CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL

The battle of Weissheim was a very small affair, viewed from an European standpoint. The forces engaged on either side were trivial, and the issues at stake of comparative indifference to all save those directly concerned; and yet it was not devoid of picturesqueness in its incidents, nor even of academic interest to those who study the conduct of military operations in the high regions of deep snow and zero frosts. The bombardment of the Marienkastel was an excellent example of concentrated artillery fire on a mediæval building, of the efficacy of modern explosives on ancient masonry, of the superiority of iron and melinite to stone and concrete. Bernhardt's gallant attempt to storm the destructive battery was as noble in its way as the heroic charge at Balaclava; its failure was even more pronounced. He returned from that spirited enterprise with half his men and a rifle bullet in his dangling left arm, but with an unbroken spirit and untamed energy.

The Marienkastel existed no longer as a building. Its halls were unroofed, its great tower but dwarf piers of splintered masonry. The position,--which had been captured with such skill and gallantry,--had been but a bait in the enemy's trap. The Marienkastel, indeed, commanded Weissheim, but Sanatorium Hill commanded the Marienkastel. The ex-priest's local knowledge had been inferior to Meyer's, and that inferiority spelt the difference between winning and losing the battle.

During Bernhardt's absence on his desperate effort to spike Von Hügelweiler's mortars, Trafford had been left in command of the castle. Finding his position untenable and his losses increasing at an appalling rate, he drew off to the sheltered ground by Major Flannel's curling-rink. Here they were safe from attack, and at the same time powerless for purposes of aggression. Gloria was with him, bitter at the destruction of her home, sick at the loss of her followers, anxious to do some desperate action which should win back their lost advantage.

The day which had opened with triumph seemed destined to close in shame. A man's courage was in her heart, a stubborn pride in her vigorous blood, but the sight of the wounded,--sufferers for her ambition,--won a softer mood, and she hastened to give comfort where she could no longer arouse enthusiasm. At about three o'clock in the afternoon Bernhardt and his remnant entered the hollow, which Trafford had now put in a position of defence. The ex-priest looked round at the entrenched riflemen and the guns in their snow embrasures, and laughed mockingly.

"On what can you train your guns here?" he asked, attempting to bind his wounded arm with the aid of his uninjured member and his strong teeth.

"On anyone who wants to play a game on Major Flannel's rink," Trafford replied, tendering his assistance for the stricken limb. "Our motto for the moment is 'defence not defiance.' We cannot hurt the enemy, and the next best thing is not to let him hurt us."

"And you are content with that?" asked Bernhardt with scorn.

"I have a beautiful nature," the American replied quietly, "and I accept the decrees of Providence in a chastened spirit. We came to capture a town and a king, and we have captured--a curling-rink! Unfortunately we have sent the curling-stones down the bob-sleigh run, so we are unable to derive much benefit from our achievement."

Bernhardt looked wonderingly at the other.

"And men call _me_ mad," he said after a pause.

"And with reason," retorted Trafford. "You are a Napoleon _in parvo_, a man who desires big things quite apart from their intrinsic value. You want a kingdom for your playground, and princes for your playthings; that is what scientists call megalomania, and I, bad taste. There are better things at hand for the normal man: a wife and children and a good conscience."

"A coward's creed!" was Bernhardt's comment.

"Maybe, but mine."

Bernhardt tossed his head in despairing amazement.

"To think that you of all men should sink so hopelessly at our first rebuff!--Trafford, the hero of the revolution, is no better than a craven!"

"There is more than one kind of cowardice, Bernhardt," rejoined Trafford without heat; "and I admit I was a coward in the Marienkastel, when the shells dropped and buried men alive under tottering walls. I don't think I was ever afraid before, but then I had never been in action with--with a woman."

"But 'perfect love casteth out fear,'" mocked Bernhardt.

"Then is my love very far from perfect," came the ready answer. "I was in a very torment of anxiety. A good man groaning out his life with a lump of lead in his breast, and a broken wall across his legs, is bad enough, but she"--and Trafford pointed to Gloria, who was engaged in tending a poor, disfigured wretch who had been moved from the stricken castle--"my God, Bernhardt, I was a coward!"

"Women don't feel pain as much as men," said Bernhardt brutally. "Our anxiety on their account is a purely selfish sentiment based on the lowest instincts."

"Your theory would be preposterous even if we were animals," replied Trafford. "As applied to humanity it is blasphemy. I fancy your wound hurts you."

"Aye, my wound hurts me--not the wound in my arm--I don't feel that--but the wound in my spirit. I am not one to sit down under defeat."

"Then what do you propose to do?"

"Push on to the Brunvarad!"

"And play Meyer's game for him! The road is held with every rifle and quick-firer they can cram into it."

"We can get through at a price," said Bernhardt between his teeth.

"I don't think we could get through at any price," rejoined Trafford with conviction. "If we go on we are beaten men; if we stay here we may make a draw of it."

Bernhardt uttered an exclamation of contempt.

"There is no such word in Grimland," he said. "We either win victory or we drain the cup of defeat to its dregs. Are we to return to the good loyal town of Weidenbruck and say, 'We have lost three hundred men and a dozen guns; we have not captured Weissheim, nor taken Karl, but we have made a draw of it? Strew garlands in our path and deck your houses with bunting, for we have escaped total destruction!'

"I was not suggesting returning to Weidenbruck," said Trafford.

"Can we stay here? What are we to eat? Where are we to sleep? The nights are far from warm at these altitudes. To sleep out of doors at Weissheim; is to sleep the sleep that knows no waking. If we cannot go forward we must fall back on our communications at Wallen. The hospitality of Major Flannel's curling-rink is not one to be accepted permanently."

Trafford was silenced. Events had landed them in an _impasse_, and to curse the whole folly of the expedition was alike ignoble and unprofitable.

It might have been wiser,--as he had advocated at Wallen,--to have abandoned the scheme of conquest, to have sought the joys of life in quiet retirement from the scene of clashing ambitions and frenzied upheavals; but the expedition had gone on to its fate and he had gone, consenting, with it. And things being as they were, Bernhardt's logic was relentlessly true. To go back with their purpose unfulfilled was to test the brittle fabric of the sullen Weidenbruckers' allegiance with too shrewd a strain. And if they could not go forward they must go back. In grim perplexity he called to Gloria.

"Is it worth while trying to force the road to Weidenbruck?" he asked her.

"If you had been tending wounded men, you would not ask such a question," she replied quietly.

"I thought the Schattenbergs rose to great heights in great difficulties," sneered Bernhardt. "If we are shirk our butcher's bill----"

"We have made our mistakes," she interrupted. "Our only chance is for them to make theirs. If we stay here they may attack us."

"Meyer doesn't make mistakes," said the ex-priest, "and if he did it would not be a mistake of that kind. If we stay here the only foes that will attack us will be General Frost and Brigadier Hunger; against such we have no defence."

"It seems to me," said Trafford, "that to go forward is madness, to go back madness, to stay here is madness; and as we must do one of these three things, madness is our portion. Now the most effective kind of lunacy seems to me to stay here till night-fall."

