for horsemanship at the military school at Gleis. My uncle knew the officer who was examining the candidates, and thoughtfully sent him a dozen of champagne and a box of cigars on the eve of the examination. The champagne was,—if I mistake not,—Perrier Jouet of a vintage year, and the cigars the finest that are grown in the island of Cuba. I was not a particularly good horseman in those days, but I passed the examination—with honours."

The Captain received the information in stolid silence. The history of the remote and somewhat disgraceful episode did not particularly interest him. The General deposited his finished cigarette in a porcelain tray, and extracted a fresh one from a tin box on the table.

"Your cigarettes are really excellent, Captain," he mused. "Pray keep me company."

Von Hügelweiler acceded to the invitation.

"You draw, I presume, certain inferences from the incident I have just mentioned?" the Commander-in-Chief went on.

"No, General."

"None whatever?"

Von Hügelweiler smiled.

"None," he said, "unless you suggest that I should be wise to send you a dozen of champagne and a box of cigars."

The General vouchsafed no answering smile to his subordinate's facetious suggestion. He merely shook his head in pensive silence.

"I am a rich man," he said insinuatingly, "and my cellars are the best stocked in Weidenbruck—not excepting his Majesty's. You cannot help me that way."

Again there was silence, and slowly it was borne in on Von Hügelweiler that he was being tempted. The situation horrified him. However much he desired to win the King's Cup, he desired to win it fairly. On the other hand, he neither wished to offend his Commander-in-Chief nor ruin his prospects of success in the competition. He began to be angry with Fate for placing him in a dilemma, before he knew exactly what the dilemma was.

Suddenly the Commander-in-Chief sat bolt upright, and in a voice of great earnestness demanded:

"Von Hügelweiler, do you know that there is a firebrand in Weidenbruck?"

"Weidenbruck is a cold place, General, but it usually contains a firebrand or two."

"I know; but I speak of no common incendiary. Father Bernhardt is here."

Von Hügelweiler nodded.

"At number 42, Schugasse," he supplemented.

"You know that?" demanded the General eagerly.

"He passed me a quarter of an hour since. He was being followed, I think."

"Good!" ejaculated General Meyer. "I want him. Captain, I asked you just now if you wanted to win the King's prize. I learn that you are the most promising competitor for this important affair. The winner of the King's prize is sure of the personal interest of his Majesty. Grimland,—especially female Grimland,—loves the successful athlete. Official Grimland smiles on him. Skating may not be the most useful accomplishment for a soldier, but proficiency in sport connotes, at any rate, physical fitness and a temperate life. There is no reason why you should not gain this trophy, and there is no reason why the gainer should not go far."

Von Hügelweiler's dark eyes flamed at the words, and his handsome, sombre face glowed involuntarily at the other's suggestion.

"As I am to be the judge," continued the General calmly, "there is no reason why your victory should not be a foregone conclusion."

Slowly the Captain's face hardened to a mask, and his eyes became points of steel.

"I do not follow, General," he said stiffly.

"You are a shade dense, my young friend," said Meyer, leaning forward and tapping the other's knee. "You want the King's prize; I want the King's enemy."

"But I cannot give him to you," protested the Captain.

"You know where he is housed; you have a sword."

"You wish me to effect his arrest, General? You have but to command."

"I do not desire his arrest in the least," said General Meyer, sighing wearily at the other's non-comprehension, and reclining again in the depths of his arm-chair. "If I wished his arrest I should go to Sergeant Kummer of our estimable police force. Father Bernhardt is a dangerous man, and a more dangerous man arrested than at large. He has the fatal gift of touching the popular imagination. The ex-Queen is a woman of no strength, the exiled Princess Gloria is but a figure-head, a very charming figure-head it is true, but still only a figure-head. Father Bernhardt is a soldier, statesman, and priest in one inflammatory whole. He has a tongue of fire, a genius for organisation, the reckless devotion of an âme damnée. His existence is a menace to my royal master and the peace of Grimland. He had the misfortune to cause me a sleepless night last night. Captain von Hügelweiler, I must sleep sound to-night."

The Captain rose to his feet.

"If you give your orders, General, they shall be obeyed," he said, in a voice that bespoke suppressed emotion.

The General yawned slightly, and then contemplated his companion with an ingratiating smile.

"My dear young man," he remarked blandly, "for the moment I'm not a general, and I am giving no orders. I am the judge of the skating competition which is to be held to-morrow, and in order that I shall be able to do full justice to your merits it is necessary that I should sleep well to-night. Do I make my meaning clear?"

"Diabolically so," the words slipped out almost involuntarily.

"I beg your pardon," said the Commander-in-Chief stiffly.

But Von Hügelweiler's temper was roused. He had been prepared, if necessary, to compromise with his conscience. He had argued,—with the easy morality of the egotist,—that he probably desired the King's prize more than any of his competitors, and probably deserved it more. Had Meyer demanded a little thing he might have granted it. But the thing asked was not little to a sensitive man with certain honourable instincts.

"I am a soldier, General," he declared, "and I am accustomed to accepting orders, not suggestions. If you order me to arrest this man I will take him dead or alive. If you suggest that I should murder him as a bribe to the judge of this skating competition, I refuse."

Von Hügelweiler's words rang high, and it was plain that his indignation was perilously near mastering his sense of discipline. But General Meyer's cynical smile never varied a hair's breadth, his pose never lost a particle of its recumbent indolence.

"Very well, Captain," he said at length. "Then I must take other means. Only do me the justice of confessing that I asked a favour when I might have commanded a service. Remember that all Grimlanders are not so dainty as yourself, and remember that murder is an ugly word and hardly applicable to the destruction of vermin. If this cursed priest is brought to trial there will be trouble in the city, street-fighting perhaps, in the narrow lanes round the cattle-market; any way, more bloodshed and misery than would be caused by an infantry sword through a renegade's breast-bone."

"But is an open trial a necessity?" demanded the Captain, his anger vanishing in the chilling certainty that the King's prize would never be his.

But the Commander-in-Chief had had his say.

"Well," he said, rising to his feet, "if you will not do what is required, someone else must. No, don't salute me. I'm only an old Jew. Permit me to honour myself by shaking the hand of an honest man."

For a half-moment the generosity of the words rekindled the dying hopes in the Captain's breast. General Meyer was a strange man—was it possible that he respected scruples he did not himself possess? But as Von Hügelweiler gazed into the old Jew's face, and scanned the mocking light in the cold eyes, the cynical smile about the mobile lips, his rising hopes were succeeded by a deeper, deadlier chill. With a slight shrug of the shoulders and a smooth-spoken "Good-night, Captain," the Commander-in-Chief left the room.

Von Hügelweiler stood gazing at the closed door in silence. Then his face grew dark, and he shook his fist after his departed visitor with a gesture of uncontrolled rage. His lips twitched, his features worked, and then covering his face dramatically with his hands, he sank into a chair. For a bitterness, totally disproportionate to his worst fears, had entered his childish heart.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE THIERGARTEN

The competition for the King's Cup had no terror for Nervy Trafford, nor did the fact that he was lamentably short of practice affect his peace of mind. When a man has lost his heart's desire, has faced the barrel of his own revolver, the prospect of gyrating on skates before a critical audience becomes a matter of casual importance. When he left Harvard—to the vast regret of his fellow-undergraduates and the infinite relief of the much-enduring dean—he had not known in what direction to bend his superabundant energies. To one who had an innate craving for an electrically-charged atmosphere and the employment of explosives, and who was not of the dollar-hunting kind, office work was out of the question. So he had gone to Oxford. But sport there—the sport of the English shires—was too stereotyped and too little dangerous to appeal to his ardent spirit. Back again in the United States, he had commenced a military career, but it is a platitude that a soldier must learn to obey before he can command; and Trafford had stumbled badly on the lowest rung of the military ladder. After that he had wandered. He had seen men and cities, and had come to the conclusion that there was only one city, and in that city but one person. Whither that conclusion had led him we have already seen. Briefly, he was an unsettled and rather a dangerous person in such an inflammatory country as he was now visiting. It is little wonder, therefore, that the competition on the Rundsee caused him little anxiety, either as a trial of nerves or as a matter of vital importance in his cosmic outlook.

The Rundsee, where the contest was to take place, was an artificial piece of water, circular of shape, situated in the Thiergarten, the public park on the outskirts of Weidenbruck. At half-past two in the afternoon its frozen surface was crowded with a vast number of human beings, who had come to see the great annual competition for the King's prize. On one side a big pavilion, garnished with small flags and red cloth, had been erected for the benefit of the King and the favoured few. The majority of the throng were crowded behind ropes, leaving a sufficient area for the evolutions of the competitors. There was no question of the ice bearing so great a crowd, for the ice of the Rundsee was as hard as a London pavement, and many times as thick. A battery of elephant guns would have traversed it without inflicting a crack on its adamantine surface.

The scene was a gay one, for the winter sun had sucked up the morning mist and turned the dull grey sky to turquoise, and the snowy covering of the great trees into a bejewelled mantle of sparkling purity. A feeling of pent expectancy held the well-wrapped throng, a feeling which found outlet in rousing cheers when, with a cracking of whips and jingling of bells, a sleigh and four horses came rapidly down a broad avenue and halted at the back of the wooden pavilion.

It was the King—King Karl XXII., fat, smiling, smoking, wrapped luxuriously in magnificent furs, and accompanied by his favourites, General Meyer and Robert Saunders.

The Grimlanders,—to do them justice,—never received their monarch without noise. They might hoot or they might cheer, they might throw garlands of flowers or nitro-glycerine bombs, but royalty is royalty, whether its representative be hero or villain, and it was never received in the silence of indifference. And at the present moment the throng was benevolent. The day was fine, the occasion interesting, and in the love of sport the Grimland public forgot its antipathy to permanent institutions.

"By the way," asked the King of General Meyer, when they had found their way to the royal enclosure overlooking the Rundsee, "did you secure our friend Bernhardt last night?"

General Meyer shook his head.

"We had a failure," he replied, "another failure."

The King received the news without any outward sign of displeasure. Only one who knew him well would have read the deep disappointment of his placid silence.

"I thought you had discovered where he lodged," he said at length.

"I had discovered the fox's earth," said Meyer, "but my hounds had not strong enough teeth to inconvenience him. I approached a certain Captain of the Guides, a young man of good family and approved courage. I offered substantial rewards, but the work was too dirty for his aristocratic fingers."

"Perhaps it would have been wiser to have approached someone of humbler birth," said the King drily.

"I was forced to that conclusion myself," sneered the General, "and I requisitioned the services of two of the biggest scoundrels who enjoy the privilege of being your Majesty's subjects. Their consciences were un-tender, but they failed, as canaille will, when they come to hand-grips with a brave man."

"In other words," said the King, "two armed ruffians are incapable of tackling one priest. Next time I should try four."

"That is what I propose doing to-night, sire," said the General impassively.

The King turned to Saunders, who was seated on his left.

"What does the Englishman advise?" he asked.

"A company of Guards and a squadron of Dragoons," said Saunders curtly.

"An open arrest?" demanded his Majesty.

"Yes, and an open trial," affirmed Saunders. "After all, simplicity has its charms, and Father Bernhardt's popularity is so great that it can hardly be enhanced by a visit to the picturesque prison in the Cathedral Square."

"The Strafeburg!" said Meyer, naming the prison in question. "I fear the good citizens might essay a rescue."

"They certainly would," conceded Saunders, "but the Strafeburg was not erected by a speculative builder. It is made of stone, not papier-maché, and the gentlemen who keep guard over it are not armed with pea-shooters."

The General nodded sagely.

"You mean you would risk bringing things to a head?" he said.

"That is my advice," said Saunders. "I have only been in Weidenbruck twenty-four hours, but have been here long enough to see the need of strong measures."

"You are right," said the King with some bitterness; "the woman who was once my wife and who hates me more than anything on earth, is seen at large unmolested in my capital. The Princess Gloria,—a charming young lady, who would like to see me guillotined in order that she may sit more comfortably in my seat,—is waiting her opportunity to cross the frontier and take up her quarters here, if she has not done so already. The music-halls resound with incendiary ditties! There is one in particular, the Rothlied,—a catchy melody with a most inspiriting refrain,—which frankly and courageously advocates my removal to a better world. I am a patient man, God knows, and I desire peace at almost any price; but there are limits to my forbearance. Yet, when I put in a plea for action, I am told that a rash step would precipitate a revolution. I am beginning to think that my friend Saunders here is my best counsellor, and that simplicity is the best policy."

A roar of cheering from the crowd betokened the presence of the competitors on the ice. General Meyer rose from his seat.

"The best policy is generally simple," he said, "and so is the worst. But with your Majesty's permission I will withdraw. My services are required below."

Hardly had Meyer left when Mrs. Saunders was ushered into the royal enclosure. She was a tall, fair woman with a cold, correct profile and unemotional grey eyes. Her manner was usually reserved, and her speech mocking. She possessed, however, a keen, if caustic, sense of humour, and those few people who were privileged to know her well were wisely proud of the privilege. The King rose from his chair, his gaze resting admirably on the tall, athletic figure in its neat Chinchilla coat and smart fur toque.

"Enter the Ice Queen!" said his Majesty, offering her the chair vacated by the Commander-in-Chief.

"Has the skating begun?" the lady thus addressed inquired animatedly.

"Not yet," her husband answered, "the competitors are having a little preliminary exercise while Meyer is putting on his skates. But you come at an opportune moment, my dear. We were indulging in a political discussion. I was advocating bold measures; Meyer, masterly inactivity. I desire your support for my arguments."

"Meyer says we can't trust the army," put in the King.

"Of course you can't trust the army," said Mrs. Saunders; "for it is not commanded by a soldier. General Meyer is an excellent judge of skating and champagne, but he is more of a policeman than a warrior. I should send him on a diplomatic mission to a remote country."

"And whom would you make Commander-in-Chief in his place?" asked the King smiling.

"One of the competitors to-day."

"What!" exclaimed the King, mystified. "Who?"

"Why, my husband's friend—George Trafford, the American!"

The King roared with laughter.

"Why not appoint your husband to the post?" he demanded.

"Because my husband has a young and beautiful wife," retorted Mrs. Saunders smilingly.

"Whereas this Mr. Trafford——?"

"Is a broken-hearted bachelor. He is prepared to seek the bubble reputation even at the cannon's mouth. He has more imagination than Robert. Besides, I don't mind so much his being killed."

Saunders laughed loudly, while the King's sunburned face beamed with genuine amusement.

"I have to thank Mrs. Saunders for a cheerful moment," he said, "a rare thing these troublous times. I'm forty-five years of age, my dear lady," he went on, "and I've been on the throne fifteen years. Sometimes I feel as if I had reigned as long as Rameses II., and sometimes I feel every bit as old and dried-up as that mummied old gentleman in the British Museum. At the same time, as you see, I have my cheerful moments, and in those cheerful moments I see Father Bernhardt in one cell of the Strafeburg and the ex-Queen in another—the latter in a particularly damp cell, by the way."

"And the Princess Gloria von Schattenberg?" asked Saunders.

"Is too young and pretty for a cell," replied the King with a smile. "She is popular and dangerous, but I have a soft corner in my heart for her. I must fight her, of course, if she persists, but I've certain sunny memories of a little girl at Weissheim, all fun and laughter and enthusiasm for winter games, and I find it hard to take her seriously or wish her harm. But for the others," he went on, hardening his voice, "I'd have no mercy. They are playing with fire, and they are old enough to know that fire burns. Arrest them openly, I say, try them openly, I say, and if the proletariat objects—shoot them openly."

"Hear, hear," said Mrs. Saunders impassively, putting up her glasses and studying the faces of the different competitors on the Rundsee.

"Meyer wants one more chance of nobbling Father Bernhardt," said Saunders in a low voice.

"He shall have it," said the King; "and I hope and pray he will succeed. That priest's the heart and soul of the whole trouble. Once he is safe under lock and key, where can the Princess Gloria find another with such cunning, such resource, such heedless daring, to fight her battles and build her up a throne? Hullo, more cheering! What's that for? Ah, one of the competitors doing a bit of fancy skating to keep himself warm. A fine skater, too, by St. Liedwi,* a powerful skater, but a shade reckless, eh?"

* The patron saint of skating.

"That is our friend, George Trafford," said Saunders; "a fine skater, a powerful skater, but, as you say, distinctly reckless."

CHAPTER FIVE
THE KING'S CUP

As the cheers which greeted the American's essay on the Rundsee died down, General Meyer, shod with a pair of high-laced boots fitted with fine steel blades, sallied forth to the ice, and shook each of the competitors in turn by the hand. Von Hügelweiler fancied he read malice in the Commander-in-Chief's eye, but his spirits had sunk too low to be further depressed by such omens of his imagination. He had determined to go through with the contest, trusting dimly that his merits might so far exceed those of his rivals that it would be morally impossible to withhold the prize from him. But he was anything but sanguine, for though he believed himself the best skater present, he felt sure that both his countrymen would run him close, and that Meyer would award the prize to anyone but himself, if he could reasonably do so.

The competition,—like most skating competitions,—was divided into two parts. In the first, the performers had to skate in turn a number of set figures; in the second they had to skate for a period of five minutes any figures of their own choosing. In one important respect the competition differed from others held on the Continent—it was not held under the auspices of the International Skating Union.

It is generally accepted that there are two styles of skating, the English style and the Continental, or, as it is sometimes termed, the International style. The characteristics of the English school are an upright carriage, a straight knee, and a general restraint and rigidity of pose, discountenancing any unnecessary movement of the arms or the unemployed leg. The Continental style is skated with a slightly bent knee, with the unemployed leg trailing behind the body, and considerable gesticulation of the arms. The exponents of the latter claim a greater gracefulness of execution, a freer and more beneficial exercise of the muscles, and a wider scope of possible evolutions. The English stylists claim dignity, severity, and the capacity of doing difficult things without apparent effort. Both have their merits and their advocates,—but it is generally accepted that to skate at all one must employ one of these two distinct methods,—and practically all skating competitions are held under the auspices of one or the other school. In Grimland, however, under General Meyer's influence, a third school had arisen. In this an effort had been made to combine the speed and steadiness of the English skaters with the wonderful scope for brilliant and daring evolutions afforded by the Continental method. In Grimland competitions, therefore, marks were awarded for the scale on which figures were described, and the pace at which they were performed; while, at the same time, reward was offered for those exhilarating tours de force which are impossible of execution under English methods. To put it differently, no marks were awarded for style qua style, but for such things as accuracy, speed, boldness, and elegance, quite apart from the mechanical methods by which such excellences were attained.