"And then hazard a night attack?" questioned Gloria hopefully.

"Not an attack," rejoined Trafford. "Meyer has very sound theories of defence, and his searchlights are sure to be in excellent working order. No; we must drop the soldier and become burglars. Where a thousand, or even a hundred, would fail, half a dozen may succeed; and the object of our burglary must be Karl. If we can secure his person and return with it to the capital, we shall have done all,--or nearly all,--we attempted. Weissheim is loyal to an individual not a dynasty, and Karl in the Strafeburg would be a much less attractive person than Karl in the Brunvarad."

Bernhardt laughed softly.

"I begin to have hopes of you again," he said.

Gloria clapped her hands excitedly.

"I knew you would find some way out of the difficulty!" she cried. "There is no such thing as despair with you in our counsels."

"I am fighting for a high stake," Trafford replied. "If I can win success out of the tangled disorder of our fortunes you----"

"If you can capture Karl," she interrupted, "I am sure there will be no political objection to your being--being my consort."

"Only personal objections?" he hazarded.

"There will be none," she said, "I swear it. You are a most gallant and resourceful gentleman, and I might search my kingdom over for your equal."

Trafford noted the genuine enthusiasm of her tones, and nodded grimly.

"You are what they call a 'throw-back,' your Majesty," he said. "You should have lived five hundred years ago, in the age of joust and tourney, when men won their wives by driving enormous spears through the breastbones of their less muscular rivals."

"And you are of the Middle Ages too," she countered; "your ideals, like mine, go back to the early days of chivalry."

"The days of the rack and the Iron Maiden? No, I assure you that with all my faults I am more up-to-date than that. Romance is a fine thing on paper, but in my heart of hearts I would win my soul's desire with a gentle wooing. But to return to our _moutons_: does the plan I have outlined commend itself to my friend Bernhardt?"

"If your proposal had been to put a bullet through Karl's cranium I should say that it bordered on sanity," replied Bernhardt. "But even that would be difficult. Meyer stands or falls by Karl's supremacy--and the Jew is not a man to let his position be forfeited for want of forethought. He will watch over Karl's sacred person as a mother watches over her first-born. Still, we might scheme an attempt for stalking the royal stag."

"I suggested turning burglar," said Trafford. "I consider that a sufficient descent in the social scale, without turning murderer."

"You have not the advantage of being an _absintheur_," was Bernhardt's rejoinder. But at this point the conversation was interrupted; an officer of the Guides had approached and was standing at the salute.

"A man to see your Excellency," he began, to Bernhardt.

"Where from?"

"Weidenbruck."

"His name?"

"Dr. Matti."

Bernhardt whistled.

"His business?" he demanded.

"Private and confidential."

"Hum! Conduct him here, please."

A moment later the doctor stood before them. He was arrayed in a woollen jersey, with a Jäeger scarf around his neck. Grey-green knickerbockers and yellow putties veiled his nether limbs. He was wearing smoked glasses, and his feet were shod with skis. His head was bare, and his hair wet and tangled, as though it had had intimate acquaintance with the snow.

"What are you doing here?" demanded the ex-priest.

"I come as a messenger and a fugitive," replied the doctor.

"Your news?"

"Weidenbruck is in a condition of anarchy. You left me as a dictator, but you deprived me of a dictator's only argument--force. You drained the city of troops, and you expected me to impose my will on that turbulent and sinful community. My will was to purify the _stadt_. My men raided the gambling-houses round the Goose-market; they harried the infamous dens of the Hahngasse. I closed the Mailand Kurhaus and that other haunt of immorality, the Augustus Café. For forty-eight hours virtue triumphed, and the worst features of my native town began to disappear with exhilarating rapidity. Then the forces of sin and debauchery put their evil heads together, and the reaction began. My police were suborned. The cry was raised that a worse tyranny than Karl's had been inaugurated. Rumours that Karl was holding his own and more began to be disseminated in the capital. It was whispered that guilty relations had been established between the young Queen and the accursed American. There was a riot. I called out the soldiers, but they were too few and not over willing. The people who had hounded Karl from his throne cheered his name in the same streets where they had sought his blood. I am no coward, but I was appalled. To calm the tempest would have needed an army corps."

"Or Father Bernhardt," interrupted Trafford.

"Anyway, I fled," the doctor resumed, "because I saw how imperative it was that you should return as soon as you had won your victory."

"And left the city to anarchy?" put in Gloria.

"I left the sons of worthlessness to their own confusion."

"Dr. Matti," said Bernhardt, "you are one of those amiable beings who have theories. If you had amused the Weidenbruckers,--or even let them amuse themselves,--all might have been well. Instead, however, you tried to turn them into angels,--a role which Providence has not assigned to any community east of Berlin."

"I meant well----"

"That is what I complain of," interrupted Bernhardt.

"But the situation is only temporarily serious," interposed the hapless doctor. "When you have captured Weissheim----"

"When we have captured Weissheim," said Trafford. "Unfortunately we are about a quarter of a mile further from Weissheim than we were two hours ago. And two hours hence we shall very probably be further still."

"Good heavens! You----"

"We are like you, Dr. Matti," went on Trafford. "We have had a failure; like you, we over-rated our own skill and under-rated our enemies'. The situation is bad."

Matti was silent, but his big, plebeian features showed plainly the disappointment and consternation of his mind. The short winter day was winning to its close. Already the sun was falling behind the great wall of the distant mountains; already the snows of the Klauigberg were flushing rose-pink against the greening turquoise of the cloudless sky. A chill had crept into the air, the surface of the curling-rink,--which had been wet under the sun's mid-day power,--was now as slippery as a polished mirror. In an hour it would be dark, and with the dark would come the intense cold that meant death to all that failed to find a night's shelter.

"It is time we fell back towards Wallen," said Bernhardt to Gloria. "I and Trafford will stay behind with a few trusty spirits. If all goes well we will join you to-morrow morning."

"I am going to stay behind too," said Gloria quietly. "Colonel Schale can conduct the retreat."

"I too will stay behind," said Dr. Matti. "I am further from Weidenbruck here than at Wallen."

Bernhardt looked at the doctor's heavy, determined features, and nodded.

"We four," he muttered. "It is enough! My wound burns like fire; the cold has got into it, and it will mortify. To-morrow Dr. Matti can remove the gangrened limb."

Matti's professional instincts were roused by the last words.

"You are wounded?" he said. "You had best let me remove the bullet at once." He produced from his person a small bottle containing a colourless fluid. "I was prepared for emergencies of this nature. A whiff of chloroform----"

"To the devil with your anæsthetics!" cried Bernhardt hotly. "My brain is wanted to-night; my _brain_, Herr Doctor, not a fuddled mass of drugged cells and inert tissue! Take out the bullet if you will, but don't imagine I shall flinch under the knife. There is no pain that I can feel but the pain of disappointment."

"But a mere whiff," began the worthy doctor.

"Do as he bids," said Trafford, taking the bottle from Matti's hand and putting it for safety into his pocket. "That may come in useful later. But I should take out the bullet, if you can," he whispered; "there is a queer look in his eyes, and I fancy the pain is making him light-headed."