The first competitor to attempt the set figures was Herr Franz Schmolder,—a lithe little athlete, who skated with great power and elegance. On one or two occasions, however, he failed to hold his edge firmly after a difficult turn, and it was obvious to Von Hügelweiler that the strained knee which Frau Krabb had made mention of was bothering him more than a little.

Captain Einstein was the second of the four aspirants, and if,—as Frau Krabb had insinuated,—his big frame was filled with an undue proportion of alcoholic nourishment, it did not seem to have impaired his "back brackets" or spoiled his "rocking turns."

"There's a dash about that fellow that's fine!" remarked Trafford to Von Hügelweiler, who was standing near him, wrapped during inaction in a big military ulster.

The Captain of the Guides had already in his own mind ruled Schmolder out of the competition, exaggerating his faults to himself with egotistical over-keenness. Einstein, however, was skating so brilliantly that Von Hügelweiler was beginning to experience the deepest anxiety lest he should prove the ultimate winner of the coveted trophy. The anxiety indeed was so deep that he refused to admit it even to himself.

"Wait till we come to the second part of the competition—the free-skating," he retorted. "Free-skating requires great nerve, great endurance, and absolute fitness. It is there that Einstein will fail."

When Einstein had finished his compulsory figures amid a round of applause, Von Hügelweiler slipped off his long ulster. For a moment a bad attack of stage-fright assailed him,—for there is nothing quite so nerve-racking as a skating competition before a critical judge and an equally critical audience,—and his heart was turned to water and his knees trembled with a veritable ague; but a cheer of encouragement restored him to himself, and he struck out for glory. With head erect, expanded chest, arms gracefully disposed, and knee slightly bent, he was about as pretty an exponent of Continental skating as one could wish to see. He travelled rapidly and easily on a firm edge, his turns were crispness itself, the elegance of his methods was patent to the least initiated.

General Meyer following slowly with note-book in hand, smiled appreciatively, as he jotted down the marks gained from time to time by his brilliant "counters," "brackets," and "rocking turns." The crowd roared their applause, and in the music of their cheers, Von Hügelweiler's depression vanished, and his heart sang an answering pæan of jubilee. Like most nervous, self-centred men, he most excelled before an audience when once the initial fear had worn off. And now he was skating as he had never skated before, with a dash, energy, and precision that drew redoubled cheers from the spectators and audible applause from the royal box. Even Meyer, he reflected, with all his malice, could hardly dare to give another the prize now; to do so would be not merely to violate justice, but to insult the intelligence of every man and woman on the ice.

At the conclusion of his effort, Trafford congratulated the Captain warmly on his performance. Von Hügelweiler's dark eyes shone bright with pleasure. Already he saw himself crowned with the invisible laurels of undying fame, receiving the massive silver trophy from the royal hands.

"Thanks, my American friend," he said, heartily, "go on and prosper."

With a few bold strokes Trafford started on his attempt to do superbly what others had done faultlessly. His style instantly arrested attention. Here was no lithe figure full of lissom vitality and vibrant suppleness; no graceful athlete whose arms and legs seemed ever ready to adopt fresh and more elegant poses. But here was an exponent of the ultra-English school, a rigid, braced figure travelling over the ice like an automaton on skates, an upright, inflexible form, sailing along on a perfect edge at an amazing speed, with a look of easy contempt on his face alike for the difficulties of his art and the opinion of his watchers.

Ever and again there was an almost imperceptible flick of the ankle, a slight shifting of the angle of the shoulders, and some difficult turn had been performed, and he was travelling away in a slightly different direction at a slightly increased rate of speed. The crowd watched intently, but with little applause. They felt that it was wonderful, but they did not particularly admire.

To Von Hügelweiler,—trained as he was in the theory and practice of the "Continental" school,—the performance seemed stiff and ugly.

"Mein Gott," cried Einstein, "at what a speed he travels!"

"He wants a bigger rink than the Rundsee!" exclaimed Schmolder. "A man like that should have the Arctic Ocean swept for him."

Von Hügelweiler was less complimentary.

"I don't think we need fear the American, my friends," he said. "He skates his figures fast and big, but with the grace of a dummy. Such stiffness is an insult to the Rundsee, which is the home of elegant skating. See with what a frowning face General Meyer follows this American about!"

"If you can learn anything from Meyer's face," said Captain Einstein drily, "you should give up the army and go in for diplomacy."

"Wait till he comes to the free-skating!" went on Von Hügelweiler. "That needs a man with joints and ligaments—not a poker. Our friend will find himself placed last, I fear; and I am sorry, for he has come a long way for his skating, and he seems an excellent fellow. I will say a few words of encouragement to him."

But Trafford had just then momentarily retired from the rink. He was changing his skates for the pair he had bought at Frau Krabb's the previous evening.

At the free-skating, which followed, Franz Schmolder broke down altogether. His knee failed him when he had performed for three minutes instead of the necessary five. Einstein, who followed, did well up to a point. But five minutes' free-skating is a fairly severe test of condition, and the big, burly soldier did not finish with quite the dash and energy he had begun with. Von Hügelweiler, however, gave another splendid display of effective elegance, and again drew resounding cheers for his vigorous and attractive performance. He himself made no doubt now that he was virtually the winner of the King's Cup. He had worked hard for his success, and was already beginning to feel the glow that comes from honourable effort generously rewarded. Meyer would doubtless be sorry to have to place him first, but in the face of Einstein's and Schmolder's comparative failure, and the American's stiffness, no other course would be open to him. Von Hügelweiler, however, watched Trafford's free-skating with interest, dreading, with an honest and generous dread, lest his amiable rival should disgrace himself. To his astonishment, Trafford was no longer a petrified piece of anatomy skating with frozen arms and arthritic legs. He beheld instead an exponent of the Continental school, who seemed to have in his repertoire a whole armoury of fanciful figures and astounding tours de force. Trafford was as free and unrestrained now as he had been severe and dignified before. Graceful, lissom, filled with an inexhaustible, superabundant energy, he performed prodigies of whirling intricacy, dainty pirouettings, sudden bold leaps, swift changes of edge, all with such masterful daring and complete success that the whole ring of spectators cheered itself hoarse with enthusiasm.

"Bravo! bravo!" cried Von Hügelweiler, clapping him heartily on the back at the conclusion of his effort. "It is good to see skating like that! If you had skated the preliminary figures with the same zeal you have displayed just now, we Grimlanders would have to deplore the departure of a national trophy from our native land."

Trafford accepted the left-handed compliment in silence, lighting a cigarette while General Meyer totted up the amount of marks he had awarded to the several competitors. After a few minutes' calculation,—and after his figures had been checked by a secretary,—the General skated back to the front of the royal box and announced his decision to the King. Then, at a word from his Majesty, a gentleman in a blue and yellow uniform placed a gigantic megaphone to his lips, and turning it to the various sections of the crowd, announced:—

"The King's Prize: the winner is Herr George Trafford; second, Captain Ulrich Salvator von Hügelweiler."

The American received the announcement with complete outward calmness. And yet those hoarsely spoken words had touched a chord in his heart that he had believed snapped and irrevocably broken. For a moment he lived, for a moment the cheers of his fellow men had galvanised into healthy activity the dead brain that had lost interest in all things under the sun. The success itself was a trivial affair, yet in a magic moment he had become reconciled to life and its burden, vaguely thankful that he had kept the first barrel of his revolver free from powder and ball.

"Congratulations, Herr Trafford," said General Meyer, who now approached him with proffered hand. "Escort me, I beg, to his Majesty, who will present you with the cup. You will also receive a royal command to dine to-morrow night at the Palace."

"Congratulations, Herr Trafford," said another voice.

Trafford looked round and beheld the competitor who had been placed second. The tone of the felicitation was one of undisguised bitterness, the face of the speaker was the ashen face of a cruelly disappointed man. And Von Hügelweiler, honestly believing himself cheated of his due,—and not bearing to see another receive the prize which he felt should have been his,—slunk from the scene with hate and misery and all uncharitableness in his tortured soul. Then, as he took off his skates, the cheering broke out again, and told that the American was receiving the trophy from the King's hand. An ejaculation of bitterness and wrath burst from his lips.

Hardly had he breathed his angry word into the frosty air when a small hand plucked at his fur-lined coat, and looking round he perceived a charming little face gazing into his own.

"Why so cross, Captain?'" asked the interrupter of his execration.

Captain von Hügelweiler's hand went up to the salute.

"Your Royal High——"

"Hush! you tactless man," said the Princess Gloria, for it was no other. "Do you want to have me arrested? For the sake of old times," she went on, putting her arm in his, "I claim your protection."

But Hügelweiler had not thought of delivering the exiled Princess to the authorities! For one thing, his mind was too occupied with self-pity to have room for State interests; secondly, he was still in love with the fascinating creature who looked up at him so appealingly, that he would sooner have killed himself than betrayed the appeal of those wondrous eyes.

They were strolling away from the Rundsee in the direction of the town, and a straggling multitude of the spectators was streaming behind them in the snowy Thiergarten.

Von Hügelweiler's lips trembled a little.

"It is good to see you again, Princess," he whispered. "It is comforting, just when I need comfort."

"Comfort!" echoed his companion with a grimace. "You were swearing, Ulrich! You are a good sportsman, you should take defeat with better grace."

"I can accept open defeat, Princess, like a man, though I had set my heart on the prize. But I was not fairly beaten. The American skated his figures as ungracefully as they could be skated."

"Why, he skated marvellously," declared the Princess enthusiastically. "I never saw such speed and daring on the ice. The man must have been born with skates on. I never saw a finer——"

"Nonsense!" broke in the irate Captain, forgetting both manners and affection in the extremity of his wrath. "He won because General Meyer had a grudge against me. He asked me last night to do a dirty piece of work. In the name of loyalty he wished me to murder a civilian; but I am a Von Hügelweiler, not an assassin, and I refused, though I knew that by so doing I was ruining my chances of success to-day."

The Princess Gloria pressed his arm sympathetically.

"The King's service frequently involves dirty work," she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes.

"So it appears!"

"Why not embrace a service that calls for deeds of valour, and leads to high honour?"

Von Hügelweiler looked at the bright young face that now was gazing into his so hopefully. A thousand memories of a youthful ardour, born amidst the suns and snows of Weissheim, rushed into his kindling heart. He had lost the King's Cup; might he not wipe out the bitter memory of defeat by winning something of incomparably greater value? There was a price, of course; there always was, it seemed. Last night it was the honour of a clean man; to-day it was loyalty to his King. But how much greater the present bribe than that offered by the Commander-in-Chief! The intoxication of desire tempted him, tempted him all the more shrewdly because of his recent depression. What had he to do with a career that was tainted with such a head as the scheming Jew, Meyer? What loyalty did he owe to a man served by such officers and such method as was Karl? The Princess's eyes repeated their question, and their silent pleading shook him as no words could have done.

"What service?" he asked falteringly.

"My service," was the hushed retort.

"And the reward?" he demanded.

"Honour."

"And—love?"

There was silence momentary, but long enough for the forging of a lie.

"Perhaps," she breathed, looking down coquettishly.

A great light shone in the Captain's eyes, and the sombre beauty of his face was illumined by a mighty joy.

"Princess Gloria," he cried, "I am yours to the death!"

CHAPTER SIXTH
"WEIN, WEIB, UND GESANG"

That evening Mr. and Mrs. Robert Saunders were George Trafford's guests in a private room of the Hôtel Concordia. In the centre of the dining table stood a big silver trophy of considerable value and questionable design. As soon as the soup had been served, Trafford solemnly poured out the contents of a champagne bottle into its capacious depths. He then handed it to Mrs. Saunders.

"Felicitations," she said, taking the trophy in both hands, "I drink to St. Liedwi, the patron saint of skaters, coupled with the name of George Trafford, winner of the King's Cup."

Saunders was the next to take the prize in his hands.

"I drink a health unto their Majesties, King Edward of England and King Karl of Grimland, and to the President of the United States," he said; and then bowing to his host, "Also to another good sportsman, one Nervy Trafford. God bless 'em all!"

Trafford received the cup from Saunders, his lips muttered something inaudible, and tossing back his head he drank deep.

"What was your toast, Mr. Trafford?" demanded Mrs. Saunders quietly.

The winner of the cup shook his head sagely.

"That is a secret," he replied.

"A secret! But I insist upon knowing," returned the lady. "Tell me, what was your toast?"

Trafford hesitated a moment.

"I toasted 'Wein, Weib, und Gesang,'" he announced at length.

"Wine, woman, and song!" repeated Mrs. Saunders. "A mere abstract toast, which you would have confessed to at once. Please particularise?"

"The 'wine,'" said Trafford, "is the wine of champagne, which we drink to-night, '89 Cliquot. 'Woman,' is Eve in all her aspects and in all countries—Venus victrix, sea-born Aphrodite, Astarte of the Assyrians, Kali of the Hindoos. God bless her! God bless all whom she loves and all who love her!"

"And the song?" demanded Saunders.

"The song is the one I have heard one hundred and fifty times since I have been here," replied Trafford. "Its title is unknown to me, but the waiters hum it in the passages, the cabmen chant it from their box seats, the street-boys whistle it with variations in the Bahnhofstrasse."

"That sounds like the Rothlied," said Saunders. "It is a revolutionary air."

"I like it enormously," said Trafford.

"Of course you would," said Saunders. "You have the true Grimlander's love of anarchy. But if you wish, we will subsequently adjourn to the Eden Theatre of Varieties in the Karlstrasse. I am told that the Rothlied is being sung there by a beautiful damsel of the aristocratic name of Schmitt."

"I have seen her posters," said Trafford, "and I should like, I confess, to see the original. But what of Mrs. Saunders? Is the 'Eden' a respectable place of entertainment?"

"It is an Eden of more Adams than Eves," said Mrs. Saunders. "No, I do not propose to follow you into its smoky, beer-laden atmosphere. I am going to accompany Frau generalin von Bilderbaum to the opera to hear 'La Bohême.' But before I leave I want further enlightenment on the subject of your toast. 'Wein' is all right, and 'Gesang' is all right, but what about 'Weib'? I thought you had sworn off the sex."

"Sworn off the sex!—Never! True, I offered to one individual my heart, and hand, and soul; but the individual deemed the offering unsatisfactory. I now offer to the whole female race what I once offered to one member of it."

"Polygamist!" laughed Saunders.

"No," explained Trafford, "it's a case of first come, first served."

"You are offering your heart and hand and soul to the first eligible maiden who crosses your path?" asked Mrs. Saunders, with upraised brows.

"My heart and hand," corrected Trafford with great dignity.

"Come, come," Saunders broke forth, "it's time we were off!"

* * * * *

The auditorium of the Eden Theatre was a long oblong chamber, with a crude scheme of decoration, and no scheme of ventilation worth speaking about. It possessed, however, a good orchestra, an excellent brew of lager beer, and usually presented a tolerably attractive show to the public of Weidenbruck. For the sum of four kronen per head Saunders and Trafford obtained the best seats in the building. For the expenditure of a further trivial sum they obtained long tumblers of the world-famed tigerbräu.

"A promising show this," said Trafford, lighting a large cigar. An exceedingly plump lady in magenta tights, was warbling a patriotic ditty to the tune of "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey?"

"More quantity than quality," commented Saunders cynically. "Personally,—not being possessed of your all-embracing enthusiasm for womanhood at large,—I find myself looking forward to the next item on the programme."

"What's that? The 'Rothlied'?"

"No. Midgets."

Trafford uttered an exclamation of disgust.

"Little things amuse little minds," he said rudely. "Give me a strong man or a giant, and I will watch with interest."

At this point the curtain descended on the plump warbler, and a powdered attendant in plush knickerbockers removed the number 7 from the wings, and substituted the number 9.

"Oh, it isn't the midgets yet, after all," said Saunders, consulting his programme. "It's the Schöne Fräulein Schmitt—the beautiful Miss Smith. I wonder if she's as lovely as her posters."

As the curtain drew up again, a young girl tripped lightly on to the middle of the stage, and it was at once manifest that the epithet "schone" was no mere advertising euphemism.

Her black skirt was short, her black bodice low, and her black picture hat exceedingly large, but her limbs were shapely, her eyes marvellously bright though small, and there was a vivacity and grace in her movements that put her predecessor to shame. When she sang, her voice proved to be a singularly pure soprano, and,—what was more remarkable,—gave evidence of considerable taste and sound training. The song was a dainty one, all about a young lady called Nanette, who conquered all hearts till she met someone who conquered hers. And then, of course, Nanette lost her art, as well as her heart, and could make no impression on the only man who had really touched the deeps of her poor little soul. The last verse, naturally, was a tragedy,—the usual tragedy of the smiling face and the aching bosom. The idea was not exactly a novel one, but the air was pretty, and the singer's personality won a big success from the commonplace theme. Anyway, the audience rose to her, and there was much clapping of hands, clinking of beer glasses, and guttural exclamations of enthusiasm.

"Bravo!" cried Trafford ecstatically, "Bravo! Bravissimo! Behold an artist among artistes, a fairy of the footlights! Bravo! Well done, beautiful Miss Schmitt!"

"Charming," agreed Saunders more calmly, "and, strangely enough, extraordinarily like a young lady I met a few years ago."

"Perhaps it is the young lady," suggested Trafford. "I noticed she fixed her beady black eyes on you during the last verse."

"I think not," said Saunders drily. "The young lady I was referring to was a somewhat more exalted personage than Fräulein Schmitt."