"Come, cut out the little lump of lead, doctor," said Bernhardt, "the little messenger that meant so much harm and achieved so little. Cut deep, Matti, and do not stint the knife. Only leave me my right arm and my brain; for to-night there will be great doings between the dusk and the dawn. Aye, Bernhardt," he went on, talking to himself, "you must rise to great heights. There will be friends to help you--a mad Yankee, a Puritan doctor, and the last of the Schattenbergs. A strange trinity! Nor must I forget my good councillor Archmedai. He must be very near me to-night. Herr Trafford, I have a flask at my belt; it is difficult for me to undo it with one hand. Kindly assist me. A thousand thanks! I drink to our success to-night, I drink to the devil in the devil's own tipple. Death to Karl! Joy to Trafford and his bride! And to Bernhardt----" he tossed down a full measure of his beloved absinthe--"to Bernhardt I drink"--his speech thickened and his eyes wandered vaguely over the group. He drank again--"To Bernhardt I pledge--the great unknown!"

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

CHAPTER THIRTY

RECRUITS

By the fireplace of the great hall of the Brunvarad, Karl was standing with his two Generals, Meyer and Von Bilderbaum. It was six o'clock, and with the falling of night a thin haze of clouds had swept up from Austria, and a mist of fine snow was descending with silent persistence on hill and roof, rink and run, on the inviolate forts of Meyer's planning, and on the battered remains of the Marienkastel. Within the palace abundant electric light and blazing logs lent cheerfulness to the great stone walls of the chamber, and the huge dark beams that spanned them. On the men's coats were rapidly diminishing tokens of the storm without.

"I have to thank you for your congratulations," Karl was saying as he shook the snow from his cap into the spluttering flame, "and to thank you more especially for the efforts which have rendered those congratulations applicable."

Von Bilderbaum tugged nervously at his huge white moustache.

"I had so little to do, sire," he protested. "If I had headed a ski charge----"

"You would probably not be here to receive my thanks," interrupted Karl with a kindly laugh and a hand laid roughly on the old General's shoulder. "I'm sure Frau von Bilderbaum will agree with me, that Meyer's tactical passivity was superb. Meyer, again I thank you. You have served me well."

"My motives for doing so were so obvious," drawled the Commander-in-Chief. "Had Bernhardt won I should probably have been shot; certainly exposed to danger and hardships. As it is, I shall sleep well to-night in a comfortable room, with the pleasing conviction that your Majesty's gratitude will ultimately take a tangible form."

Karl laughed heartily. His eye was very bright, and the burden of many years seemed taken off his wide shoulders.

"Upon my word," he said, "I sometimes pity my dear cousins of Germany and England, who rule over united and contented kingdoms. I have my anxieties, God knows, but I also have my compensations. Fair weather is a pleasant thing, but it is the storm that distinguishes the friend from the parasite."

The great bell of the Brunvarad clanged, and a minute later Bomcke announced Robert Saunders and his wife.

"We come to offer your Majesty our congratulations," said Saunders.

Karl took the Englishman's hand, and held it in a firm grasp.

"You are a lucky man," he said with a glance at Mrs. Saunders' radiant cheeks. "You possess the silver of friendship and the gold of love. I have only friendship, and therefore I prize the lesser metal at great value. If this day is the turning-point of my fortunes, and I become King again of a whole country, I shall not esteem my happiness complete unless my friend, Robert Saunders, is my right-hand man."

"Your Majesty's fortunes are assured," said Saunders. "The enemy is half-way back to Wallen by now."

"And is being pursued?" asked Karl.

"Von Hügelweiler begged leave to harry them," said Meyer, "and he is harrying them to such purpose that they have shed their guns one by one in their flight. Had it not been for the snow-storm he might have captured a hundred or two prisoners."

"I think," said Karl, "we will not push our victory further. We have won the day, and there has been sufficiency of bloodshed. To-night I am a happy man, and I wish no one ill. Meyer, give orders for Von Hügelweiler to be recalled. He has done his work well, and he shall have his reward."

Meyer withdrew with a shrug to the room where the telephone was installed.

"It is good to see your Majesty happy," said Mrs. Saunders in the silence that followed Meyer's departure. "There has sat a cloud on your brow ever since we have been in Grimland. And to-night for the first time the cloud is gone, and there is sunshine--the old sunshine of 1904--in your face."

"Aye, I am happy," assented Karl with a smile, "happy in my friends."

"Here comes another happy person," said Saunders with an upward glance to the staircase, down which the spacious person of Frau von Bilderbaum was slowly descending.

"Truly spoken," said Karl, for as the ex-maid-of-honour caught sight of her lord and master she quickened her footsteps to a bovine canter, and hurled herself enthusiastically on to the General's breast.

"My brave, brave Heinrich!" she gasped.

"Not at all, at all!" murmured the warrior, disengaging himself gently from the overpowering embrace. "I have done literally nothing. Now, if there had been a ski-charge----"

At this moment Meyer returned from the telephone.

"I have sent to recall Hügelweiler," he said; "but I must say I think the policy of mercy is being over-done. My forbears of Palestine were not half so kind when they got the Amalekites on the run."

"We are not dealing with Amalekites," said Karl, "but with Grimlanders, who happen to be our fellow-countrymen. But come, ladies and gentlemen, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for the storm is over and the sun is already gleaming through the thin edges of the cloud-wrack."

"I am not a weather prophet," said Meyer, "nor did Providence assign to me a sanguine temperament. We have hit the enemy hard, and we have drawn most of his teeth, but until Bernhardt's dead body is discovered stiffening in the snow I have no intention of celebrating a decisive victory."

"Don't do so, then, dear raven," laughed Karl, "but at least take food for your strength's sake. At any rate, I hear that Bernhardt was wounded in the attack on Sanatorium Hill."

"A wounded tiger is not a particularly innocuous beast," returned the Commander-in-Chief, "and there is a certain friend of Herr Saunders who has the unpleasant gift of rising superior to difficulties, and whom I fear is not even wounded."

The meal at the Brunvarad was neither very long nor very festive. Meyer's taciturn refusal to admit premature victory had a distinctly damping effect on the spirits of the company. Noises of revelry and jubilation were audible from the world without, _feux de joie_, rockets, songs of carousal and bursts of cheering broke in on the desultory conversation that flowed fitfully round the royal dining-table. But these sounds of jubilation only brought a deeper frown to the features of Von Bilderbaum, an added sneer to the lips of the Commander-in-Chief; even the King began to lose the exaltation that had so illumined his countenance.

"The Weissheimer is in his element to-night," said Meyer. "He believes himself a hero, and will get most heroically drunk. If Bernhardt's retreat is only a ruse,--as I suspect,--he will return in the small hours and capture a town guarded by fuddled swine."

"Is there no discipline in my army?" asked Karl irritably.

"Very little just at present," was Meyer's cool reply. "Our friends have stood by us at a pinch; it is too much to expect them to keep sober when the danger is apparently over."

Karl rose angrily to his feet.

"And are we to assume," he demanded, "that the garrisons of our redoubts are drunk at their posts?"

"Certainly not," said Meyer; "they are drunk in the streets and taverns of Weissheim."

"Then I am going where my men ought to be," said Karl. "If we can gather a sufficient body of sober men to hold Redoubt A, we can at least foil any attempt of Bernhardt's to rush the town in the dead of night."

"An admirable idea," said Meyer rising with the others, "and one which I was going to suggest myself. I can manage a searchlight, and Von Bilderbaum can train a _mitrailleuse_, and Herr Saunders can order a company of riflemen--if he can find them."

"Come," said Karl, making towards the door, "let us waste no time!"

"Your Majesty," said Mrs. Saunders, speaking with some hesitation, "this morning I asked my husband to let me accompany him to the Marienkastel. He refused, and with reason. But there is no danger in your quest to-night. I am not asking you to let me help guard the redoubts, but to use a woman's influence in obtaining recruits for your garrison."

"Bravely spoken!" said Karl. "Wrap yourself well in furs, dear lady, and come with us. Bilderbaum can swear, and Meyer can sneer, but a beautiful woman can compel by surer means."

"If Frau Saunders goes, I will go too," said the wife of General Bilderbaum. "I will shake these drunken soldiers into a sense of discipline, or I am not the wife of the bravest soldier in your Majesty's army."

The party of six sallied forth into the night. The snow had ceased falling, and the haze of clouds had drifted southwards, leaving the black dome of night clean and clear and jewelled with the steely brilliance of the winter stars. Through the courtyard they strode, over the squeaking snow, past the sentinels in their black and yellow boxes with their charcoal braziers, past the great piers of the entrance with their fantastic caps of overhanging snow, and as they went the sounds of revelry assailed their ears with louder note.

"Dissipation is the better part of valour," was Meyer's sneering comment, as the refrain of riotous song floated on the thin air. "It is so easy to be brave when the red wine is well within range, and the ammunition of the _bier-halle_ is inexhaustible."

In the road were groups of men, soldiers and civilians, with linked arms, reeling gait, and a gift for making the night hideous with tuneless song.

Within fifty yards of the palace a bonfire had been kindled, and round its ruddy flames a wild dance, a veritable _carmagnole_ of drunken triumph, was in progress. Here the royal party stopped to watch, and in a few minutes they were recognised.

"Hail, Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!" cried a big-bearded man in a military overcoat. "Long live our gallant King!"

"Three cheers for Karl!" cried another, a burly form well muffled in a gigantic green ulster. "Death to the revolutionaries!"

Karl saluted gravely.

"Your sentiments are admirable, sirs," he said. "It would be perhaps even nobler if you put them into practice."

"I have been in the firing-line all day," answered the first speaker, "and Bernhardt and his men are two leagues from here by now."

"They may not be so in the small hours of the morning," said Meyer. "If they take it into their heads to return, they will have an easy task to overcome an army of sots."

The dance had ceased for the moment. The majority stood at a little distance from the royal party, ashamed to pursue their orgy, but resentful of its interruption. Two other figures, however, arm in arm,--as if to steady their unruly footsteps,--joined the group. One of them,--a small man with a big blonde moustache,--was clad in the uniform of a private. The other was wrapped in a sheepskin overall and had a woollen helmet pulled down over his ears and chin. The latter raised a guttural voice in husky protest.

"It is hard if we cannot celebrate your Majesty's victory in our own way!" he hiccupped. "A glass or two of wine hurts no man on a cold night like this." He steadied himself against the small soldier.

"Frantz will be all right in half an hour," said the bearded one confidently. "He has had but two or three cups of Kurdesheim, and his head is not over-strong. A few more dances round the bonfire and he will be as sober as any of us."

"Look here, my merry gentlemen," said Meyer. "You seem to me to be only partially drunk, and a brisk walk down to the forts would probably render you tolerably sober. If you will stand by us to-night and help us guard the town till daylight you shall be drunk for a week on end at the King's expense--I swear it on the honour of a Jew."

"That's well spoken," said the bearded man pensively. "I like to get jolly now and again, but I don't want to see those d----d Weidenbruckers stealing a march on us when we're in our cups. I'm for the King, I am, and to the devil with the Schattenbergs!"

"But to-morrow there will be no sport afoot," objected the man in the green ulster, "and to-night there will be grand fun in the 'Drei Kronen' and outside the Meierei."

A murmur of agreement came from the others.

"They say they're going to burn Father Bernhardt in effigy," said the fellow in the woollen helmet, "and that there will be free beer at the 'Drei Kronen.' The beer at the 'Drei Kronen' is good--very good."

It was Mrs. Saunders who spoke next.

"I think these men are quite right," she said coolly. "They have probably seen a little fighting from a distance, and are quite satisfied with that. They evidently prefer the smell of beer to the smell of gunpowder, and would be quite useless if there was serious work to do in the forts."

"What's that?" demanded the bearded man, in a sudden access of indignation. "We afraid! My father was a soldier, and so was my grandfather, and I have served his Majesty twelve years come Michaelmas, and one doesn't serve twelve years in the army of Grimland without learning something about ball cartridges. Afraid! Bah! I'd sooner spend a night in the trenches potting at old Bernhardt and his friends than drink the best brandy in the cellars of the Brunvarad."

"An admirable sentiment," said Meyer, "but one not apparently shared by your comrade in the green ulster."

"Oh, I like fighting well enough," replied the individual in question, "only it is cold work doing sentry-go when there's no enemy within six miles of you."

"For shame!" cried Mrs. Saunders. "Is your idea of military service the mere excitement of fine-weather fighting? Is not _duty_ among your ideals as well as _glory_? We so far mistrust this retreat of Bernhardt's that we are going to Redoubt A to watch against any return of the rebuffed Weidenbruckers. Must we go alone,--four men who are wearied with long hours of anxiety and ceaseless activity, and two women who have never handled a rifle in their existence? Is that your creed of loyalty, your standard of a soldier's honour?"

"Rudolf," said the man in the ulster to the gentleman with the beard, "we must accompany our good sovereign and his friends to the fort. The lady is right. Duty is duty, and the beer of the 'Drei Kronen' can wait. I would have liked a dance outside the Meierei, but----" here he wiped an eye with the sleeve of his ulster--"I am a man of honour--and the beer will keep."

"Forward then!" said Meyer, striking while the iron was hot. "Down the hill to Redoubt A, and gather what recruits we can in the name of duty--and postponed beer."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"A SURPRISE"

Onward they tramped in silence down the road towards the lower town, and as they went the half-moon pushed its gleaming disc through the melting curtain of cloud, and made of the night a frozen picture of fantastic beauty. To their right the snows of the Trau-altar and Eizenzahn streamed in silver floods towards the glistening plain, where, a full thousand feet below, the village of Riefinsdorf proclaimed itself with cheerful points of golden light.

The sounds of revelry grew distant, and the silence of the sleeping hills made itself felt. It was a prospect of unreal beauty, a duo-tone of violet-black and fairy silver, an impression of eerie shadows and unearthly light.