The fascinating songstress re-appeared for her encore, and this time the orchestra struck up a martial air with a good deal of rolling drums in it.

"My 'Gesang,'" whispered Trafford excitedly.

"The 'Rothlied,'" said Saunders.

Again the Fräulein sang, and now the burthen of her song was of battlefields and war's alarms. The tune was vastly inspiriting, and the audience knew it well, taking up the chorus with infectious enthusiasm.

"It's great!" muttered Trafford, twirling excitedly at his moustaches. "By the living Jingo, it's great!"

And of a truth the air was an intoxicating one. There was gunpowder in it, musketry and cold steel, reckless charges and stern movements of advance. One caught the thunder of hoofs and the blare of bugles. Its infection became imperious, maddening even,—for the audience forgot their pipes and their tigerbräu, and beat time to the insistent rhythm, till the chorus gave them a chance of imparting their enthusiasm to the roaring refrain. The girl herself seemed the embodiment of martial ardour. She trod the stage like a little war-horse, her eye sought the gallery and struck fire from the beer-loving bourgeoisie. For a second her gaze seemed to fall upon Saunders mockingly, and with an air of challenge. Then she glanced round the crowded house, held it spellbound, lifted it up, carried it to high regions of carnage, self-sacrifice, and glory. The audience roared, clapped, screamed with exuberant acclaim. Their state was frénétique—no other word, French, English, or German, well describes it.

"By George, she's a witch!" said Trafford. "She's as dangerous as a time fuse. I'll be hanged if I don't want to fight someone!"

The encore verse was more pointed, more sinister, less general in its application. It spoke of wrongs to be righted, tyranny to be overcome, freedom to be gained. It hinted of an uplifting of the proletariat, of armed citizens and frenzied women, of tumult in square and street; it breathed of barricades and civic strife, the vast upheaval of a discontented people determined to assert their rights. Men looked at each other and stirred uneasily in their seats, and then glanced round in apprehension,—as if expecting the entrance of the police. The song was a veritable "Marseillaise," a trumpet call to revolution, a match in a barrel of gunpowder; and with the final chorus and the stirring swing of the refrain, all remnants of prudence and restraint were cast to the winds. The house rose en masse; men mounted their seats and waved sticks and umbrellas aloft; a party of young officers drew their swords and brandished them with wild insurgent cries. Forbidden names were spoken, cheers were raised for popular outlaws and suspects, groans for unpopular bureaucrats and the King's favourites. It was an intoxicating moment,—whatever one's sympathies might be,—and it was obvious enough that the temper of the people was frankly revolutionary, and that the authorities would be quite justified,—from their point of view,—in arresting the audience and the management en bloc.

"We'd better clear out," suggested Saunders; "there's going to be trouble."

"If there's a row," announced Trafford grimly, "I'm going to be in it. You've seen stirring times over here before, but I'm a novice at it, and I want blooding. Shall we raise three cheers for Karl and fight our way out?"

"Not if you want to keep your thick skull weather-proof," was the sensible retort. "There's always discontent in Grimland, but there's a big sea running just now, and it isn't wise to fight the elements. Sit tight, my friend, and you'll live to see more exciting things than a noisy night at the Eden Music-Hall."

The curtain was down again now, but the audience still roared for the re-appearance of their favourite, still clamoured for another verse of the intoxicating song.

"Hullo! what's this?" cried Trafford. An attendant had edged her way up to Saunders, and was offering him a folded note on a tray. "If you have any pleasant memories of the winter of 1904, come round to the stage door and ask for Fräulein Schmitt." That was the purport of the note, and after reading it, Saunders handed it to Trafford.

"Then it must be your lady friend, after all," maintained the latter, smiling at his friend.

"It must indeed," acquiesced Saunders with a frown. "Come round with me now."

"Why not go by yourself?"

"Because I am a married man," replied Saunders, "and I want a chaperon." And together the two men left the still noisy house and made their way to the stage door.

Under the guidance of a pale youth in a shabby pony coat, they entered a gloomy passage, ascended a steep flight of stone steps, and halted before a door, which had once been painted green.

The pale one knocked, and a clear musical voice gave the necessary permission to enter.

A naturally bare and ugly room had been rendered attractive by a big stove, several comfortable chairs, and an abundance of photographs, unframed sketches and artistic knick-knacks. It had been rendered still more attractive by the presence of a charming young lady, who was engaged—with the assistance of her dresser—in removing all traces of "make-up" from her comely lips and cheeks.

The lady in question came forward with an air of pleasurable excitement, and smiling a warm welcome to the Englishman, cried:

"So you have come, Herr Saunders! You have not, then, altogether forgotten the winter of 1904?"

Saunders took the small hand which had been extended to him and bowed low over it.

"Heaven forbid, my dear Princess—or must I call you Fräulein Schmitt, now? No, indeed, so long as I have memory cells and the power to consult them, I shall never forget the winter of 1904. It gave me an angel for a wife, a king for a friend, and—must I say it—a princess for an enemy. That fierce enmity! It is by no means my least pleasurable remembrance. There was so much fun in it, such irresponsible laughter, that it all seems now more like the struggle of children for a toy castle than anything else."

"Ah, but you forget that I lost a dear father and a loved brother in the struggle for that toy castle!" There was almost a life-time of sorrow in the young girl's voice.

Again Saunders bent his head.

"Pardon me, Princess," he said, "I did not forget that, nor the fact that you nearly lost your life, and I mine. But my memory loves rather to linger on the bob-sleighing excursions, the tea-fights at Frau Mengler's, the frivolous disputations and serious frivolities—all with such a delicious substratum of intrigue."

"You have a convenient memory, mein Herr," she said quietly. "You remember the bright things, you half remember the grey, the black you entirely forget."

Saunders' smile faded, for there was still a touch of sadness in the girl's words. Under the circumstances it was not unnatural, but he thought it more considerate to keep the interview from developing on serious lines.

"The art of living is to choose one's memories," he said lightly. "He who has conquered his thoughts, has conquered a more wonderful country than Grimland."

"And so marriage has made of you a philosopher, Herr Saunders?" she returned, her soft lips curling a trifle contemptuously. "Well, perhaps you are right—if we take life as a jest, death, then, is only the peal of laughter that follows the jest." And then, turning to the American, she chided Saunders with: "But you have not presented your friend!"

"I must again crave pardon—I had quite forgotten him," apologised Saunders. "Your Highness, may I present my very good friend, Mr. George Trafford of New York—the winner of the King's Cup."

The American bowed low before this exquisite creature; then uplifting his head and shoulders and twirling his moustache—a habit he had when his emotions were at all stirred—he asked with true American directness:

"Am I speaking to a princess of the blood royal or to a princess of song?"

The princess and the Englishman quickly exchanged amused glances, and a moment later there came from the girl a ringing laugh, a delightful laugh bubbling over with humour, with not a hint of the sorrow or the bitterness of a few moments before, while Saunders hastened to say:

"Both, my American friend! You are addressing the high-born Princess Gloria von Schattenberg, cousin to his Majesty King Karl of Grimland!"

"Then I congratulate the high-born princess less on her high birth than on her inimitable gift of song," said the American gallantly.

The Princess acknowledged the felicitation with a bewitching smile.

"Thank you, Herr Trafford," she said simply. "It is better to be a music-hall star in the ascendant than a princess in exile—it is far more profitable, isn't it?" No answer was expected, and in a trice her mood changed again. "When I fled the country three years ago, Herr Trafford," she continued, "I was penniless—my father dead, and his estates confiscated. True, an allowance—a mere pittance—might have been mine had I returned and bowed the knee to Karl." She stopped, her feelings seemingly too much for her; in a moment, however, she had mastered them. "But I was a Schattenberg!" she cried, with a little toss of her head. "And the Schattenbergs—as Herr Saunders will testify—are a stiff-necked race. There was nothing to be done," she went on, "but develop the gifts God had given me. Under an humble nom de guerre I have achieved notoriety and a large salary. Germany, France, Belgium, I have toured them all—and my incognito has never been pierced. So when I got hold of a splendid song I lost no time in hastening to Weidenbruck, for I knew it would go like wildfire here."

"A most dangerous step." The comment came from the American, but there was a light of frank admiration in his eye.

"Oh, no!" she protested, a faint touch of colour in her cheek, denoting that his approving glance had not escaped her. "It is years since I was in this place." And smiling at the Englishman, now, she added naïvely: "My features are little likely to be recognised."

"Indeed!" voiced Saunders, a touch of satire in his tone. "Photographs of the exiled Princess Gloria are in all the shop-windows, her personality is more than a tolerably popular one. When they are placed in conjunction with those of the equally popular Fräulein Schmitt, will not people talk?"

"I hope they will do more than that," confessed the Princess, growing excited.

"You want——?"

"I want Grimland," interrupted the Princess; and added loftily: "nothing more and nothing less. You will have me arrested?"

"Not yet!" declared Saunders with his brightest smile. "The night is cold—your dressing-room is cosy. No, my fascinating, and revolutionary young lady, the truce between us has been so long unbroken that I cannot rush into hostilities in this way. Besides, we are not now in 1904, and——"

"Oh, for 1904!" cried the Princess, her eyes ablaze with the light of enthusiasm. "Oh, for the sweets of popularity, the ecstasy of rousing brave men and turning their blood to wine and their brains to fire! I want to live, to rule, to be obeyed and loved as a queen!"

In an instant Trafford felt a responsive glow; he started to speak but Saunders already was speaking.

"Princess," the Englishman was saying coldly, "popularity is champagne with a dash of brandy in it. It is a splendid pick-me-up. It dispels ennui, migraine, and all the other troubles of a highly-strung, nervous system. Only, it is not what medical folk call a 'food.' It does not do for breakfast, luncheon and dinner. After a time it sickens."

"Popularity—the adulation of my people would never pall on me," returned the Princess, gazing off for the moment, absorbed in a realm of dreams.

"No, but the police might take a hand," intimated Saunders grimly. "There is a castle at Weidenbruck called the Strafeburg. As its name implies, it is intended otherwise than as a pleasure residence. It is a picturesque old pile, but, curiously enough, the architect seems to have neglected the important requirements of light and air. You would get very tired of the Strafeburg, my Princess!"

"The people of Paris got very tired of the Bastille," retorted the Princess hotly and flashing a defiant look at the Englishman. Trafford's hand clinched in sympathy for her. Never was maid so splendidly daring and reckless and fascinating! "They got very tired of Louis XVI.," the voice was still going on, "and the people of Weidenbruck are very tired of the Strafeburg."

To Trafford's astonishment the Princess's eyes showed danger of filling upon uttering these last words. Her perfect mouth quivered, and of a sudden, she seemed to him younger—certainly not more than nineteen. Again he was tempted to interfere in her behalf, but again Saunders was before him.

"They got tired of a good many people in Paris," the Englishman said slowly. "Ultimately, even of Mére Guillotine. But supposing this country rose, pulled down the Strafeburg and other interesting relics, and decapitated my excellent friend, the King; supposing after much cutting of throats, burning of buildings, and shootings against the wall, a certain young lady became Gloria the First of Grimland, do you imagine she would be happy? No—in twelve months she would be bored to death with court etiquette, with conflicting advice, and the servile flattery of interested intriguers. Believe me, she is far happier enchanting the audiences of Belgium and Germany than she would be in velvet and ermine and a gold crown that fell off every time she indulged in one of her irresponsible fits of merriment."

"I might forget to laugh," said the Princess sadly. "But no, I cannot, will not, take your advice! Do you not suppose that nature intended me to fill a loftier position than even the high firmament of the Café Chantant? No, a thousand times no, Herr Saunders—I am a Schattenberg and I mean to fight!"

The American could not restrain himself an instant longer.

"Bravo!" burst out Trafford enthusiastically. "There's a ring in that statement that warms my heart tremendously!"

A swift frown clouded Saunders' brow. It was plain to see that the Englishman was much annoyed at the American's outspoken approval of the Princess's purpose; but she broke into the laughter of a mischief-loving child.

"And you—are not you a friend of King Karl?" she inquired of Trafford, while a new light shone in her eyes.

The American gave a furious twist to his moustache before answering.

"Mrs. Saunders, I believe, has recommended me as his Commander-in-Chief," he said with mock gravity, "but the appointment has not yet been confirmed. 'Till then my services are at the disposal of the highest bidder."

"My American friend's services are of problematic value," put in Saunders, recovering his temper. "He is an excellent skater, but a questionable general. He has had an exciting day and a superb dinner. With your permission I will take him back to his bed at the Hôtel Concordia."

The Princess had not taken her eyes off of the American since he had last spoken.

"He has energy," she mused, looking into space now, "also the capacity for inspiring enthusiasm, and I am not at all sure that he has not the instinct of a born tactician."

"But I am," Saunders broke in bluntly. "Princess, we have the honour of wishing you good-night!"

The Princess laid a delicate hand on the Englishman's arm.

"Herr Saunders," she said, "I will ask you to see me home."

Saunders shook his head.

"You must excuse me," he said. "To-night, I am neutral, but neutral only. I am the King's guest and must not aid the King's enemies."

"Good loyal man!" exclaimed the Princess. "Plus royalist que le roi!" And then turning to the American: "And Herr Trafford? He will not refuse to perform a small act of courtesy?"

"Trafford accompanies me!" declared Saunders firmly.

"I'm hanged if he does!" spoke up Trafford. "The lady wants to be seen home—and I'm going to do it if I swing for it!"

"The lady wants to be seen home—and I'm going
to do it if I swing for it!"

The Princess transferred her hand to Trafford's arm.

"Thank you," she said with a bewilderingly grateful look up into his face.

"Nervy, you're a fool—a bigger fool than ever I believed you to be!" exploded Saunders.

Trafford's only answer was a most complacent grin.

"Good-night, Herr Saunders!" said the Princess in the sweetest of accents. "Remember me kindly to your wife and other Royalists. We may meet again or not—my impression is that we shall.... If so, remember that laughter is not always a symptom of child's play."

"Good-night, Princess!" returned Saunders with an exaggerated low bow. "Forgive me, won't you, if I take the threatened revolution lightly? The possibility of your sitting on the throne of Grimland," he went on with another obeisance, "opens up such delightful prospect that I shall fight against it with only half a heart. Still, I shall fight against it. Good-night, Prin—Your Majesty!"

CHAPTER SEVEN
CONFIDENCES IN A WINE SHOP

Nervy Trafford—comfortably covered by a warm rug, seated in an open sleigh next to a young lady of exalted birth, romantic temperament, and unimpeachable comeliness—was almost a happy man. It was not that he had fallen in love at first sight, that he had found swift consolation for his recent disappointment in a rapidly-engendered passion for the fascinating claimant to the throne of Grimland, that he was capable of offering any woman the fine spiritual worship he had accorded to the adorable Angela Knox; but to his temperament admiration came easily—and he had dined well. He had been the auditor of a wildly exciting song, had made the acquaintance of the inimitable singer, and because there was wine and music in his blood, and much beauty by his side, the nightmare of his past depression vanished into the biting air, and his pulses stirred to a Hit of amazing exhilaration.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed to himself, stealing a side glance at his companion's bewitching profile, "Saunders is right—life is too valuable an asset to fling away in a moment's madness. There is a beauty of the body and a beauty of the soul, and if the two are perfectly combined in only one woman in the universe, is that any reason why I should not admire a tip-tilted nose or a curved mouth when Fate puts them within a hand's breadth of my own scrubby cheek?"

"Do you know Weidenbruck, Herr Trafford?" the Princess broke in on his silent philosophising.

"Little beyond the Hôtel Concordia," he replied. "Where are we now?"

"The Domkircheplatz. That is the Cathedral."

They were crossing a big open space, well lit, planted with trees, and adorned in its centre by a big group of statuary. To their right was a huge gothic building—a high ridged intricate structure of red sandstone—with a tangle of fretted pinnacles and flying buttresses, and a couple of lofty towers that stood out black against the starry heaven.

"A fine building!" commented the American.

"That is where I am going to be crowned," said the Princess, and she laughed a fine, free, silvery laugh that thrilled her companion with admiration.

"That's the right spirit," he said gaily; "and what's this depressing-looking place in front of us?"

"That's where I shall probably be confined," was the cheerful retort.

The building in question occupied the entire side of the square, and was as gloomy as it was vast. It was a plain rectangular structure totally devoid of ornament, and constructed of enormous blocks of rough hewn stone; irregularly spaced windows broke its sombre front with narrow slits and iron gratings, and a high-pitched roof of ruddy tiles crowned the grim precipice of enduring masonry.

"That's the Strafeburg," concluded the Princess, "the Bastille of Weidenbruck!"

"I see myself rescuing you from that topmost window," ventured Trafford.

The Princess turned half round and looked at him curiously.

"Thanks," she murmured, "but I shall keep outside as long as I can. As a foreigner you should visit it—as a sight-seer. It is a most depressing place, but there is a very valuable collection of armour and a collection of instruments of torture without its equal in Europe."

"Is it still used as a prison?" asked Trafford.

"They say not." There was a meaning behind her qualified denial and Trafford demanded it. "Between official statements and actual facts there is apt to be a serious discrepancy in this unfortunate land," she replied. "Officially, no one resides in the Strafeburg but the caretaker and his daughter. As a matter of fact, I am told that several political prisoners are still rotting in its dungeons."

Trafford shuddered. He was a very humane man,—despite his explosive temperament. His companion noted keenly the effect of her words, and went on:

"Officially, also, the instruments of torture went out of use one hundred and fifty years ago."

"You mean——"

"I mean," she continued, "that our dear humane monarch does not stick at trifles when his interests are threatened."

Trafford opened his eyes wide, and regarded his companion with amazement. In his curious, excitable brain was a largely developed loathing of cruelty. Hard knocks he was prepared to give or receive in the world's battle, big risks to life and limb he was prepared to incur or inflict with heedless impartiality, but deliberate cruelty, the malicious and intentional infliction of pain on man or brute, always roused him to a frenzy of wrath. The Princess read his look and silence.

"The Archbishop of Weidenbruck, a political opponent of King Karl's, is said to have met a peculiarly terrible end," she said meaningly.