Saunders and his wife walked hand in hand. The day had brought them very close together, and they were well content. Soon a shuffling sound was heard, and a turn of the road disclosed a body of troops on skis ascending the hill from the opposite direction. The King's party halted in the middle of the way, and Meyer accosted the officer at their head.

"Who are you, sir?" he asked.

"Fifteenth Light Infantry," was the reply. "I am Captain Lexa, and we are returning from pursuing the enemy, according to orders."

Meyer cast his eye over the officer's command. There seemed about a hundred and fifty to two hundred riflemen, of whom a good score bore tokens of recent fighting. A few serious cases were covered with rugs, and were being pulled on small sleighs. A further inspection disclosed a number of prisoners in the centre, with hands roped behind their backs.

"You got into touch, I see," Meyer pursued.

"We pressed them closely," answered the Captain, "and at first so eager was their retreat that they abandoned all their guns one after another. Further away they rallied, and though they continued to retreat, they easily held us at bay, and went off at their own pace."

"Do you think they mean coming back?" asked Karl.

"No, sire. When we got orders to return they were six or seven kilometres beyond Riefinsdorf; and though we waited and watched them for at least half an hour, they continued to increase the distance, till they were lost to sight in the gloom and the snow."

"They're not the right stuff, those Weidenbruckers," said Von Bilderbaum. "They can only play a winning game. I don't think we shall see their faces again this winter."

"But what of Von Hügelweiler?" demanded Meyer. "He was in command of the pursuit. Has he been hit by the enemy?"

"No, sir."

"Then why in heaven's name does he not return with you?" persisted the Commander-in-Chief. "Has he been loyal for long enough to one side? Or does he, like Cato, prefer to espouse the losing side?"

Captain Lexa hesitated.

"I think he was mad," he said at length. "When your _aide_ brought the order of recall, Captain Hügelweiler swore that he had been sent to pursue and would continue to pursue as long as his legs carried his body, and his arms a rifle. The _aide_ backed his orders with the King's name, but Hügelweiler harangued his men and bade all such as loved the good game of war follow him to the bitter end. An impossible position was created, and the _aide-de-camp_ ordered Von Hügelweiler's arrest. Before, however, the order could be put into execution, the mutinous captain was ski-ing down a steep snow slope in the direction of the enemy."

"You should have fired on him," said Bilderbaum.

"I gave the order, sir, but the men hesitated. Some of them had served with him earlier in the day, when he had displayed the most reckless courage. Besides, his refusal to halt, seeming rather an excess of gallantry than an act of mutiny, touched their imagination, and the few shots that rang out left him unscathed. Then the _aide-de-camp_, losing his patience, snatched a rifle from one of my units, knelt down in the snow, and brought down the Captain with a well-directed shot."

"And was he killed?" asked Saunders not unfeelingly.

"I think so. If not, he is dead by now, for he was badly hit, and the frost does not spare a man when he is bleeding from an open wound."

"Captain Lexa," said Karl, "you seem a capable and zealous officer, but your task is not over yet. It may be,--as you and General von Bilderbaum think,--that the Weidenbruckers have had enough hammering for a season, and have no intention of returning. But Meyer thinks otherwise, nor am I one to leave matters to chance. Bernhardt is a madman who is not subject to the ordinary influences of disaster. His lieutenant, Trafford, is a man of exceptional ability and resource. They are not likely, in my opinion, to acquiesce in a discredited return to the capital."

"They cannot be back at Weissheim for some hours yet, sire," said the Captain.

"I know. But our men are debauched with victory. They are out of hand. They have done their day's work, and they want to enjoy the price of their labours. You, Captain, seem a sober, honest soldier with a firm hold over your command. Can I trust you,--when you have rested your men and seen to their rations,--to return in an hour's time to Redoubt A to watch with us against a surprise attack from our enemies?"

"You may trust me to the death, sire," said the young officer with emotion, "and for every man of my command whom I fail to bring to the redoubt I will forfeit a year's promotion."

"Well spoken, Captain Lexa," said Karl with a smile. "While there are men like you in my army I can never despair of my fortunes."

The King and his little party stood at the edge of the road while the regiment resumed its upward progress. Lithe, sunburned men, untired by the long day's work, they glided swiftly by, one and all saluting as they passed the royal presence, and ultimately breaking into a shrill cheer as they vanished up the zig-zagging road.

"Thank God for brave men!" said Karl simply, when they had gone.

"We shall not need our friends here after all," said Saunders, referring to the quartet they had enticed from the festive bonfire.

"Aye," said the man with the beard. "You may want us yet. They are gallant fellows, those soldier lads, but they will be tempted up yonder, and the true Grimlander ever meets temptation half way."

"They will not fail me," said Karl, whose optimism seemed to have returned in full force. "My fortunes have turned, and I have no fears of their staunchness."

"Still it would be prudent to take these gentlemen with us," said Meyer. "Lexa and his men may be late, and there will be plenty for them to do."

"Oh, we are coming," pursued the bearded man. "I, too, believe Bernhardt means returning, and I would give ten years of my life to put a bullet through his wicked skull. As for the Princess Gloria, I would not spare that wanton little----"

"Hush, man!" interrupted Karl. "The Princess is a relative of mine."

"Aye, and one to be proud of!" went on the man defiantly. "They say that she and the American Trafford----"

"Never mind what they say," said Karl sternly. "The Princess is a wild, irresponsible girl, but she is as free from grossness as the snows of the Eizenzahn."

"They say----"

"Silence!" thundered Karl passionately, raising an arm as if to strike the speaker across the mouth. "I have known her since she was a tiny child, and though she has rebel blood in her veins, she is as clean and wholesome as a Weissheim night."

"Your Majesty is generous," said Von Bilderbaum.

"Maybe," assented Karl, "but I think we all share the same fault where the Princess Irresponsible is concerned. I, who have seen her grow from a beautiful child into a lovely woman, have still a soft corner in my heart for her; even when her schemings were most alarmingly successful I could never summon hate to my aid in my battle against her. And to-night, when fortune smiles upon me, I could wish to take her small hand in mine and read her a lesson on the iniquity of trying to dethrone one's first cousin once removed."

"Your Majesty is sentimental," said Meyer.

"It is natural to be so on such a night as this," was the King's reply. "This still, deep cold should freeze the cynicism even out of your nature. If the Princess fights she must be fought, and she must accept the fortune of war. But when this half-tipsy ruffian casts aspersions on her purity----"

"Hear, hear!" broke in the man in the green ulster. "Shoot the Princess if necessary, but spare her good name. I, in my humble way, am a great admirer of the pretty little Gloria. She has an eye that laughs, and as sweet a pair of lips as a poor carpenter like me may dare clap eyes upon. The devil I want to harry is the American Trafford, who mixes up with matters that don't concern him, and brings fire and sword into a poor country that has plenty of troubles already. We've vermin of our own, goodness knows, but this foreign weasel----"

But Karl was in a mood to hear ill of no man. He was convinced,--as he said,--that his fortunes had turned. His natural generosity was in the ascendant, and the magic of the glorious night had won him to a temper of broad benevolence.