"Impossible!" muttered Trafford.

"Impossible things happen in Grimland. It is impossible, of course, that you should side against your friend, Herr Saunders, and your prospective friend, King Karl——" and she touched his hand with an unconscious impulsive movement,—"and help me in my legitimate ambitions."

Her words were in the nature of a suggestion, almost a question.

Trafford answered them between his teeth.

"That is the sort of impossibility that comes off," he muttered.

"You mean it?" demanded his fair companion, and her eyes were pleading as they had pleaded with Captain von Hügelweiler in the Thiergarten.

Trafford drank deep of their glance, and it intoxicated him.

"When I see these picturesque buildings," he returned, "with their garlands of snow and cornices of icicles, I feel I am in fairyland. And in fairyland, you know, the poor beast is changed into a handsome young man and marries the beautiful Princess." He was not insensible of his boldness, and carried it off with a laugh. "I feel the transmogrifying effects of this fairy kingdom already."

"And you are beginning to feel a handsome young man?" asked the Princess gaily.

"I have felt it this past quarter of an hour, Princess," he answered, twirling at his frozen moustache. "Already wild hopes are stirring in my bosom."

"You are not going to propose, are you?" she asked calmly, but with a most delicious quiver of the lips.

Trafford looked at his fair interrogator steadily a few seconds before replying. If ever encouragement was legible in bright eyes and challenging smile, it was writ clear in the facile features of the Princess von Schattenberg. Again he drank deep of beauty and his brain reeled among the stars.

"Not exactly a proposal, but I'll make you a proposition," he said in a voice typically American in its business-like tone.

They had entered a narrow side street, and the driver was pulling up his horse before a disreputable-looking wine shop. Dismissing the sleigh the Princess led the way into the building through a low, malodorous room—where a number of men were swilling beery smoking, and playing dominoes—and penetrated to inner chamber.

"And is this your home?" inquired Trafford.

"One of them," was the reply. "An outlaw must sleep where she can—it's wise to vary one's abode."

An old man in shirt-sleeves and apron entered the room and demanded their pleasure.

"We want nothing except solitude," said the Princess. "May we have that, Herr Krantz?"

"Most certainly, your High——, gracious lady. You will not be interrupted unless——"

"Thanks, good Herr Krantz, I understand."

The old landlord inclined his bald head and quitted the shabby apartment. The Princess motioned to her companion to be seated, pointing to a chair at a small table, then taking a seat opposite him, she rested her pretty head on her hands, her elbows resting on the table, and surprised him by suddenly popping out:

"And now about that proposition of yours——"

Trafford's countenance indicated that he thought that the bantering note in her voice and words was distinctly out-of-place, but notwithstanding he drew his chair closer and began:

"Princess, we have not known each other long——"

"We have not known each other at all," she quickly interrupted.

"Pardon me," corrected Trafford, with a fierce energy that always possessed him at a crisis. "You diagnosed me admirably in your dressing-room at the Eden Theatre. With equal perspicacity I have diagnosed you on our frosty drive hither. Shall I tell it?—yes? Well, then, a nature ardent but pure, fierce without being cruel, simple without being foolish. I see youth, birth and beauty blended into one exhilarating whole—and I bow down and worship. To a heart like yours, nothing is impossible—not even the capacity of falling in love with an adventurous American. I do not make you a proposal of marriage, but a matrimonial proposition." He paused to note the effect of his words before concluding with: "Now then, if by my efforts I can secure for you the throne of Grimland, will you reward me with your heart and hand?"

The Princess drew in a long breath, half-astonishment, half-admiration.

"That is one of the impossibilities that does not come off—even in Grimland," she told him at last.

"Listen," Trafford went on impetuously, "I shall only ask for my reward in the event of your being crowned in the Cathedral of Weidenbruck, and in the event of your acknowledging of your own free will that I have been mainly instrumental in winning you your sovereignty."

The Princess bit her lips and nodded silently, as if weighing his words. Something, however, impelled her to make the obvious objection.

"In the event of my being crowned Queen of Grimland," she reminded him, "I shall not be permitted to marry whom I will. If I married you without the consent of my counsellors and Parliament the marriage would be, ipso facto, null and void."

"All I ask is your promise to go through the ceremony with the necessary legal and religious forms."

The Princess remained a moment in silent thought. Then she broke out into her merriest laugh.

"We are building castles in the air," she hastened to say. "Yes, I promise—on those conditions. But you perceive the badness of the bargain you are making? A marriage that will be no marriage—a contract that will not be worth the paper it is written on?"

"I will chance its validity."

"In that event and on those conditions you shall have my hand."

The Princess stretched forth her right hand.

Trafford took it and pressed his lips to it.

"And heart?" he demanded.

As in the Thiergarten with Von Hügelweiler, the Princess Gloria hesitated momentarily, but long enough for the framing of a lie. But this time something strangled the conceived falsehood before it passed her lips.

"Alas!" she faltered. "Nature forgot to give me a heart." The words were seriously enough spoken, but somehow they did not ring true to him.

"You are incapable of love?" he asked.

The Princess flushed deeply as slowly she scanned the man who faced her. It was patent that a battle was raging in her heaving bosom. For a full half-minute silence reigned, a silence broken only by faint murmurs and the clink of beer glasses from the outer room. And all the time Trafford's face preserved an expressionless immobility, his eyes a gleam of stern directness. The Princess heaved a deep sigh. The battle was over; something was lost, something was won.

"Herr Trafford," she began in a mechanical voice, "I want to tell you the history of my maiden fancies. At the age of seventeen—when staying at Weissheim, at my father's schloss, the Marienkastel—I fell in love with a young officer in the Guides. He was handsome, aristocratic, a gallant man with a refined nature and a superb athlete as well. He loved me dearly—was more to me than my father, mother or anyone or anything in the kingdom of Grimland. But my infatuation was divined, and we were separated. I wept, I stormed, I vowed nothing would ever comfort me. Nevertheless, in six months I was a happy, laughing girl again with an intense love of life, and only an occasional stab of regret for a heart I had sworn to call my own."

Trafford's face showed his sympathy, but he did not speak.

"Then came the winter of 1904," the Princess went on with the same unemotional tone. "In our unsuccessful rebellion of that fatal winter an Englishman performed prodigies of valor. It was mainly owing to his foresight and daring that King Karl saved his throne—and my father and brother met death instead of the crown that was within their grasp. Later, it is true, this same Englishman saved my life and procured my escape from Grimland. But, even so, would any girl not dowered by Providence with a fickle disposition permit any feeling to dwell in her heart other than hate and horror for such a man? And yet, I was on the point of experiencing something more than admiration for this fearless Englishman, a second conquest of my heart was imminent"—she paused to scrutinise the face of the man at her side, watching keenly for some signs of disapproval—"when it was nipped in the bud, strangled in its infancy, if ever there, by his choosing a mate elsewhere. So, once again I was fancy free. What then is love—my love?" she exclaimed wistfully. "A gust that blusters and dies down, a swift passing thunder-storm, a mocking dream,"—her voice quavered and sank,—"a false vision of a sun that never rose on plain or on mountain."

Trafford met the sadness of her gaze with eyes that twinkled with a strange kindliness. The story of her life had moved him strongly. At the beginning of their interview he had felt like a seafarer listening to the voice of the siren. He had been bartering his strength and manhood for the silken joys of a woman's allurements. His native shrewdness had told him that he was being enticed less for himself than the usufruct of his brain and muscles; but the bait was so sweet that his exalted senses had deemed it more than worthy of the price he paid. Had the Princess Gloria avowed a deep and spontaneous passion for him, he would not have believed her; but he would have been content, and well content, with the agreeable lie. But she had been honest with him,—honest to the detriment of her own interest.

"You don't dislike me, do you?" he blurted out, at length.

"On the contrary," she responded frankly, "I like you well, Herr Trafford."

"It would be sad otherwise," he sighed, "for I like you exceedingly well."

And at that she put her hand bravely on his shoulder and smiled at him.

"Never mind, comrade," she told him, "your heart is big enough and warm enough for two."

"My heart!" he exclaimed in a most lugubrious way, "my heart is several degrees colder than the ice on the Rundsee;" and added with terrible lack of tact: "whatever of warmth and fire it possessed was extinguished last Christmas Eve."

The Princess removed her hand from his shoulder in a manner that should have left no doubt in his mind of the thought behind it.

"Princess," he went blindly on, "you have told me your story, let me tell you mine—it is brevity itself."

The Princess inclined her head.

"I fell in love with a young lady named Angela Knox—an American;"—and his tone was fully as responsible as his words for bringing his companion's eyes back to his with something of the scorn his clumsy love-making deserved;—"the young lady, Angela Knox, refused me. I tried to blow my brains out, but Fate and Saunders willed otherwise. The latter advised Grimland as a hygienic antidote to felo de se. Behold, then," he concluded with a sigh, "an able-bodied man with an icicle in his breast!"

Trafford spread out his hands in an explanatory gesture, and then for the first time he noted the heightened colour in the Princess's cheek, that her eyes were aflame, and that an explosion of some kind was imminent.

"And you had the impudence to make love to me!" she cried in that wonderful voice that had captivated audiences with every intonation, from the angry tones of a jealous grisette to the caressing notes of the ingenue. "To amuse yourself by feigning a pure devotion——" But the Princess's words failed her, and the hand of a Schattenberg was raised so threateningly,—at any rate, so it seemed to Trafford—that in surprise and consternation he rose from his chair, and as he did so, his head came in contact with the electric light, which hung low from the dingy ceiling. Simultaneously the white fire in the glass bulb was extinguished to a thin, dull red line, and in two seconds they were in total darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BARGAIN

For several seconds Trafford stood silent in the darkness, thinking furiously. What was the correct thing to say or do in such an unusual, almost painful, situation, he had not the faintest idea. But before speech suggested itself to his puzzled brain, his companion—not wholly successful in smothering the merriment that had instantly replaced her affectation of anger—had checked him with a warning "hush!"

Noiselessly the Princess tiptoed to the glazed partition that separated the inner chamber from the wine-shop, and drawing back a curtain gazed cautiously through the chink.

A couple of men—as indigent in appearance as the rest of the throng—had entered the shop and were talking to the landlord. The latter was all civility and smiles, but his customers were regarding the newcomers with glances of deep suspicion and resentment.

After gazing a few seconds, the Princess returned to Trafford, and taking him by the hand led him rapidly through another door into a street at the back.

"Krantz extinguished the light," she whispered. "It was not your head, stupid, that did it! It was the danger-signal agreed upon between us—there are a couple of police agents in the shop."

The touch of melodrama delighted Trafford, and the presence of danger destroyed much of his embarrassment. They were in a narrow lane, lighted at rare intervals, and half choked with snow. A bitter wind blew cheerlessly between lofty houses, but the stars burned clearly in the deep violet of the heavens.

"Where now?" he asked briefly.

"Home," answered the Princess curtly. "I'm going home—good-night!"

Trafford stood irresolute. A hand was offered him in farewell. It might be tactless to enforce his society any longer, but there were reasons—the hour and the gloom of the street if nothing else—why he could not leave her alone.

"I promised to see you home," he protested stubbornly. "I keep my promises."

"You are foolish," she returned, accepting the situation and walking briskly down the street. "This quarter of Weidenbruck is anything but a safe one, despite its present tranquillity. There are queer folk dwelling in these gabled old houses—men who live by the knife and the garote! You would be wise to reseek the civilisation of the Hôtel Concordia."

"Is it necessary to insult me?" bristling.

"Ah, but you found it necessary to insult me!" she retorted.

"In what way?" staring at her in astonishment.

"By making love—such love! You nearly blow your brains out for a silly American girl, and then have the impertinence to ask me—me, the Princess Gloria von Schattenberg—to marry you, informing me casually that your heart is dead and cold."

"But your heart is dead and cold, too," he argued fatuously. "And you were not willing to accept me. It seems that we are in the same boat. We offered too little, and we asked too much."

The Princess was momentarily silenced by his logic; womanlike, however, she refused to let things end in a logical conclusion.

"I am terribly angry with you," she persisted, nevertheless, with what Trafford could have sworn was a veritable wink.

"So I was led to suppose," he replied, rubbing his head.

His words and their accompanying action, tickled the Princess's risibilities, always lying just beneath the surface. She bit her lips in a desperate effort to control, but in a moment her fine, fearless laugh rang out merrily in the deserted street. Trafford gazed in amazement at his volatile companion, and then he laughed, too.

"Don't imagine that I am not angry because I'm laughing," declared the Princess. "I have—unfortunately, perhaps—a painfully acute sense of humour. I very often laugh when I am feeling most deeply."

But Trafford having commenced to laugh, gave way to roars of laughter. He had been accorded such varied treatment, such swiftly-changing moods, that he was quite uncertain as to what the next moment would bring forth; and the atmosphere of political intrigue and romantic adventure—with its picturesque setting of ancient houses and deep snow—lifted him into such regions of pure unreality that he laughed for very joy at the exhilarating absurdity of it all.

"Great Scott! To think I have lived eight-and-twenty years without discovering Grimland!" he exclaimed when able to catch his breath. "Princess, you must indeed forgive me.... It seems, besides dead hearts, we have in common a most lively sense of the ridiculous."

"I'll forgive you when you have seen me home," she replied. "But I absolutely repudiate the bargain we made at Herr Krantz's wine shop. We may have much in common ... but surely you don't suppose that I would marry a man with a dead heart?"

"As to the bargain, I surmised as much when you raised your hand to——" he broke off suddenly, and then added: "I suppose the deal is off, then? Well, perhaps it's just as well for both of us. May I ask where your home is?"

"My home—my home for to-night—is there," said the Princess, pointing across the street to an entrance, which bore the number forty-two.

Trafford looked up at a venerable structure, which raised its steep gable somewhat higher than its neighbours.

Light shone from a window on the second story. Otherwise the façade showed a blank front of closed shutters. Just as they were crossing the snow-encumbered road, a couple of men halted before the door in question, and one of them knocked loudly. The Princess and Trafford stopped automatically. Both scented danger, one from experience, the other from instinct. A friendly archway afforded complete concealment, and there, sheltered alike from gaze and the bitter wind, they awaited developments.

Trafford felt his arm gripped tight by a little hand, either from excitement or from a desire for protection.

"Those are Meyer's men," whispered the Princess.

Trafford nodded in reply. He was humming the Rothlied softly between his teeth. They watched for a silent moment, and then a woman answered the door. After a moment's palaver, the men went in. Simultaneously two more men glided into view from some invisible hiding-place, and took up their positions one on each side of the doorway.

"Are you armed?" asked the Princess in a whisper.

Trafford's eyes were like stars for brightness.

"I have my fists," he answered.

The Princess produced a tiny revolver from a satin handbag, which she pressed on her companion.

Trafford declined it curtly.

"I have my fists," he repeated.

The Princess regarded him with astonishment and a recrudescence of anger.

"They are trying to take my friend," she expostulated in low tones. "They will probably murder him. It is essential to my success that he escapes their clutches."

"He'll escape all right," said Trafford, with the unreasoning confidence of the born optimist; but the Princess stamped with annoyance at his folly.

Suddenly sounds of a struggle were heard from the direction of the lighted window on the second floor—sounds of shifting feet and reeling furniture, but no cry of human throat or crack of firearm.

"I must investigate this," said Trafford, but before he could take action there was a great crash of riven glass, and a dark form fell rolling and clutching from the shattered window into the street. The fall was considerable, but the snow broke its force, and the man stirred where he lay.

"Is it he?" asked the Princess breathlessly. "No, thank God!" she answered herself as the man raised a bearded face from the snow, and groaned in agony.

"Look out!" said Trafford, for there were sounds of men descending a staircase at breakneck speed, and as he spoke a dark form issued from the doorway. As it did so, one of the two men who were waiting without, threw a cloak over the head and arms of the emerging man. Simultaneously the other raised a weapon and struck. A half-second later and another man issued from the house, and leaped like a wild beast on the back of the enmeshed and stricken man.

This was too much for Trafford's tingling nerves. Leaving the Princess where she stood in the archway, he darted across the road with the speed of a football end going down the field under a punt to tackle the opposing fullback. His passage was rendered noiseless by the soft carpet of thick snow, and he arrived unseen and unheard at the scene of the mêlée. The man with the dagger was just about to strike again. He had been making desperate efforts to do so for several moments, but his would-be victim was struggling like a trapped tiger, and the heaving, writhing mass of humanity, wherein aggressors and quarry were inextricably entangled, offered no safe mark for the assassin's steel. However, just as his point was raised aloft with desperate intent, Trafford anticipated his action with a swinging blow on the side of the head. The man fell, dazed and stunned, against the wall. Trafford, with his fighting lust now thoroughly inflamed, turned his instant attention to the other aggressors. Now, however, he had no unprepared victim for his vigorous arm. A vile-looking ruffian, with low brow and matted hair, had extricated himself from the involved struggle, and was feeling for a broad knife that lay ready to hand in his leather belt.

With the swift acumen born of pressing danger, Trafford stooped down, and picking up a lump of frozen snow, dashed it in his enemy's face. A shrewd blow in the midriff followed this tactical success, and further punishment would have befallen the unhappy man had not his original victim, freed from two of his three aggressors, gained his feet, and in his effort to escape, cannoned so violently and unexpectedly into Trafford, that the enterprising American lost his balance and fell precipitately into the soft snow. When he regained his feet he saw a tall form flying rapidly down the street, with two assailants in hot pursuit.

"You've begun well!" said a soft voice in his ear. Trafford turned and faced the Princess.

"Begun well?" he repeated, brushing the snow from his person.

"A good beginning for your work of winning me a throne."

"I don't understand."

"Our bargain is on again," she declared, with suppressed enthusiasm, "unless you wish it otherwise?"

He looked into her fearless eyes, which fell at length before his own.

"We will let it stand," he agreed curtly. "But what of your friend?" he went on, "will he get away?"

"If he wishes," answered the Princess easily. "It would take more than two men to capture Father Bernhardt. I have no further anxiety on his account, but what about me—poor me?"