"Oh, Trafford," he laughed, "Providence watches over men like that. They take risks and thrive on them. The bullet is not moulded that will pierce his tough American skin; and I rejoice to think it is so, for he is a most fascinating free lance. He saved me from death in the courtyard of the Neptunburg, and I have not forgotten the debt. Given a state of peace, and I would have him as my guest in the Brunvarad to discuss old battles over my best Tokay."

They had reached the place where the bob-sleigh track crossed the highway,--a point of the run much dreaded by the steersmen of racing crews.

"If we follow the path that borders the run," said the bearded man, "we shall save a quarter of a mile at least."

"That's true," said Meyer, "but the ladies must be careful where they plant their feet. If they step off the beaten track they will be up to their waists in soft snow."

"There is a moon," said the man in the ulster curtly, climbing over the snow bank and leading the way along the firm but narrow track. The others followed in single file, and for a time nothing was heard but the crunching of snow beneath their feet. For a space their progress lay among pine-trees, through whose black trunks and freshly-silvered branches the moonlight streamed in rays of elfish light. With its mysterious shadows and sharp silences the wood seemed a vast natural treasure house, wherein the frost jewels gleamed with rich profusion and the strange radiance of an enchanted dreamland. To walk with open eyes in such scenes was to lose touch with reality, to forget the sway and swirl of things material, the harsh absurdities of Grimland's civic strife. No wonder a silence fell on the pacing line.

The awakening was rude. As they emerged from the many pillared sanctuary of the forest there was a loud cry of "Now!" Someone, a man in a woollen helmet, threw a cloak around Karl's head and shoulders; someone, a man with a thick beard, struck Saunders heavily in the face, so that he fell back from the firm path into the yielding depth of the untrodden snow. At the same moment Von Bilderbaum, hastening to the King's rescue, was tripped up by the man in the green ulster, and measured his length violently on the hard path. Meyer, quick as thought, whipped out a revolver and fired point blank between the shoulders of Bilderbaum's assailant. Frau von Bilderbaum screamed, and in her emotion stepped off the firm path and disappeared backwards into a sea of incohesive crystals. Before Meyer had time to fire again a man was at his throat, a man with a beard hanging grotesquely from one ear, a man with mad passion in his eye and a nameless oath on his lips.

"Bernhardt!" gasped Meyer, fighting with the frenzy of a terror-stricken man. His assailant was his superior in weight and vigour, but fortunately for the Commander-in-Chief had but the use of one arm. Nevertheless, the arm that fought him was a limb of steel, the fingers of the sound member as relentless as the tentacles of a devil fish. The Jew sweated and struggled like a man in a nightmare. For a moment, choked and breathless, he was overborne; then relief came. Bilderbaum had regained his feet; the old soldier's sword was drawn from its scabbard, and the ex-priest hissed his last shuddering blasphemy into the night air.

"Robert, Robert, are you hurt?" asked Mrs. Saunders, in dire distress, of her struggling spouse, who was making heroic efforts to wade through the waist-deep snow to the _terra firma_ of the trodden path.

"Karl--quick!" urged the breathless Englishman, at length making his voice heard now that the struggle was terminated.

They looked where Karl had been--and there was no one. The man in the woollen helmet, too, had disappeared, and the short individual in the private's uniform was likewise nowhere to be seen.

"A bob-sleigh,"--explained Saunders, still short of breath, regaining with assistance the coveted foothold of the path,--"they pushed him on to a bob-sleigh which was anchored to the bough of a fir-tree. The little soldier man took the helm, and the other sat guarding the King with a revolver in one hand and the brake-lever in the other."

"After them!" cried old Bilderbaum excitedly, letting go his wife's hand so that she relapsed again into the treacherous quagmire of mocking powder. "After them!"

"After them!" repeated Meyer scornfully, rubbing his bruised throat. "We might do an heroic eight miles an hour down this slippery path. _They_ will be going forty, at least. We might as well chase the moonbeams!"

"What are we to do?" asked Saunders desperately.

"That is a question that fools always ask themselves when their folly finds them out," returned Meyer bitterly. "Unfortunately there is no answer to it."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE CONQUERING KING

"Brake!" called a high feminine voice, issuing strangely from the moustached lips of the soldier who steered the abducting bob-sleigh.

The gentleman in the woollen helmet applied the brake, and a sharp turn in the run was negotiated in safety.

"How is Karl?" asked the Princess Gloria, for it was she who was manipulating the wheel at the "bob's" prow.

"Coming to, I think!" Trafford shouted back; "this cold air would restore a corpse."

They were in the straight now, and the pace was terrific. Downward they tore through realms of icy air, while the night wind pushed at their throats, brought floods of moisture to their eyes, and roared a wild melody in their deafened ears. It was an exhilarating experience, and even without the added excitement of their desperate deed would have set the blood racing in their veins. But with the excitement was mingled a very definite sense of shame, in Trafford's case at any rate. Their action had been justified by success, and morally, perhaps, by its absolute necessity in their desperate plight, but it painfully resembled an act of treachery.

"What became of Father Bernhardt and Doctor Matti?" asked Gloria presently.

Trafford leaned forward and answered at the top of his voice:

"They must have been killed! Our weight started the 'bob' before I intended, and we were a hundred yards down the track before I could get my hand to the brake. It was impossible to go back."

"Will they catch us, do you think?"

"Impossible! We are travelling at the rate of an express train. Another twenty minutes of this, and we shall reach the point where Colonel Schale's flying detachment has arranged to wait for us."

For a while they travelled without further speech, save when an imperious "Brake!" from the Princess indicated that the pace must be checked in order for a corner to be rounded without mishap.

Under the stone viaduct of the railway they flew, winding in and out of pine woods, sometimes catching a glimpse of the golden lights of Riefinsdorf, and sometimes of the moonlit ivory of the mighty Klauigberg.

"You are sure that Father Bernhardt and Dr. Matti must have been killed?" asked Gloria at length.

"Without reasonable doubt. They have gone to their long homes, which, according to all theory, should be widely separated. That's as may be. The man I'm sorry for is poor Karl, who was feeling really happy till I clapped the drugged antimacassar over his head."

Trafford waited to hear his sentiments echoed, but Gloria said nothing. Her silence pained him; under the circumstances it seemed ungenerous.

Then occurred something which cannot be verbally described,--so far as the sensations of the three human beings were concerned; for, to be suddenly checked in a lightning descent and hurled incontinently into deep snow, produces a complexity of emotions incapable of being recorded through the medium of ink. What happened to the bob-sleigh is a matter of more precise fact. The front part struck violently against some hard object, the steering runners were wrenched round at right angles to the body of the sleigh, the whole thing skidded viciously on the ice, and finally buried its nose in the flanking wall of snow.

"Are you hurt, Gloria?" called out Trafford from his couch of crystals, as soon as he had sufficient breath to frame the question.

There was no answer. Within a few yards of him Karl was sitting up with an expression of dazed bewilderment that was almost comic to behold. Trafford rose and made his way with infinite difficulty to the run. Discovering his revolver lying by the side of the track, he picked it up and examined it. It was uninjured and the cartridges still undetonated.