"About you?" he repeated, without understanding.

"Where am I to spend the night?"

Trafford passed his hand through his ruffled locks, dislodging therefrom several pieces of frozen snow. Then he looked at the man who had staggered under his blow against the wall, and who was eyeing them with a malignancy that bespoke rapid recuperation. The man who had fallen into the street had risen to his knees and was muttering something—a curse or a prayer—and might speedily exchange speech for action. The two pursuers of Father Bernhardt might return,—baffled of their prey and breathing threatenings and slaughter,—at any moment.

Trafford grasped the Princess's hand and dragged her across the street.

"Herr Krantz's wine shop," he insisted.

"Is in the occupation of spies," retorted the Princess.

"Then what——?"

"The Hôtel Concordia," proposed the Princess calmly.

"The Hôtel Concordia!" he echoed.

"Yes. Your sister has just arrived from England and wants a small room at the top of the house. Her luggage, naturally, has gone astray. You are a friend of Herr Saunders, and consequently above suspicion. Do not be alarmed, my friend, I shall leave early and I will pay for my bed and breakfast."

Trafford tugged each moustache violently in turn.

"So be it," he said at length. "It is all part of the bargain. Come, little new-found sister, let us find a sleigh to drive us to the Hôtel Concordia."

CHAPTER NINE
THE KING'S BREAKFAST

Like most members of the kingly caste, Karl XXII. was a big eater and an early riser. On the morning following Trafford's adventures in the slums of Weidenbruck, the genial monarch was breakfasting on innumerable fried eggs and abundant grilled ham at the early hour of seven. He was dressed in high, white leggings, stout boots, and a dark brown woollen jersey; and the reason of his athletic attire was a suggested ski-ing expedition in the neighbourhood of Nussheim,—a small village some ten miles distant from the capital. His Majesty was breakfasting alone save for his faithful major-domo, Herr Bomcke, an old gentleman of great dignity and superb whiskers. Bomcke moved noiselessly about the room, with one eye on his royal master's needs, and the other on the doorway, which was guarded by a young officer in a snow-white uniform and glistening steel cuirass. The apartment itself was the moderate-sized chamber where Karl was wont to conduct his private affairs. In one corner stood a satinwood bureau strewn thick with papers; in another a marble bust of his father on a malachite pedestal. Two entire sides of the room were devoted to book-shelves, which contained such diverse treasures as fifteenth-century bestiaries, "Alice in Wonderland," "Moltke's History of the Franco-Prussian War," and the Badminton volume on "Winter Sports." The whole of the apartment had a mellow golden tinge, a soft atmosphere of affluent homeliness and regal respectability.

Just as his Majesty was consuming his fourth roll and honey, there was a whispering in the doorway and Saunders' name was announced in the mellifluous tones of the major-domo.

"Good-morning," began the King. "You are ready for our expedition, I perceive."

"My family motto is semper paratus—always ready," replied Saunders lightly. "But I understand our train does not start for Nussheim till 8 A.M. I came early because I wished to talk over a delicate situation with you."

"Talk away," said the King, attacking another roll, and draining his coffee cup.

"The Princess Gloria is in Weidenbruck."

Karl nodded thoughtfully.

"And her address?" he asked.

"I don't know. I did not want to know, so I refused to see her home last night."

Again the King nodded. He understood his friend's position perfectly.

"The Princess Gloria——" he began, producing an enormous meerschaum pipe, and proceeding to stuff it with some dark tobacco.

"Is being very closely watched," said a voice from the doorway. It was General Meyer, who had entered unannounced, as was his privilege.

"And how about Father Bernhardt?" grunted the King, puffing at his pipe without looking up. "He has been closely watched for some time."

"It was about him that I came to speak," said the General, walking into the middle of the room.

"You have taken him, of course," said the King. "I told you to employ four men."

"I followed your Majesty's advice," said Meyer. "I was wrong. I should have followed Herr Saunders'. He advised, if I remember rightly, a battalion of Guards and a squadron of Dragoons."

"Do you mean to say," demanded the King, with some warmth, "that four armed men were incapable of dealing with one priest?"

"So it appears," returned Meyer calmly. "They say there was some sort of a rescue. That, of course, may be a lie to excuse their failure. Any way, one of them is suffering from a broken thigh, the result of a fall from a window. Another has a dislocated jaw. Two others,—who pursued our friend down the Sichelgasse—were foolish enough to follow him along the banks of the Niederkessel. Fortunately they could both swim."

The King turned with a gesture of impatient weariness to Saunders.

"What do you say?" he demanded.

"Yes, what do you say?" said Meyer, putting up his eyeglass and fixing his glance on the Englishman.

Saunders shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, I say, that there evidently must have been some sort of a rescue."

"A most determined rescue," added Meyer.

"A most determined and reckless rescue," affirmed Saunders, meeting Meyer's glance without flinching.

"But your advice, Saunders," said the King.

"I gave it you yesterday, sire. Act! Hitherto we have schemed. We have been patting the mad dog on the head, but as he still shows his teeth,—shoot him!"

"Who is the 'him'?" demanded Meyer. "The sort of person who rescues rebels when they are being arrested?"

"By mad dog," explained Saunders, "I meant the snarling, discontented, dangerous element in Weidenbruck. We have had plenty of clever schemes for pacification. What we want is a little stupid brutality."

"Saunders is right," said the King. "In theory I am a Democrat, a Socialist, a believer in the divinity of the vox populi. In practice I am a believer in platoon firing and lettres de cachet. There are only two nations in Europe who are genuinely capable of self-government, and Grimland is not one of them. We have tried the velvet glove, and we must show that it contains a hand of steel, and not a palsied member."

"So be it," said Meyer, with a slight inclination of his head. "We will give the policy of open repression a trial, a fair trial and a full trial, and may the God of Jews and Gentiles teach the loyalists to shoot straight."

Saunders scanned Meyer's face critically. There was no colour in his sunken cheek, no fire in his heavy eye. The man had no stomach for fighting, and his complex nature abhorred straightforward measures. Yet he had proved himself a faithful servant before, and though life meant more to him than to most soldiers, he was not one to purchase personal safety by the betrayal of his sovereign.

Again Herr Bomcke upraised his honeyed tones.

"Captain von Hügelweiler," he announced.

The Captain bowed, and then stood at the salute.

"Good-morning, Captain," said his Majesty. "To what am I indebted for this honour?"

"I wish to send in my papers, sire."

"You wish to resign? What is it? Money troubles?"

The Captain hesitated.

"I am thinking of getting married, sire," he answered at length.

"Young and a bachelor," said the King, "of course you are thinking of getting married. That is very right and proper, but hardly a reason for sending in your papers."

Again Von Hügelweiler was at a loss for words, and a tinge of colour mounted to his olive cheeks.

"I am tired of soldiering," he said, after a long struggle for thought.

"Meyer," said the King, turning to his Commander-in-Chief, "is not this man a Von Hügelweiler?"

"Yes, your Majesty. A member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in your kingdom?"

"The son of Heinrich Salvator von Hügelweiler, who fought in the trenches in '84?" persisted the monarch.

Again the Commander-in-Chief replied in the affirmative.

"He is tired of my service, Meyer," went on King in a low voice.

Von Hügelweiler's head sank onto his breast, as if weighed down with shame.

"Your Majesty can be served in more ways than one," he murmured.

"But in none so well as by the sword," returned the King. "When an officer resigns his commission on the eve of war we call him by an ugly name, Captain."

"But we are not on the eve of war, sire," expostulated the poor Captain.

"Pardon me," said Karl, "I think otherwise."

"If there is fighting, sire, my sword is at your service."

"There is fighting and fighting," mused the King. "Fighting in the long-drawn firing-line with your nearest comrade ten yards distant, and your nearest foe a mile off; and there is fighting in the narrow street with your company shoulder to shoulder, and the enemy at the end of your swordpoint. The former needs courage, but the latter needs courage and a loyal heart. Do I make myself clear, Captain von Hügelweiler?"

Von Hügelweiler straightened himself. Life's problems seemed very puzzling just now. He had acted from the best motives in tendering his resignation, for if he decided to aid and abet the King's enemies, he preferred not to do so in the King's uniform. But the instincts of a soldier and certain splendid traditions of his family warred hard with his desires.

"I understand my resignation is not acceptable, your Majesty," he said at length.

"I neither refuse it nor accept it," said Karl. "This morning I am going ski-ing to Nussheim. I need protection these troublous times, and I am taking my Commander-in-Chief with me. I am taking Herr Saunders, who is a deadly revolver shot; I am also taking Mrs. Saunders, who has nerves of steel and the heart of an Amazon. Will you make assurance doubly sure and form part of my body-guard to Nussheim?"

Von Hügelweiler's eyes flashed proudly at the honour, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

"Your Majesty's safety shall be on my head," he said.

CHAPTER TEN
A SKI-ING EXPEDITION

Weidenbruck lies in the wildest part of the valley of the Niederkessel. On either side,—at the distance of several miles—rise mountains of picturesque outline and considerable eminence. Prominent among these stands the Piz Schadel, a grim giant with a fatal fascination for those who affect dangerous rock-climbing. It is on the lower slopes of the Piz Schadel,—snug among its pinewoods, and facing southwards to the sun,—that the tiny village of Nussheim is situated. The little train that plies between the capital and this sunny hamlet was fairly crowded,—despite the earliness of the hour—for ski-running is a favourite amusement of Grimlanders, and the slopes of Nussheim offer an ideal ground for the exercise of that exhilarating pastime. The royal party had a carriage to themselves, and in due course they steamed through the outskirts of Weidenbruck, across the flat, snow-covered plains of the valley, and then mounted by means of a cog-wheel and a centre rail, to the little yellow station that was their objective. A party of tourists in blue glasses and check ulsters—Americans, to judge from the accent and phraseology of their leader, a tall black-bearded man with a Baedeker—got out at Nussheim and proceeded to the local hostelry. The King and his companions repaired to a small chalet, where their skis were awaiting them. Having shod themselves with their long footgear, they sallied forth on to the snow. The sun was just rising above the opposite mountains, and the scene was one of quite extraordinary beauty. The air was still and crisp and invigorating, but so dry on this elevated plateau that there was no sensation of cold, though the thermometer gave a far lower reading than at Weidenbruck. The sky was purest ultra-marine, and in the perfect air every detail of the surrounding hills, forest, crag, and hamlet, stood out with soft distinctness. And everywhere was snow and the silence of the snows; white fields of sparkling purity swelling and falling in smooth stretches of shimmering argent. Above were dun precipices and dark green woods of larch and fir, and above, again, fairy snow-peaks, showing like dabs of Chinese white against the cloudless glory of the sky. It was a day to live and be thankful for life; a day for deep breath and noble thoughts, a day to take one's troubles to Nature and lose them in the splendid silence of her hills and the vastness of her immaculate snows.

The royal party of five shuffled along on their wooden footgear till they came to a long dip with a gentle rise at the end of it. Karl was the first to essay the descent. With knees slightly bent, one foot slightly in front of the other, his burly body noticeably inclined forward, he started on his downward course. For a second or two he moved slowly. Then the pace increased till he was travelling at a sharp speed; then, as the momentum grew, and the angle of the hillside sharpened, he fairly flew through the air in the swift, smooth rush that brings joy to the heart of the ski-runner. At the bottom he got into some soft snow, and after a fruitless struggle with the laws of gravity, the royal equipoise was overcome, and Karl lay prone and buried in the gleaming crystals. A roar of delight burst from his companions above, and a ski-shod foot was waved answeringly in the air in plaintive rebuke at their merriment.

Mrs. Saunders was the next to come down. With perfect balance,—relying not at all on her guiding stick,—she swept down the mountain-side like a Valkyrie. With grey eyes shining with pleasure, wisps of fair hair streaming from under her woollen beret, she seemed the embodiment of graceful and athletic young womanhood. Her course was taking her direct on to the prostrate monarch, but at the critical moment she swung round with a superb Telemark turn, and halted to watch Karl's desperate efforts to regain an upright position.

The others descended in turn with varying elegance but without serious mishap, Von Hügelweiler bringing up the rear and nearly injuring his sovereign whom he had sworn so solemnly to defend. Onward they went again, shuffling along levels, gliding down descents, mounting laboriously sideways, like crabs, when it was necessary to reach higher ground. In the pleasurable absorption of their sport they wandered far, ever gaining fresh joys of swift descent or harmless fall, and winning fresh views of plain and wood and mountain.

"There go the Americans," said the King to Mrs. Saunders. "They have been travelling parallel to us."

The King's party had collected under a mutual desire for rest, by a crop of boulders which broke through the level surface of the snows.

"Parallel to us," agreed Meyer, mopping his humid face, "but I notice that they always manœuvre for the upper ground."

The King frowned at the General's speech. He was enjoying the morning's relaxation from his usual worries, and Meyer's words,—if they had any meaning at all,—suggested personal danger to himself and his friends.

"They are excellent ski-runners," said Mrs. Saunders, watching them as they moved rapidly to a point of the hill above them.

But Meyer was whispering something in the King's ear, and a vague sense of apprehension had taken the party.

Karl nodded, as one convinced against his will, and spoke briefly to the company.

"General Meyer suggests that those people may not be quite so harmless as they seem," he said. "Personally, I think he is over-suspicious, but in order to be on the safe side, I propose doubling back down the hill, and if they turn, too, and follow us, we will assume the worst."

The others received the statement in silence.

The gorgeous splendour of the day and the unmatched loveliness of the scene seemed to mock the timidity of the Commander-in-Chief's imaginings. But all present were too familiar with Grimland politics to question the prudence of the King's decision; and with scarce a backward glance they turned round and followed General Meyer down the hillside. Presently they reached a cliff of brown rock which broke the slope of the mountain with a precipitous drop of some twenty feet. Beneath this and parallel to it Meyer decided to proceed, till the King called a halt for purposes of reconnoitering.

Far below them lay the valley of the Niederkessel, and plainly discernible were the tiny houses and toy churches of the capital. But above them it was impossible to see anything except the golden-brown wall of rock which they were following.

As swiftly as the operation permitted, Meyer slipped off his skis, bidding Von Hügelweiler do the same. The Captain was then told to stand leaning against the cliff, whereupon the Commander-in-Chief clambered bravely on to his shoulders. Then with an agility remarkable for his years, he drew himself up to the ledge of rock from which it was possible to overlook the top of the cliff. He gazed for a moment with peering eyes, the others watching with silent interest. Then he came down in a flash. "Skis on again, Captain," he said, kneeling down and inserting his foot in the shoe of his own ski. "We must run for it."

"Who are they?" demanded the King.

"There are six of them, sire," answered the Commander-in-Chief, tugging viciously at a refractory strap. "They are about five hundred yards up the hillside, and the man in the beard is Father Bernhardt!"

"Father Bernhardt in the beard!" ejaculated the others.

"In a false beard," affirmed Meyer. "He has had a fall, and one side has come unhooked. It's the ex-priest, sure enough, and full of vengeance for his last night's inconvenience. We'd better move at once."

Karl hesitated a moment.

"I don't like running away," he said, glancing at Saunders and Von Hügelweiler.

"I do," retorted Meyer, "when it's six to four in their favour. Come sire, we shall never get a better chance than this. They can't follow us direct, because of this cliff, and while they are making a detour we will push on to some spot on the railway, and hold up a train to take us back to Weidenbruck."

"The General's right," said Saunders, seeing the King hesitate. "We have a lady with us."

"Who is not in the least afraid," added the lady in question.

"That is precisely the trouble," said Saunders.

"Forward, sire!" urged Meyer, making a move. "I will lead the way, and you and Mrs. Saunders will accompany me. Von Hügelweiler and Heir Saunders will bring up the rear."

"The post of honour!" commented the King.

"If you will," said Meyer with a shrug. "I go first because I know the countryside. I am more useful so. Saunders stays behind because he is the best shot."

"A gallant fellow, our Commander-in-Chief," sneered Von Hügelweiler to Saunders, as the three others glided rapidly away down the snow-slope. The crack of a rifle punctuated the Captain's remark. Saunders waited to make sure that neither his wife nor her escort was touched, and then produced a revolver.

"I am glad Meyer has gone on with them," he said. "He is a clever old fox, and he knows every cliff and cranny in the countryside."

Another shot rang out, but this too failed to take effect, and in a twinkling the fugitives had disappeared into the friendly shelter of a pine wood.

Saunders wore a pensive air, in marked contrast to Von Hügelweiler, who was betraying signs of strong excitement.

"Of what are you thinking?" demanded the latter.

"I am thinking that if we follow the others we shall most certainly be shot," replied Saunders.

"That is true," agreed the Captain. "Our enemies must be quite close now. It would be madness to venture out into the open."

"Precisely," said Saunders. "We are left here as a rear-guard, and it is our duty to check the pursuit, not to be killed. Here we are under cover, and here I propose to remain."

"The enemy will make a detour to avoid this cliff," said Von Hügelweiler, "then will come our opportunity to move out."

Saunders shook his head.

"This cliff stretches half a mile at least, in either direction," he said, "and there is broken ground beyond that. No, they won't make a detour, not if they're the good ski-runners I take them for. To a clever ski-laufer, a jump over a cliff like this is no very desperate affair, and it's their only chance of nabbing Karl before he gets back to Weidenbruck."

"Then we wait here and fire at them from behind?" demanded the Captain excitedly, taking his orders from the distinguished Englishman as a matter of course.

"We pot them as they come over—like pheasants," said Saunders.

There was a smile on his face, not at the prospect of taking human life, still less at the chance of losing his own; for Saunders was not one to welcome danger for its own sake, though he could always meet it with coolness and resource. He was thinking, just then, of Trafford, and how willingly his excitable friend would have changed places with them, how jealous and annoyed he would be at learning that he, Saunders, had again the luck to be in the thick of a desperate affair. Von Hügelweiler noted the smile with admiration. Saunders was one who had a big hold on the popular imagination of Grimland, and the Captain was proud to be associated with him in an enterprise of this sort. His divided loyalty to the King and Princess was quite forgotten in the exigencies of the situation. He had a plain duty to perform,—and he hoped to perform it creditably in the eyes of the cool, smiling Englishman who had won such fame in the stirring winter of 1904.