"Gloria!" he called.

"Yes--I'm all right," came a voice somewhere from the neighbourhood of Karl. "I'm only a bit shaken. I couldn't answer before. I hadn't--any--breath."

"No bones broken?" he persisted.

"None whatever. What happened?"

Trafford was peering thoughtfully at the track.

"Curling-stones," he answered laconically. "When we enfiladed Saunders' trench we sent Major Flannel's stones on a long journey--but not long enough, it appears. There has been a small avalanche of snow across the track, due, I presume, to the vibration of the guns. This held the stones up in the middle of the fair-way. We might have ploughed through the snow, but the granite smashed us."

"What's to be done?" asked the Princess after a pause.

Trafford stepped over the snow-bank and examined the "bob." The runners were twisted and half wrenched from the wooden framework. The steering-wheel was jammed, and refused to respond to the most strenuous efforts; the brake-lever was snapped off short.

"The midnight express doesn't run any further," he said.

"What on earth are we to do?"

He answered her question with another.

"How's Karl?"

The outraged monarch replied in person.

"I am tolerably well, thank you," he said. "I have been conscious for some time, and have listened with some amusement to your commiserations of my lot. The little catastrophe which has just occurred has dispelled the last lingering fumes of the chloroform with which you rendered me _hors de combat_."

Trafford said nothing, but knitted his brows in perplexed thought.

"We are face to face with a very serious problem," he said after a full minute's meditation. "Gloria, are you sufficiently recovered to join me on the path here, or shall I come and help you out of the soft snow?"

"I will come to you," she answered, suiting the action to the word, and ploughing her deep way to his side. The blonde moustache had parted company with her fair lips, and her fallen shako had released a charming disorder of dark tresses. In her great overcoat, her nether extremities concealed in the snow, she looked once more what she really was,--a young girl of singularly fascinating aspect.

"We can't stay here all night," she said, when she had won her way to the path, "and we cannot well reach the spot where Colonel Schale is awaiting us."

Trafford shook his head.

"Assuming we could walk so far," he said, "and assuming our friend over there would consent to accompany us, we should be overtaken by the pursuit party they are bound to send after us."

"It's all hopeless," she said wearily.

"You have lost confidence in my ability to help you out of difficulties?" he asked.

"You are resourceful--indomitable almost," she conceded, "but you cannot fight Fate."

"I am not trying to."

"But I am. Had it not been for this wretched mishap everything would have been splendid; we should have returned to Weidenbruck with Karl our prisoner. I should have been firmly established on my throne, and you----" she broke off suddenly and added a little sadly: "As it is, we are checkmated within sight of victory."

"You do not blame me for your disappointment? You concede that I did my best?"

His question was dispassionate. She answered it with generous words, but without enthusiasm.

"You did more than any other man could have done. Indeed, I am not complaining of you; I am complaining of Fate."

"Personally, I have a pathetic and unconquerable confidence in Fate," he retorted.

"You--yes. But what is my position? Bernhardt is dead, Matti is dead, Karl is our prisoner only so long as he consents to be. You and I are alone,--alone in the dead of night, in a land of snow and frost. We must find shelter, or perish. We must creep down to Riefinsdorf for a night's lodging, for the road to Wallen is long and will be traversed, for a certainty, by our pursuers. Do you not see now why I complain of Fate? Lying slander has coupled our names none too pleasantly before; what will it say when it has visual facts instead of idle gossip to build upon?"

"Slander will say a good deal," he replied, "but if we wish to give it the lie, the register of the Chapel Royal can always retort with an unanswerable argument."

Gloria said nothing. Moonlight, which is infinitely more beautifying than sunlight, had put a strange fire into her eyes, and turned her flesh to clearest ivory. Trafford, had he been a heathen, would have bowed down and worshipped, so goddess-like was her still pose, so unearthly the cold, soft shadows that gave roundness to her cheeks. As it was, he held his breath and clenched his hands in a spasm of passionate appreciation. Was ever anything so fair under the stars, he asked himself?--did ever such mystic fire burn in human eyes, or frosty breath issue from such perfectly-shaped lips?

In another instant, however, Trafford unclasped his hands, and his fingers trembled, for a great wrath had suddenly mastered him and was shaking his frame as a winter tempest shakes the dead bough of a blasted tree. Gloria,--his Gloria,--who might have loved, who might have fulfilled the mission of her splendid womanhood, had fought down the promptings of her heart and given herself to ambition and the deadening lust of place and power. He felt an almost overpowering desire to seize her roughly in his arms, to break her in his grasp, to crush the supple limbs in an act of ferocious but just retribution. Fortunately his brain steadied itself in time, the mad impulse was checked, and,--as was the way with him,--the paroxysm gave place to a singularly clear and controlled condition of mind.

"Your Majesty," he called out to Karl, who was still maintaining a recumbent position in the snow, "are you sufficiently recovered from your various mishaps to join us here on the path and discuss the situation?"

For answer Karl struggled to his feet and made towards them. He appeared very pale in the moonlight, but there was the same look in his eyes as when he had faced the rebel throng in the courtyard of the Neptunburg.

"You perceive our difficulties, of course," Trafford began. "A week ago we set out from Weidenbruck to accomplish a certain object: that object was, in plain language, to wipe you off the earth, or bring you back bound to the capital. We employed open force, and failed. We employed the gentle arts of abduction, and succeeded--up to a point."

Karl nodded. "I follow you," he said curtly.

"Our motives were frankly selfish," Trafford went on. "The favour of the good Weidenbruckers had to be retained, and it was necessary to do something notable to obtain permanent possession of their good graces." He paused a moment, toyed with his revolver, and looked fixedly at Gloria and then back again at Karl. Then he went on deliberately: "If we return without having killed or captured one, Karl, styling himself King of Grimland, we shall be returning to a nest of hornets. You see my point?"

Karl eyed the revolver thoughtfully.

"Yes, I see your point," he said; "I saw it long before you put it before me. Having failed to abduct me, only one course is open to you. Here I am, unarmed, alone, scarcely recovered from an anæsthetic, shaken by a fall. The moon gives ample light, and your revolver is loaded."

"Precisely," said Trafford. "My course is so obvious! A pressure of the first finger, a puff of smoke, and a brave man groaning in the snow! There are but two objections: firstly, I am not a butcher; secondly, you took it upon you a little while ago to defend the honour of my wife!"

"Your wife?"

"Yes. The lady who is now more or less disguised as a private of the line, did me the honour of bestowing on me her hand in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg. When Bernhardt,--playing his part,--hinted at her shame, your kingly spirit refused to hear ill even of your enemy. For that,--if for no other reason,--I am steering clear of regicide."

Karl passed his hand across his brow, as if the news was too much for his dazed senses.

"You and Gloria von Schattenberg are man and wife?" he gasped.

"On paper," Trafford affirmed, "on paper only. In reality we are nothing to each other, and as events are turning out, never will be anything to each other. But I am a proud man, proud of the secret bond between us, though our vows were meaningless and of no value; and because you took it upon you to defend the honour of my 'paper' spouse, I give you your life and wish you God-speed."