Suddenly there was a slight scuffling sound in the snow above, and a second later something dark came over their heads like an enormous bird. It was one of their pursuers, a braced, rigid figure travelling through the air with the grace and poise of a skilled ski-juniper. Saunders raised a steady hand and fired. Simultaneously the human projectile collapsed into a limp and shapeless mass and fell with a dead plump into a cloud of snow. A second later and another ski-jumper had darkened the heavens above them. He had heard the crack and seen his comrade fall, but it was too late to stop his progress. He turned a swarthy face with black eyes full of terror, and again Saunders' revolver spoke, and with a dull groan the man fell spread-eagled in the snow within a yard of his companion.

"Bravo! Englander," muttered Von Hügelweiler, his eyes bright with excitement, his fingers nervously clutching the butt of his own weapon.

But Saunders' eyes were cast upwards at the jagged edge of the cliff above their heads. After a wait of some moments the face of a man peered over the skyline. Instantaneously Saunders covered it with his revolver. But the face remained, and a voice—the voice of Father Bernhardt—spoke.

"Don't fire, Herr Saunders!"

Saunders remained fixed and tranquil as a statue.

"You have killed two of my men, Englishman," went on the ex-priest.

"I think not," returned Saunders calmly. "The second man was only wounded in the thigh."

"I should be justified in taking your life for this," continued Father Bernhardt.

"Perfectly," agreed Saunders with composure, "but you will find the proceeding difficult and rather dangerous."

A low laugh followed Saunders' words.

"That's the spirit I admire!" cried the outlaw. "There's a dash of the devil about that—and the devil, you know, is a particular friend of mine."

"So I have been led to understand," said Saunders drily.

Again the outlaw laughed.

"Come," he said, "will you make a truce with us? We could probably kill you and your friend there, but we should lose a man or two in the killing. Make truce, and we give you a free return to Weidenbruck, or wherever you choose to go. Your friend Karl has got away safely now,—thanks to your infernal coolness,—so you can make peace with honour."

Saunders shrugged his shoulders.

"If my friend, Captain von Hügelweiler, agrees," he said, "I consent. Only there must be no further pursuit of us or the royal party."

"I give my word," said Bernhardt.

"Can we trust it?" whispered Von Hügelweiler. But the ex-priest overheard, and for answer clambered down the cliff beside them.

Von Hügelweiler was no coward, but something made him give ground before the strange individual who confronted him. A man of medium height and compact build, there was a suggestion of great muscularity about the outlaw's person. But it was the face rather than the body which compelled attention. The clean-carved, aquiline features, the black, bushy eyebrows, the piercing eyes, and the strange, restless light that played in them, made up a personality that set the turbulent rebel as a man apart from his fellows.

"Now, then," he said, thrusting his face into Von Hügelweiler's, "shoot me, and earn the eternal gratitude of your sovereign."

Again the Captain gave ground, though his timidity shamed and irritated him.

"I am not a murderer," he said, flushing. "You come to parley, I imagine."

"I come to shake Saunders by the hand," said the outlaw, turning and stretching out a sudden hand to the Englishman. "He is a man, a stubborn fellow, with a brain of ice and nerves of tested steel. I would sooner have him on my side than a pack of artillery and the whole brigade of Guards."

"You flatter me," said Saunders, taking the proffered hand. "I am a man of peace."

"How lovely are the feet of them that bring us good tidings of peace," said the outlaw with a scornful laugh. "Behold Satan also can quote the Scriptures! When I sold my soul three years ago to the Father of Lies I drove a fine bargain. I took a Queen to wife—such a Queen, such a wife! And my good friends Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness, and Archmedai, the Demon of Lust, have given me strength and health and cunning beyond my fellows, so that no man can bind me or prevail against me. They never leave me long, these good fiends. It was one of them who warned me not to lead the pursuit of Karl over this bit of cliff."

Von Hügelweller shuddered, but Saunders looked the outlaw steadily in the face.

"Your nerves are out of gear, Bernhardt," he said. "Did you ever try bromide?"

"I've tried asceticism and I've tried debauchery," was the leering answer, "and they both vouchsafe visions of the evil one. When I was a priest I lived as a priest: I scourged myself and fasted; but the Prince of Power of the Air was never far from me. And now that I am of the world, worldly, a sinner of strange sins, a blasphemer, and a wine-bibber, Diabolus and his satellites are in even more constant attendance on me. Perhaps I am mad, or perhaps they are there for such as me to see."

"I'd chance the former alternative and see a brain specialist," suggested Saunders. "It might save a deal of wasted blood and treasure to Grimland."

"There is no healing for a damned soul," said Bernhardt fiercely. "I saw strange things before I drank the libidinous cup of Tobit. I see them now. Saint or sinner, my eyes have been opened to the unclean hosts of Beelzebub."

Saunders offered the unhappy man a cigarette.

"Saints and sinners generally do see things," he said dispassionately. "I am neither, and my vision is normal. If you would live a reasonable life for six months you might become a useful member of society instead of a devil-ridden firebrand. Fasting is bad and excess is bad. One starves the brain, the other gluts it. Both lead to hallucinations. Take hold of life with both hands and be a man with normal appetites and reasonable relaxations, and you will have men and women for friends, not the unclean spawn of over-stimulated brain-cells."

A puzzled look crept into Father Bernhardt's eyes. Then he shook his head firmly.

"I won't talk to you any more," he cried angrily. "I hate talking to you. I hate your cursed English common sense. If I saw much of you I'd lose all the savour of life. I'd be a decent, law-abiding citizen, and miss all the thrills and torments of a man fire-doomed."

"A good conscience is not a bad thing," said Saunders, "and a man at peace with himself is king of a fine country. You're a youngish man, Bernhardt, and the world's before you. Give up listening to devils, and the devils will give up talking to you. Go on listening to them and the fine balances of sanity will be overthrown for ever."

"Silence!" cried the ex-priest, thrusting his fingers in his ears. "Would you rob me even of my remaining joys? For such as me there is no peace. I have my mission, and by the devil's aid I must perform it!"

"We all have missions," retorted Saunders. "Mine apparently is to preserve Karl from assassination. I don't boast a body-guard of demons, but I'll back my luck against yours, Father Bernhardt."

The outlaw smiled again at these words.

"Good-bye, Englishman," he said, "I love you for your courage. Go in peace," he went on, shaking him by the hand, but ignoring Von Hügelweiler altogether. "But take heed to yourself, for you are pitting yourself against a man who is neither wholly sane nor wholly mad, and therefore entirely to be feared. Good-bye, and tell the Jew Meyer that to-night I am dwelling in the Goose-market, at the house of Fritz Birnbaum, the cobbler. Let him send to take me and see whether he is stronger than my dear allies, Archmedai and Ahriman."

"I will make a point of doing so," said Saunders, preparing to depart, "and I will lay a shade of odds on the Jew."

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE IRON MAIDEN

While the Englishman was ski-running and saving the King's life, the American had spent an uneventful morning seeing the sights of the capital. Acting on his friend's advice he had visited the Reichs Museum, wherein were housed some extremely old Masters, some indifferent modern sculpture, and a wholly admirable collection of engravings by Albrecht Dürer. But Trafford's mind had wandered from pre-Raphaelite anatomy and marble modernities to a pair of dark eyes, a finely chiselled little nose, and a diminutive mouth, that were utterly unlike anything depicted by Botticelli, Fra Angelo, or the great Bavarian engraver.

Art had never held an important place in his mind, and on this fine January morning it competed feebly with a certain restless longing that had stolen over his ill-balanced nervous system, to the domination of his thoughts and the destruction of his critical faculties. He desired to be out in the open air, and he desired to see, and touch, and speak with a certain young woman who had passed herself off as his sister at his hotel, but who had disappeared into thin air long before he had tasted his petit déjeuner of coffee and rolls. It was not, he told himself, that he was in love. Love,—as he conceived it,—was something akin to worship, a regard pure as the snows, passionless almost in its humility and reverence. For one woman he had felt that marvellous adoration; he would never feel it again for any woman in the world. But beauty appeals even to those who have suffered at beauty's hands, and the Princess Gloria was a maiden of such bewildering moods, so compounded of laughter and fierceness, of such human pathos and relentless purpose, that she was bound to have a disturbing effect on so responsive and sensitive a soul as his. He acknowledged the obsession, for it was patent and paramount. But he told himself that in his regard there were no deeps, certainly no worship; merely a desire to cultivate an attractive young woman whose habitual behaviour was as heedless of the conventions as his own.

But this desire took him out of the long galleries of the Reichs Museum into the slums of Weidenbruck, into the purlieus of the Goose-market and the Grassmarket, and into the network of narrow alleys round about the Schugasse. But the face and figure that were in his mind's eye refused to grace his bodily sight, and so,—having lost himself half a dozen times and gained a magnificent appetite,—he took a sleigh and drove back to the Hôtel Concordia.

In the middle of his meal Saunders arrived, and told him at full length of his morning's adventures. And, as Saunders had expected, Trafford's disappointment at having missed the exhilarating rencontre with Father Bernhardt was palpable and forcibly expressed.

"Confound your beastly luck!" he said. "And, I suppose,—thanks to your brilliant shooting, and tactful diplomacy,—the King got away."

"He got home safely with my wife and General Meyer three-quarters of an hour before I did," replied Saunders, ignoring the sarcasm. "They held up a train on the big stone viaduct, and I and Von Hügelweiler tapped one at a small station called Henduck. It is a pity you were not with us, Nervy."

Trafford ground his teeth. His companion was very irritating.

"What about this afternoon?" he asked despairingly.

"I'm afraid there won't be any excitements this afternoon," replied Saunders blandly. "I've got to accompany Karl to a bazaar in aid of distressed gentle-women. As you are dining to-night at the palace, we shall, of course, meet. Au revoir till then. You might well have another look at those Dürers."

"D—— the Dürers!" said Trafford angrily, as his friend left the dining-room. "And hang Saunders for a selfish brute!" he added to himself. "He lures me out to this infernal country, and then sends me to picture galleries and museums while he shoots people ski-jumping over his head." And with the air of an aggrieved man Trafford kindled an enormous cigar and sauntered forth into the hall.

As he did so, he was approached by the concierge.

"A letter, mein Herr," said the official: "a messenger left it a moment ago."

Trafford took it, and as he read his eyes opened in astonishment, and his mouth in satisfaction.

"Dear Herr Trafford," it ran. "This is to thank you for what you did for me last night. You fight as well as you skate—and that is saying much. If you will meet me at the Collection of Instruments of Torture in the Strafeburg at three o'clock this afternoon, I shall try to be as fascinating as you could wish me—and take back any unkind word I may have spoken."

G.V.S."

Trafford chuckled to himself. After all, he reflected, Saunders was not having all the fun. He had not mentioned his adventures of the previous evening to his friend, because he knew that Saunders would disapprove of his action in abetting Karl's enemies. He, however, was a free lance, and if he was not permitted to save the King's life, he might as well devote his energies to the equally romantic task of protecting the rebel Princess. And in his rapture at the unfolding prospect of unlimited fracas, he chuckled audibly.

Then, turning somewhat abruptly, he bumped into a gentleman, who must have been standing extremely close behind him. Instinctively he thrust his letter into his pocket, realising that the missive was not merely a private but a secret one. He half-feared that the person into whom he had cannoned,—and whose approach he ought to have heard on the marble-paved hall,—might have been covertly reading his letter over his shoulder; nor was he particularly reassured at finding that the individual in question was none other than General Meyer.

"I beg your pardon," began the Commander-in-Chief, "but I was not quite sure that it was you, as I could not see your face while you were reading your letter."

"My fault entirely," said Trafford genially. "Were you looking for me?"

"I was. I came to say that the command which his Majesty graciously issued to you to dine with him to-night is also extended to your sister."

"My sister!" repeated Trafford, in dazed accents.

Meyer smiled at the other's mystification. "I was informed at the bureau that your sister was staying at the hotel with you," he said blandly.

Instantly the fraud of the previous evening returned to Trafford's memory.

"She spent last night at the hotel," he said, "but she left early this morning."

"A brief visit!" was the General's comment.

"Extremely! She is on her way to Vienna. She—she took the opportunity of paying me a flying visit to see me compete for the King's Cup on the Rundsee. She went on by the 8:35 this morning."

Meyer nodded, as if appreciating the other's glibness.

"Would you think me very inquisitive," he went on, "if I asked at what hotel she will be staying in Vienna?"

"She is not going to a hotel," replied Trafford. "She is going to stay with my aunt,—my dear Aunt Martha,—whose address I cannot for a moment recall. I shall doubtless hear from her in a day or so, when I will communicate her whereabouts to you—if you particularly desire it."

"Please do not trouble," said the General, scrutinising his companion closely through his eye-glass. "But there is one further question I would put to you. How is it that Saunders does not even know that you have a sister?" Meyer's tones were of the blandest, but there was something in his look and bearing that bespoke suspicions that had become certainties. Trafford read danger in the mocking voice and smiling lips, and he grew wonderfully cool.

"That's dead easy!—she's only my half-sister," he replied. "We see little of each other. Saunders may well have never chanced to meet her or even hear of her. My half-sister, you know, detests men. In fact, my only fear of her going to Vienna is lest she should at once enter a nunnery and never be seen again."

Meyer dropped his eye-glass in a facial convulsion of admiration.

"Au revoir, Herr Trafford!" he said, with a gracious bow. "We meet at eight o'clock at the Palace to-night. But I am desolated at the idea of not seeing—your half-sister."

Shortly after the Commander-in-Chief's departure, Trafford donned his overcoat and sallied forth on foot to the Strafeburg. The beauty of the day was gone. The mist that had been dispelled by the noonday sun had settled down again on the city. The penetrating cold, born of a low temperature and a moisture-laden atmosphere, nipped and pinched the extremities, and ate its way behind muscles and joints till Trafford,—despite his warm coat,—was glad enough to reach the friendly shelter of the ancient prison-house. A half-krone procured him admission to the show-rooms of the famous building, and a young woman, angular of build and exceptionally tall, took him under her bony wing, and commenced to show him the objects of interest. Trafford had come to see something less forbidding than racks and thumb-screws, but for the moment the object of his visit being nowhere to be seen, he devoted a temporary interest to the quaint and sinister-looking objects displayed on all sides of him. These,—as has already been made clear,—were mainly the ingenious contrivements of filthy minds for the infliction of the utmost possible suffering on human beings. A judiciously-displayed assortment of racks, wheels, water-funnels, and other abominations, soon had the effect of making Trafford feel physically sick. Nor was his horror lessened by the custodian's monotonous and unemotional recital of the various uses to which the different pieces of mechanism could be put. And as his thoughts travelled back across the centuries to the time when men did devil's work of maiming and mutilating what was made in God's own image, a fearful fascination absorbed the American's mind, so that he quite forgot the Princess in a sort of frenzy of horror and wrathful mystification.

In the third room they visited,—a gaunt department of deeply-recessed windows and heavy cross-beams,—was an assortment of especially ferocious contrivements.

"This was used for those who made bad money," went on the long-limbed maiden, in her droning monotone, indicating a gigantic press which was capable of converting the human frame into the semblance of a pancake. "The coiner lay down here, and the weights were put on his chest——"

"Stop! for heaven's sake," ejaculated Trafford, white with emotion. "If I could get hold of one of those mediæval torturers I'd give him a good Yankee kick to help him realise what pain meant."

"I'm sure your kick would be a most enthusiastic one," said a voice at his elbow. A lady in handsome furs and a blue veil—a common protection, in Grimland, against snow-glare—was addressing him. Despite this concealment, however, Trafford did not need to look twice before recognising the Princess Gloria.

"You can leave us, Martha," commanded the Princess to the angular attendant. "I am quite capable of describing these horrors to this gentleman. I am sufficiently familiar with the Strafeburg, and shall quite possibly become more so." Then, as the obedient Martha withdrew her many inches from the room:

"I want to thank you for last night's work," she said to Trafford; "and if I may, to ask——"

"Charmed to have been of service," interrupted the American, and taking the Princess's hand, he bent low and kissed it. As he raised his head again there was a flush in his cheek and a fire in his eye that seemed portents of something warmer than the Platonism of a dead soul. "But don't resume the hospitality of the Concordia," he added. "Meyer suspects, and my lying capacities have been well-nigh exhausted."

"He has been cross-questioning you?"

"Most pertinaciously; but I lied with fluency and fervour."

The Princess laughed gaily.

"You are splendid!" she cried, clapping her hands with girlish excitement. "Do you know," she went on presently, "that the authorities, acting under Herr Saunders' advice, are going to adopt strenuous measures against us?"

"Is that anything new?"

"Not exactly. But they have decided to leave off trying to murder us, and are going to try and take us openly. The ex-Queen,—whose nerves are not very good,—has already crossed the frontier into Austria. Father Bernhardt has found several new hiding-places, and a brace of new revolvers."

"And you?" asked Trafford.

"Have found you," she answered with a frank smile.

"Admirable!" laughed the American. "But tell me, pray, how I can serve you."

"You will be dining at the Palace to-night. Find out all you can and report to me."

Trafford was silent. He was about to dine with the King, and he had certain scruples about the sacredness of hospitality. Quick as a flash the Princess read his silence, and bit her lip.

"Now then," she said, as if to change the subject, "let me play the part of showman. Here we have the famous 'Iron Maiden.'"

Trafford beheld a weird sarcophagus set upright against the wall, and rudely shaped like a human form. On the head were painted the lineaments of a woman's face, and the mediæval craftsman had contrived to portray a countenance of abominable cruelty, not devoid of a certain sullen, archaic beauty. A vertical joint ran from the crown of the head to the base, and the thing opened in the middle with twin doors. The Princess inserted a heavy key,—which was hanging from a convenient nail,—and displayed the interior.

"Now you see the charm of the thing," she went on, as the inside of the iron doors revealed a number of ferocious spikes. "The poor wretch was put inside, and the doors were slowly shut on him. See, there is a spike for each eye, one for each breast, and several for the legs. The embrace of the Iron Maiden was not a thing to be lightly undertaken."

"Of all the fiendish, hellish——"

"It was made by one Otto the Hunchback," pursued the Princess, "and it was so admired in its day, that the reigning monarch of Bavaria had a duplicate made, and it stands in the castle of Nuremberg to this day."

"When was this thing last used?" inquired Trafford in hoarse tones.

"It is said that the late Archbishop of Weidenbruck was killed in this way, three years ago," replied the Princess calmly.

Trafford was white with indignation.

"Who says so?" he demanded fiercely.

"Everybody. The King hated him, and he died of cancer—officially. I was told—and I honestly believe—that he was killed by torture, because when the troubles of 1904 were at an end, he openly incited the people to revolt."

"If that's true," said Trafford, "I shan't make much bones about siding with you against Karl XXII. And it won't worry my conscience reporting to you anything I may accidentally overhear at the dinner to-night."

"We can't fight in kid gloves," said the Princess with a sigh.

A sudden noise in the street without attracted his attention. Light as a bird, the Princess leaped into the embrasure of the window. Trafford followed suit. A company of soldiers was drawn up outside the building, and facing them was a fair-sized mob jeering and cheering ironically. A number of units were detached under an officer to either side of the building, and it was plain that the Strafeburg was being surrounded by the military. A second later there was the dull sound of hoofs on snow, and a squadron of cavalry entered the platz from another direction. Lined up at right angles to the Strafeburg, carbine on knee, they held the threatening mob in hand with the silent menace of ball and gunpowder.

Trafford and the Princess looked at each other in blank and silent amazement.

"This means business," said the latter, pale but composed. "The Guides and the King's Dragoons are not being paraded for nothing. Royalty is going to be arrested with the pomp and circumstance due to the occasion."

"They have discovered your presence here?"

"Obviously. I am caught like a rat in a trap."

Trafford scanned the bloodless but firm countenance, and admired intensely. Here was no hysterical school-girl playing at high treason for sheer love of excitement, but a young woman who was very much in earnest, very much distressed, and at the same time splendidly self-controlled. He stood a moment thinking furiously with knitted brows, hoping that his racing thoughts might devise some scheme for averting the impending tragedy. The room they were in was the last of a series, and possessed of but one door. To return that way was to come back inevitably to the entrance hall,—a proceeding which would merely expedite the intentions of their enemies. He looked hopelessly round the chamber, and he dashed across to the great stone fireplace. It would have formed an admirable place of concealment had not its smoke aperture been barred with a substantial iron grille.

"It's no use," sighed the Princess wearily. "I must face my fate. Perhaps the good burghers will effect a rescue."

"Not if the King's Dragoons do their duty," retorted Trafford grimly. "Mob-heroism is not much use against ball-cartridges."

"Then I must yield to the inevitable."

Trafford shook his head fiercely.

"That is just what you must not do!" he cried. For a moment he stood irresolute, running his hand through his stiff, up-standing hair.

"I've got some sort of an idea," he said at length.

Approaching a table whereon were displayed a number of torture implements, he selected a pair of gigantic pinchers that had been specially designed for tampering with human anatomy, and applied them vigorusly to the nuts which fixed the spikes of the Iron Maiden.

"Otto the Hunchback little knew that his chef d'œuvre would be put to such a benevolent purpose as a refuge," he said, as he loosened and withdrew the spikes one by one from their rusty environment. "Given ten minutes' respite, and I'll guarantee a hiding-place no one in his senses will dream of searching."

"Quick, quick, quick!" cried the Princess in a crescendo of excitement, transformed again from a pale, hunted creature to a gleeful schoolgirl playing a particularly exciting game of hide-and-seek. "I hear them searching the other rooms. Quick!"

Trafford deposited the last spike in the pocket of his overcoat, and motioned to his companion to enter. When she had done so, he closed the doors, locked them, and put the key into his pocket with the spikes.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Quite comfy, thanks," answered a muffled voice.

Trafford contemplated the exterior of the Iron Maiden, and was pleased to note air-holes in the Maiden's ears. It had not been the intention of the mediæval tormentor that his victims should die of suffocation.

A few moments later there was the tread of martial steps along the passage, and the door was thrown open. Trafford buried himself in the contemplation of a water-funnel that had served to inconvenience human stomachs with an intolerable amount of fluid.

"Herr Trafford once again!"

The gentleman addressed looked up and beheld the grey-coated figure of General Meyer. Behind him with drawn swords were two officers of the Guides.

"Fancy meeting you again," went on the Commander-in-Chief, putting his eye-glass to his eye, and smiling his most innocent smile.

"Your presence is really more remarkable than mine," returned Trafford. "I am a stranger seeing the sights of Weidenbruck. You apparently are here on sterner business."

"I am here to effect an important arrest," drawled the General. "But perhaps you can aid us in our purpose," he went on in his blandest tones. "Have you by any possible chance seen a young woman hereabouts?"

"I saw one here only a few minutes back."

The General produced a note-book—the same in which he had jotted down the marks of the skating competition.

"This is most interesting," he said. "I need hardly ask you to be precise in your information, as your remarks will be taken down verbatim."

"I will be accuracy itself," said Trafford with mock seriousness.

"Good! When did you see this woman?"

"About a quarter of an hour ago."

"Her name?"

"I am ignorant of it."

"Her age?"

"I am bad at guessing ladies' ages; but I should say between twenty and thirty."

"Dark or fair?"

"Dark."

"I thought so. Her height—approximately?"

"Six foot two."

Meyer stiffened himself indignantly, and the eye-glass dropped from his eye.

"You are trifling, sir," he said angrily.

"Perhaps I have exaggerated," said Trafford calmly, "put down six foot one-and-a-half."

Meyer darted a sidelong glance at the American, and scribbled something in his book.

"Remember," he said, "that you may be called upon to substantiate that statement, and that false information——"

"He must be referring to Martha," broke in one of the attendant officers.

"Martha!" cried Trafford delightedly. "Yes, I believe that was her name. In return for half a krone she told me more in five minutes about instruments of torture than my wildest imagination had conceived possible."

"You have seen no one else?" rapped out the General.

"Till you arrived I have not seen a soul."

Meyer glanced round the room carefully. He looked under the several tables whereon the exhibits were displayed; he put his head up the great stone fireplace; his glance swept past the Iron Maiden, but it rested on it for a fraction of a second only.

"She is not here," he announced decisively, "this gentleman has been speaking the truth."

"A foolish habit of mine, but ineradicable," murmured Trafford ironically.

Meyer readjusted his eye-glass and turned, smiling, to the American.

"You behold in me," he said, "a disappointed man. For the second time in two days I have blundered. It is a coincidence, a strange coincidence. Also it is regrettable, for I am rapidly dissipating a hard-earned reputation for astuteness. Once again, au revoir, my dear Herr Trafford! We shall meet at dinner to-night, and I hope often. Gentlemen of the Guides, vorwarts!"

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SIMPLE POLICY

The royal palace of Weidenbruck—the Neptunburg, as it is called, after a leaden statue of the sea god which stands in its central courtyard—is a Renaissance structure of considerable size and dignity. Its main façade,—a pompous, Palladian affair of superimposed pilasters, stone vases and floral swags,—fronts the Königstrasse, a wide thoroughfare joining the northern suburbs with the Cathedral Square. Internally, there is a fine set of state-rooms, a florid chapel, and the famous muschel-saal, an apartment decorated with shells, coral, pieces of amber, marble, and porphyry, and other semi-precious material. It was into this apartment, scintillating with light and colour, that Trafford found himself ushered on his arrival at the royal domain.

General Meyer, resplendent in a pale blue and silver uniform and sundry brilliant orders, received him and presented him to his wife, a handsome lady of South-American origin and an ultra-Republican love of finery. Saunders was there, also with his wife, the latter beautiful and stately as a statue, in an empire gown of creamy green with red roses at her breast. There was an old gentleman with a billowy white moustache, and a young officer of the Guides. There were the diplomatic representatives of France and England, and a bevy of court ladies with the expensive paraphernalia of plumes, egrets, and voluminous trains. The company was a decorative one, and the setting sumptuous, only needing the sun of the royal presence to gild the refined gold of the exhilarating scene.

Saunders took an early opportunity of drawing Trafford apart.

"Nervy, my boy," the former began, "the King, Meyer, and myself have been having a little private conversation about you."

"A most interesting topic, to be sure."

"Most. The conclusion we arrived at was that you had been making an idiotic ass of yourself."

"Details, dear flatterer?" demanded Trafford.

"This sister business!" expostulated Saunders. "Why, everybody knows you arrived at the Hôtel Concordia by yourself, and without expectation of a visit from any relative."

"Everybody knows it?" queried Trafford blandly.

"By everybody, I mean the police, who study most things, and particularly the visitors' list at the 'Concordia.' The hall-porter of that excellent hotel is one of Meyer's most trusted agents, and there is not the slightest doubt that it was the Princess Gloria who enjoyed the privilege of claiming you as a brother."

"A half-brother," corrected Trafford.

"A half-brother, then," growled Saunders. "Anyhow, it is established beyond a doubt that you have helped the Princess by every means in your power."

"Then we will admit what is universally known," said Trafford coolly. "Only, I don't agree with your description of me as an idiotic ass. I came out here for excitement, and as you don't seem willing to provide me with it, I am finding it for myself. Besides, the Princess is a splendid little person, and to cultivate her society is the act not of an ass, but of a philosopher."

"That sort of philosophy leads to the Strafeburg," retorted Saunders. "Be warned, old friend. I know more about this charming country than you do. You have won the King's Prize. Wrap it in tissue paper and take it by the midnight express to Vienna. There is excellent skating to be had there—and you may come across your half-sister."

"My dear humourist," said Trafford, smiling and twirling his moustache. "I have no further use for—half-sisters."

Saunders started in amazement, not at the words themselves, but at their tone, and the twinkle that accompanied them.

"Nervy, Nervy Trafford," he said solemnly. "Do you suppose a Schattenberg sets her cap at an American! If she wins a throne,—as she may for all I know,—you will be put in a row with other gallant dupes of her witchery, and you will be allowed to kiss her hand every first and second Thursdays. Give it up, man," went on Saunders more heartily. "Give up playing poodle-dog to beauty in distress. You will get plenty of scars and very few lumps of sugar. Moreover, you may take it from me that a sterner policy of suppression is being pursued. There are important arrests impending."

"Important arrests!" echoed Trafford, laughing softly. "Why, I was the means of spoiling one this afternoon. I was in the Strafeburg with the Princess when Meyer turned up with foot and horse to arrest the poor child. Not wishing to witness a pathetic scene, I unscrewed the spikes of the Iron Maiden, and popped Gloria von Schattenberg inside the barbarous contrivance. Needless to say, no one, not even Meyer, thought of looking in such an impossible hiding-place. So you see, my British friend, important arrests sometimes fail to come off."

"Sometimes, but not invariably," said a voice close by the American's ear. Trafford shuddered rather than started, for he recognised the acid tones of General Meyer, and he was getting used to finding that gentleman near him when he believed him far away. But the words depressed him, nevertheless, for they held a note of ruthless certainty that smelled of damp walls and barred windows. He realised that he had made an enemy, a personal enemy, who was not likely to respect the liberty of a young foreigner who baulked his choicest schemes.

"I stepped across the room to warn you of the King's entrance," went on the General suavely. "His Majesty is on the point of entering the chamber."

A door was flung open by liveried and powdered menials. The company drew itself into two lines, and between them, smiling, portly, debonnair, walked the big, half-pathetic, half-humorous figure of the King. He bowed to right and left, murmuring conventional terms of greeting to all and sundry.

To the American he said:

"I congratulate you heartily, Herr Trafford, on winning my skating prize. I am a great admirer of the nation to which you have the privilege to belong."

Trafford bowed, and took the King's hand, which was extended to him.

"To-morrow," went on the monarch, "I am going to Weissheim, land of clean snow, bright suns, and crisp, invigorating air! Farewell, then, to Weidenbruck, with its penetrating chilliness, its vile, rheumatic fogs, and its viler and more deadly intrigues! Then hurrah for ski and skate and toboggan, and the good granite curling-stone that sings its way from crampit to tee over the faultless ice! What say you, Saunders?"

"I say hurrah for winter sport, your Majesty, and a curse on fogs, meteorological and political!"

Dinner was a meal of splendid dulness. Excellent viands, faultless champagne, and a gorgeous display of plate were not in themselves sufficient to counteract the atmosphere of well-bred boredom that sat heavy on the company. The King made desperate efforts to sustain his role of exuberant geniality, but his wonted spirits flagged visibly as the evening wore on, and it was clear that the events of the morning had left him depressed and heart-weary. Saunders, indeed, chatted volubly to Meyer's better-half, a lady who talked politics with a reckless freedom that was palliated by occasional flashes of common sense. Meyer himself,—glass in eye, tasting each dish and sipping each wine with the slow gusto of the connoisseur,—maintained an epigrammatic conversation with Mrs. Saunders, whose ready tongue had nearly as keen an edge as his own. But poor Trafford,—despite a healthy appetite and an appreciation of his high honour,—was enjoying himself but little. The lady whom he was privileged to sit next to,—the Frau Generalin von Bilderbaum, née Fräulein von Helder, formerly maid of honour to the ex-Queen,—was a wife of the General with the snowy moustache, and her sole topic of conversation was her husband. She was a lady of immense proportions and a more than corresponding appetite, and her devotion to her spouse would have been more romantic, had she possessed features as well as contours. During the meal Trafford was much enlightened as to the loyal and devoted career of General von Bilderbaum and the digestive capacities of an ex-maid of honour.

"The General fought with distinction in the trenches at Offen in '84, and he took part also with great distinction in the hill fighting round about Kurdeburg in '86. In '87——" Fortunately for Trafford the flow of the worthy lady's recital was checked. A menial, pompous, in plush and yellow braid, put his powdered head between him and his persecutrix, whispering in his ear: "His Majesty will take wine with you, sir."

Trafford looked up to the end of the table where the King sat. King Karl, with raised glass and a resumption of his genial smile, was endeavouring to catch his eye.

Trafford raised his glass and flushed. It is not given to every man to be toasted by a reigning sovereign, and Trafford felt a sense of pride that surged up in his bosom with no little strength. Then the incongruity of his position struck him. There was he, eating the King's food, and drinking the King's wine, and at the same time pledged to help and abet his most relentless enemy. Nay, more, he had sworn to abuse his hospitality that evening by gleaning any facts which might help the rebellious Princess to continue free to work out her ambitious and subversive propaganda. And now he was signalled out for especial honour, and he blushed, not because the eyes of the ladies regarded him with frank admiration, not because Meyer looked sideways at him with sneering inscrutability, but because his host, the King, regarded him with a glance that was all welcome and good fellowship. And in the emotion and excitement of the moment Trafford recalled Saunders' favourable opinion of King Karl, rather than the Princess Gloria's sinister suggestion of the torture-chamber. But just as, with mixed feelings and mantled cheek, he threw back his head to empty his glass, a noise from outside attracted his attention. It was a low, humming noise at first, with sharp notes rising from its depths. But it grew louder, and something in its swelling vibrations checked the glass untasted in his hand. Men and women looked at each other, and the conversation ceased automatically. Louder the noise grew—louder, till it was like the roaring of a great wind or the snarling of innumerable wild beasts. And yet, besides its note of wrath and menace, it held a sub-tone of deep, insistent purpose. Fair cheeks began to blanch, and an air of pained expectancy hung heavy on the throng. For there was no longer any possibility of mistaking its import. It was the hoarse murmur of a mob, wherein the mad fury of beast and element were blended with human hatred, and dominated by human intelligence.

Meyer sipped his wine composedly, but his face was a sickly green. General von Bilderbaum flushed peony, and Trafford felt big pulses beating in different parts of his body. The situation was intolerable in its frozen anxiety. With an oath the King rose to his feet, threw back the great purple curtains that masked the windows, and flung open the tall casements. A redoubled roar of voices flowed in with a stream of icy air. The ladies shuddered in their décolleté gowns, but Trafford,—heedless alike of frost and etiquette,—was on the balcony in an instant by the King's side, looking down on the great street. The other men followed suit immediately, and the sight that met their gaze was a stirring one. The broad Königstrasse, which ran past the palace, was packed with a dense and swaying throng.

In the midst of a bevy of dark-coated police walked a tall figure, handcuffed, bareheaded, his clothes torn as if he had been taken with violence, yet retaining withal an air of fierce scorn and tameless pride. On each side of the police tramped companies of infantry with fixed bayonets. At the head and at the rear of the little procession rode formidable detachments of the King's Dragoons. And surging behind, menacing, furious, determined,—yet held in check by the cold logic of steel and bullet,—pressed and swayed and shouted a great mass of turbulent humanity.

"They are arresting Father Bernhardt," drawled General Meyer, who surveyed the scene through his eye-glass and with a slight smile. "This is an illuminating example of the straightforward policy of repression."

"At any rate, he is being arrested," said the King. "Under your system he was always on the point of being arrested. Once inside the Strafeburg, Father Bernhardt will not derive much assistance from his noisy friends out here."

"Once inside the Strafeburg—yes!" sneered Meyer. "But there is still a quarter of a mile to be traversed; and unless I mis-read the temper of the good Weidenbruckers, there will be some sort of attempt at a rescue in a minute or two."

"Why don't they fire on the mob?" spluttered out General von Bilderbaum, stifling a fine military oath in his billowy moustache.

"Because I ordered the Colonel commanding the Dragoons not to fire unless a rescue was actually being attempted," answered Meyer. "Revolutions are stupid things, and are best avoided when possible."

"I'd fire on the brutes if I were in command," murmured the old General with suppressed fierceness, as the crowd pressed close at the heels of the last file of Dragoons.

Hardly had he spoken when a harsh order rang out above the growling of the mob, the rear rank swung their horses round, and with a click of carbines a volley rang out into the icy air. A bullet struck the stonework of the palace, not far from the King's head, for the soldiers had fired purposely in the air. Karl never even winced. His features wore a look of pained distress that no personal danger could accentuate. General Meyer quietly took cover behind a friendly pilaster, but Trafford,—wildly excited by the novel scene,—watched eagerly the quick panic of the mob. Helter-skelter they ran, tumbling over each other in a frenzied effort to avoid the stern reprisal they had so ruthlessly invited.

"A whiff of grape shot!" said Saunders. "A little firmness, a little sternness even, and a deal of trouble is saved. Another volley in the air, half a dozen executions, and a few sharp sentences of imprisonment, and a desperate situation will give way to normal tranquillity."

"I believe you are right," sighed the King.

"I don't," said Meyer; and as he spoke the crowd came back again, surging and rebellious, shouting with rage and shame and furious determination.

"See! a woman is leading them on!" cried the young officer of the Guides.

"So I perceive," said Meyer, turning to Trafford, who stood next him. "It is the young lady whose arrest I strove to bring about this afternoon in the Strafeburg. It would perhaps have been better for her if my purpose had been fulfilled."

Trafford drew in his breath and grasped the hand-rail of the iron balcony with a vise-like grip.

"They won't fire on her!" he said in a choked voice.

"I think so," said Meyer smoothly. "A rescue is certainly being attempted."

For a moment it seemed that the torrent of frenzied humanity would bear down and engulf the thin ranks of soldiery; but once again the rear rank swung their horses round, once again there was a precise ripple of small arms, and once again there was the spluttering crack of levelled carbines.

Trafford, white as a sheet, trembling with suppressed emotion, shut his eyes. When he opened them the compact mass of the crowd had melted into scattered groups fleeing for dear life in every direction. Only, on the trampled snow of the Königstrasse, lay a number of dark and prostrate objects, some feebly moving, some stark still. Trafford turned violently from the balcony and entered the dining-room with the intention of making an instant departure. Wild-eyed, heedless of good manners, court conventions, or everything indeed but a dominating desire to break out into the stricken thoroughfare, he dashed madly through the great room. In the doorway a hand, a cool feminine hand, checked him, and he found himself looking into the unemotional grey eyes of Mrs. Robert Saunders.

"Where are you going?" she asked firmly.

"Into the street."

"Why?"

"Murder has been done. Someone may need succour."

"The wounded will be looked after," said Mrs. Saunders calmly, "and by more capable hands than yours. Your departure now without a formal leave-taking of his Majesty would produce the worst impression. As my husband's friend, your conduct would reflect on him. I must ask you to be prudent."

Trafford's eyes flamed furiously at the maddening check. His whole system was quivering with the excitement of the situation and the intense desire to find relief for tortured nerves in vigorous action. There was a strange pain, too, in his heart, a queer, stabbing sensation that he neither analysed nor understood. All he knew was that the Palace walls cramped him like a narrow cell, that he needed air,—the air of the Königstrasse. And yet nothing short of rude violence could have brushed aside the well-developed young lady who blocked his exit with such exasperating vis inertiæ. With a really fine effort of self-control he mastered himself.

"I will be prudent," he said bitterly.

"Thank you."

"It would never do," went on Trafford ironically, "for your husband to fall out of favour with the humane King Karl. He might wake to find himself in the dungeons of the Strafeburg;" and with a polite bow he returned through the dining-room to the balcony.

"Well," he asked of Saunders, "does peace reign at Weidenbruck?"

"There seems to be trouble in the direction of the Grass-market," replied Saunders, pointing to a quarter from which distant sounds of shouting were faintly audible. Almost as he spoke, a red glare lit up the heavens with a rosy flickering glow.

"Incendiarism!" muttered old General Bilderbaum, feeling instinctively for his sword.

The King whispered something in General Meyer's ear.

The Commander-in-Chief nodded.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ON THE WARPATH

While Trafford was devouring the enticing viands of the Neptunburg, and listening to the inspiriting conversation of the Frau Generalin von Bilderbaum, a certain captain in the third regiment of Guides was the prey to a whole host of mixed sentiments, divergent ideals, and other troubles of a conscientious egotist. Ulrich von Hügelweiler was sitting in his barrack quarters, smoking hard and thinking harder, and occasionally kicking the legs of the table in an excess of mental indecision.

"I am a loyalist by instinct," he murmured to himself, lighting his fourteenth cigarette. "But to whom? Loyalty is a virtue,—a grand virtue as a rule,—but loyalty to the wrong person is as immoral as worship paid to a false god." And having delivered himself of this platitudinous monologue he kicked another flake of varnish from the leg of his long-suffering table.

He recalled the post of honour that had been assigned him that morning on the slopes of Nussheim, and he longed to prove his worth by the solid arguments of a soldier's sword. And yet ... and yet ... it ought to have been he, not the American, who was the honoured guest at the Neptunburg, that night.

For the memory of his disappointment on the Rundsee rankled intolerably in his retentive brain. Meyer had offered him a dirty task and had cheated him of fame and glory because he had refused to undertake it. He hated Meyer—hated him far more than he loved the King. He hated Trafford, too, for winning the King's Prize. He threw away his last cigarette-end with a gesture of annoyance, and rose impatiently to his feet. He would have liked at that moment to have faced Meyer on even terms with measured swords and stripped body; and having pinked the Jew's bosom, he would like to do the same service to the cursed American, who had come between him and his honourable ambition. But Karl had played no part, so far as he knew, in the dishonourable intrigue which had prevented him being placed first in the skating competition. Karl was a man who had proved his personal courage in the rising of 1904, and who,—despite the ugly rumours which flooded the city,—had an undoubted charm of personality. He repented of having tendered his resignation, for the manner in which that resignation had been deferred touched all that was most soldierly and honourable in his heart. And then into the troubled whirlpool of his thoughts came a vision, so calmly dominating, so unconquerably insistent, so sweetly imperious, that the dictates alike of hate and loyalty grew faint and indecisive before the splendid allure seen of his inward eye. A Princess stood before him, bright eyes looked pleadingly into his own, soft hands caressed the lappet of his coat. A breath sweeter than the spices of Araby was in his nostrils. Conscience, maybe, called one way, but something stronger than conscience called the other. The call of the one was clear and loud; but the call of the other stirred every fibre in his sensuous being.

He sat down again in his arm-chair, and buried his face in his hands, and because his eyes were blinded by the action, the vision of Gloria's youthful beauty and smiling lips grew clearer, more tangible, more seductive. His mind harked back to the dismal moment when he was leaving the Rundsee, a defeated, discredited candidate for the blue ribbon of the skating world. The Princess had appeared to him at a moment when her bright presence had seemed especially dazzling by contrast with the black thoughts that filled his brain. She had appealed to him for assistance, had promised, or at least hinted at, the great reward that would bear him rose-crowned to the stars. That was worth much—everything perhaps—even a soldier's honour. But would his honour inevitably be sacrificed by placing his sword at the Princess's disposal? He had reasons for being dissatisfied with his present service, he argued. Karl—well, he could not bring himself to dislike Karl, but he was certainly a man of whom much ill was spoken. His Commander-in-Chief, Meyer, he knew for a scheming and unscrupulous politician rather than an honest soldier. And so, little by little, desire suborned conscience, till he persuaded himself,—as self-centred men habitually do,—that the path of pleasure was the path of duty.

The blare of a bugle broke rudely on his meditations. Rising and looking out of the window, he saw his men hurriedly mustering in the barrack-yard. A second later his door burst open and his Colonel entered.

"Captain Hügelweiler, proceed instantly with a full company and fifty rounds of ball-cartridges to the Domkircheplatz," came the sharp command. "There is trouble outside the Strafeburg, and your orders are to restore tranquillity at all costs."

* * * * *

When the party at the Neptunburg broke up abruptly, as it did soon after the glare of incendiarism had flushed the sky to a threatening crimson, Trafford paid a hasty leave-taking of his Majesty, and hastened down the great staircase to the entrance hall. Here stood Saunders in close consultation with General Meyer.

"Nervy," said the former, "if I were you I should stay here. There is no necessity to go, and if you come up to my room we can watch things comfortably from my window."

"Thanks," said Trafford curtly, "I am not fond of watching things from the window."

"You really must not leave us," said the Commander-in-Chief, with exaggerated politeness.

"I'm afraid I must, though," said the American decisively, buttoning up his coat and putting on his snow boots over his evening shoes.

"We really cannot allow you to depart," persisted Meyer, walking to the hall-door and ostentatiously shooting a massive bolt.

A gleam lighted in Trafford's eye, but his response was politeness itself.

I must insist on tearing myself away," he retorted.

Saunders and Meyer exchanged glances.

"Herr Trafford," said the latter, "when I said you must not go, I meant to couch a command in terms of courtesy. The streets of Weidenbruck are in a dangerous state to-night, and as the person responsible for the public safety I really cannot sanction your departure from the Neptunburg."

Trafford glanced round him. On either side were flunkeys in powdered wigs, knee breeches, and yellow coats. Between him and the street he desired to gain was—an elderly Jew.

"Is your command based solely on a concern for my personal safety?" he asked.

"Solely," was Meyer's sarcastic reply.

"Then I shall disregard it," said Trafford, producing his gun and flourishing it about in reckless fashion, "for I am quite capable of protecting myself, dear General, I assure you."

Meyer flinched violently as the muzzle of the deadly weapon was pointed in all directions, and most frequently at his own person. For a half-moment he hesitated; he had been playing a game of bluff, but he had not appreciated the bluffing capabilities of his opponent. He might call the guard, but he had a nerve-destroying idea that if he did so the mad American would have an accident with the revolver and shoot him through the leg. His half-moment's hesitation was fatal to his scheme for retaining Trafford in the Neptunburg. The latter brushed past him, threw back the bolt, and with a "Good-night, Saunders. Good-night, General," vanished into the street.

Having gained the open, Trafford's first steps were directed hastily to the scene of the late contest between the mob and the soldiers. The roadway was strangely empty,—as though some dominant attraction had lured away all such as could walk or run,—leaving only those whom the recent fracas had robbed of their limbs' use. It was these latter to whom Trafford paid instant and anxious attention. One by one he bent over the prostrate forms with peering eyes and a nameless dread in his heart. There were about a dozen, some dead, some dying, some merely incapacitated.

At the conclusion of his search Trafford heaved a deep sigh of relief, for they were all men, and what he had feared had not happened. Then, just as he was wondering what he could do to alleviate the sufferings of the stricken ones, he saw a party of friars, black-cloaked and hooded, approaching the scene with charitable intent. And so, leaving the task of mercy to better hands than his, he hastened in the direction from which distant sounds of shouting were audible. His ears led him towards the Cathedral Square, and as the noise of turbulence swelled louder and fiercer, and as his own sense of relief at the Princess's escape from danger made itself felt more consciously, a strange exaltation of the spirit took him. His heart sang at the joyous prospect of a disturbance beside which the finest college row on record would seem a small and trivial thing. He quickened his footsteps to a run, for his nerves were taut and tingling with the shrill joy of anarchy. Houses would be burnt instead of furniture, policemen would be assaulted with genuine ferocity, instead of the half-humorous roughness of his undergraduate days. The war-drum was sounding in his ears. The strange brain, that could pity human suffering with a superhuman sympathy, was kindled with the wild flames of primitive pugnacity. The strange heart, that could conceive an ethereal, passionless regard for a woman, was a fierce swirl of troubled waters.

Trafford, Nervy Trafford, the fire-brand of Caius, was on the warpath.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MUSIC AND THE MOB

When Trafford reached the Cathedral Square he found a vast number of people, a considerable amount of noise, but nothing very stirring in the way of action. The military and the mob seemed to be watching one another in an equipoise of mutual distrust. The King's Dragoons,—who had escorted Father Bernhardt to the Strafeburg,—were patrolling a space before the prison-house, while the portal itself was held by a company of Guides under Captain von Hügelweiler. On one side, indeed, a body of energetic firemen were engaged in pumping exceedingly cold water on to an ignited building, but though the crowd jeered and shouted, the brass-helmets proceeded in their duty, unheeding and unmolested. An air of palpable dejection seemed to oppress the throng, as though they had tried conclusions with the military and come off second best. The situation pleased the American not at all. His own enthusiasm was at boiling-point, and it fretted his high spirit to see a promising revolution fizzling out for want of leaders and concerted action. He edged his way into the outskirts of the crowd, in the dim hope of meeting some kindred spirit, perhaps, even if fortune favoured him, of chancing across the Princess.

"Oh, for five minutes of Father Bernhardt!" murmured a mild-looking individual in spectacles, broadcloth, and a high felt hat. Trafford turned and regarded the gentleman who had voiced that spirited aspiration in such a tone of quiet pathos. He was a very large person, eminently respectable in appearance, and he was seated on a wooden stall intended for the display of merchandise.

"What would Father Bernhardt do?" asked Trafford.

"Do!" echoed the other. "Why he'd turn these dull logs of people into blazing firebrands in five minutes." The tone was one of regret and disappointment, slightly bitter and distinctly reproachful.

"Indeed!" said Trafford, scenting a character, and drawing him out.

"Yes," said the other in rising tones, "with a few of his red-hot sentences fresh from heaven or hell, or wherever it is he draws his inspirations, he'd light a flame that would roast Karl and all his pack of venial favourites and hungry courtesans."

Trafford smiled appreciatively. There were symptoms of a battle-light in those big, grey eyes, a certain rude force and stubborn vigour on those heavy, bovine features.

"Father Bernhardt's in the Strafeburg," said the American.

"Alas, yes," admitted the stranger in a voice of infinite sadness. "He alone held the threads of revolution in his hands. He alone possessed the magic of command, the subtle influence that turns canaille into heroes. Without him we are an army of sheep without a leader."

"Why not attempt a rescue?" suggested Trafford.

The other made a gesture of contempt.

"Look at us," he said, with a wave of his hand. "Do we look the sort of people to pull down six-foot walls in the face of rifle bullets? We've been peppered once to-night, and we didn't like it. Then the firemen turned their hoses on us, and the cold water was worse than the hot fire. Look at my hat!"

Trafford regarded the high felt head-covering, and could not restrain a smile. Its crown was shiny and cockled, and its brim limp and dripping.

"I'm wet through," went on the stranger pathetically, "and I'm going home. I'm a doctor, and if there's not going to be a revolution, I'm not going to undermine my constitution watching these cowards do nothing."

"Nonsense!" said Trafford cheerily, "Something must and will be done. Why, my good man, I've come all the way from New York to see a revolution, and do you suppose I'm going back without seeing one?"

"You'd better make a speech," suggested the stranger sarcastically.

"That's not a bad idea," said Trafford, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "but I think I've got a better one."

The stranger turned his glance on the American, a spark of interest in his gloomy eye.

"I heard a song the other night at the Eden Theatre," went on Trafford. "I think it was called the 'Rothlied.' Its effect on the audience was remarkable. Old men became boys, women went fighting mad, and officers in uniforms swore death to all. If we could get the 'Rothlied' going we'd have Father Bernhardt out of the Strafeburg in half an hour."

"Young man," said the stranger solemnly, "I'm not sure you're not a genius."

"Neither am I," said Trafford modestly. "Look here—can you sing?"

"I have a powerful baritone—and you?"

"Have the voice of a crow," said Trafford. "Also I don't know the words, and I'm not very sure of the tune."

The other repeated a few lines in Trafford's ear and hummed a few bars of the melody.

"That's all right," said Trafford. "Now then, as loud as you can. One—two—three——

"Tremble tyrants, base and callous,
Tremble at the people's cry,
See the flaming star of freedom
Rise blood-red in the sky."

In a trice the song was taken up by those nearest the two agitators, and in an incredibly short time the whole square was resounding with the swinging chorus of the inflammatory melody. The thing succeeded beyond all expectation. A new temper seemed to come over the entire throng. Wet clothes were forgotten in an access of revolutionary ardour. Men who had seen red wounds and staring death forgot the chill remembrance in the burning music of the "Rothlied." Louder and louder it swelled, fiercer grew the gesticulations of the fermenting mob. The whole mass swayed and surged with the leaven of revived fanaticism.

"We've got something to work on now," said Trafford gleefully. "Give me a pick-a-back, Herr Doctor, and I'll make a speech."

The doctor bent his massive back, and Trafford climbed up on to the broad shoulders.

"Into the thick of them, good doctor horse!" he cried, and the doctor struggled on manfully under his burden,—albeit he lost his high felt hat in the press, and the cold wind chilled the perspiration on his benevolent brow. And Trafford addressed the populace with fervid words and execrable grammar, and for some inexplicable reason his assurance and manifest energy won him a ready hearing and savage applause.

"Form barricades!" he shouted at the conclusion of his wild address.

"Why?" whispered the doctor.

"Don't you know that there is no such thing as a revolution without barricades," replied the American, "they are a necessary part of the game. Form barricades, my brothers!" he repeated in louder tones.

"With what?" demanded one.

"With snow, son of a crossing-sweeper!" replied Trafford. "Work hard, brothers, and form a rampart breast high, and hold it against all comers."

The tone of command and his imposing position on the big doctor's shoulders, won their way. The doctor, too, was recognised as a prominent burgher of "advanced" tendencies, and the crowd set to work with the utmost energy and determination.

"What on earth are you doing?" asked a soft voice by his side.

Looking down he perceived the Princess Gloria. The girl was evidently under the stress of great excitement; her eyes were unnaturally bright and her bosom was heaving tumultuously under her coat of sables. But when her eyes met Trafford's she laughed; it would not have been the Princess Gloria had she not done so.

"What on earth are you doing on Doctor Matti's shoulders?" she repeated.

"Telling the people to make snow-men for the Dragoons to charge against," he replied.

"But that won't stop them," she objected.

"Of course it won't," he agreed, "but it keeps these fellows warm and busy. The essence of a revolution is to keep things moving. Inaction is the foe to insurrection."

"You talk like a paid agitator," she said, still smiling.

"I am. The highest-paid agitator that ever was. Have you forgotten the agreed price?"