Karl's features twitched in the moonlight, and his breath seemed to come with difficulty.

"You are a generous foeman," he said at length.

"Not more so than yourself," Trafford retorted. "When I,--also playing my part,--swore death to 'the cursed American Trafford,' you vowed you would like me for a guest, with whom to fight old battles over old Tokay. I am fond of Tokay," Trafford went on, "and I am fond of reminiscences; also I know a man when I see one. Karl, King of Grimland, will you give me your hand?"

Karl stretched out his hand and gripped the other's. He seemed searching for words, but no words came.

Trafford read many things in the labouring chest and the dimmed eye, and his heart kindled.

"You call me generous," he went on, "but I am generous with another's property. Grimland is yours or Gloria's; mine it never was. Fate has somehow set me as umpire in a great quarrel; and being holder of the scales I must perforce be impartial. Supposing I trample conscience under foot and do a nameless deed under the moon: suppose we return to Weidenbruck triumphant as Queen and consort, what then? Bernhardt, who understood the temper of the Grimland _canaille_, who ruled them as a rough huntsman rules a pack of hounds--Bernhardt the apostate, the _absintheur_, the distorted genius whose counsels could alone have kept us in power--is no more. Matti is dead--Matti who, as city prefect, did more with his reforming zeal to make the name of Schattenberg stink in the nostrils of the citizens than any enemy could have done. Weidenbruck is yours for the asking! The nobility were never against you; the people were ours only in their meaner moments. You left the capital as a fugitive; you will return as conquerer, and the people will cry, as I cry now: 'Long live Karl the Twenty-second, of Grimland!'"

Still Karl maintained his frozen silence; not a muscle of his face moved. Only, there was a gleam in his eyes that seemed to look beyond the stark pine trunks and the barren fields of snow; that seemed to project his vision over forty leagues of hill and plain to the turbulent city on the Niederkessel, where a shouting throng acclaimed him as their King. For a moment his whole face lit up with a wonderful glow, and then his emotion seemed to master him. He was a strong man, but he had been through much, physically and mentally, and the last sudden vicissitude of his fortunes won a sharp reaction. His heart beat in great thuds, and the stiff vertical trunks of the forest pines bent and swayed before his eyes. He leaned against a big tree and covered his face with his hands.

Trafford turned and faced Gloria. He expected reproaches, anger, tears of despair. He had given away her kingdom to her enemy. The strong plant of her ambition he had cut at the very tap-root. He who, by hardening his heart, might have made her a queen, had preferred by an act of mercy to make her a fugitive! He steeled himself against the expected hurricane of bitterness. He looked, and as he looked he rubbed his eyes in amazement. The face of Gloria von Schattenberg was the face he had seen in delirium at the old house at Wallen,--the face of a woman with a loving heart and a soul of flame. The eyes that met his were bright with a splendid joy, overflowing with a great tenderness.

"Gloria!"

She advanced towards him with outstretched arms, a smile on her lips.

He seized her and drew her to him.

"Have I done right?" he whispered.

"Beloved, a thousand times, yes!" she replied. "To-night I see things truly, and I shall never see them otherwise. You have conquered me, hypnotised me, as you nearly did at Wallen; and now there is no Bernhardt to wake me from my sweet dream. The glory of a man is his strength and his courage, but the heart of a man is his tenderness and his mercy, and it is these that have prevailed with me."

"Herr Trafford!" came a voice from the big pine-tree.

"Your Majesty."

"I am going to make my way back to Weissheim. May I ask what you propose doing?"

Trafford hesitated.

"About that I must consult the Princess," he said at length.

"I am going where my husband goes," said Gloria, "and I am doing what my husband decides to do."

"Then we will make for Riefinsdorf," said Trafford. "To-morrow, early, we will get a smith to mend our shattered 'bob,' and before the sun has climbed above the shoulder of the Klauigberg we will be scudding down the King's highway, 'Youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.'"

"Towards Wallen?" asked Karl.

"Towards Austria," corrected Trafford. "The road forks at Winterthurm, and we take the southern branch. The Rylvio Pass is steep, and six hours' coasting should bring us to the frontier."

"Needless to say, you need fear no pursuit," said Karl, "but when will you return? You have to be my guest at the Brunvarad and drink my wine. That is part of the bargain."

Trafford smiled.

"It may come to that, some day," he said. "Things move quickly in Grimland. But the time is not yet." He paused, and then went on: "Your Majesty has had an eventful winter. You have lost a throne and regained it, I believe, more firmly than before. That is, in allegory, the case with me"--he took the Princess's hand in his--"and I am well content."

Karl gazed at the happy pair. Slowly a wonderful smile spread itself over his face, and his eyes shone through a veil of moisture. He seized Trafford's hand and gripped it almost violently.

"Good-bye, brave and generous enemy!" he said; "Good-bye, friend that is to be, that must be, that shall be!" He turned to the Princess, took her in his big arms, and kissed her on both cheeks. "Good-bye, little cousin!" he said. "You are wise and happy in your choice. You have abjured a troubled throne for a kingdom of peace and heart's ease. You are my kinswoman in more than blood,--for you have given yourself to the man whom I am proud to call friend."

He turned and walked up the path as one in a dream. For a moment he staggered in his gait; but he stooped down and rubbed some snow on his forehead, and went on steadily up the hill towards Weissheim.

Gloria and Trafford stood watching him till he disappeared from view.

A little sob broke from the Princess. Then she put her hand in Trafford's, and together they set out towards Riefinsdorf.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE LOST SHEEP

In the small hours of the morning, a party of half a dozen men on skis issued from the courtyard of the Brunvarad. They were weary-looking folk, dull-eyed and taciturn, and without a word they set themselves in motion along the road to Riefinsdorf. The remains of a huge bonfire glowed dully by the roadside, and a pillar of black smoke streamed straight up into the windless air. Where the snow had thawed in a circle round the once festive blaze it had frozen again into lumps of discoloured ice. Dark, recumbent forms showed here and there in the snow, heavy breathing wretches who had gone to sleep, warmed with abundant wine and the glowing flames, but who would wake in the morn to the misery of frost-bite and its attendant horrors. But the little group of ski-ers had no thought for such as these, and they passed them by with scarce a glance. Onward they went without a word, till Meyer tripped up over a sleeping form in the roadway, and broke the silence with a bitter curse, as he dragged himself to his feet.

"Why don't you go home, Meyer?" suggested Saunders, "you are fagged out, and we may have to sprint later on."

"If Bilderbaum can go on, I can go on," said the Commander-in-Chief irritably. "He is ten years older than I am."

"Five," corrected the General snappishly.

"The pursuit is farcical," said Meyer. "It would have been useless if we had undertaken it at once. At this hour it is a piece of ludicrous folly."

"You need not come," snapped Saunders, who, like the others, seemed to be in the worst of humours.

"Thanks," retorted Meyer. "We must play the game to its weary end. We have shown ourselves fools, and the least part of our penalty is a sleepless night after a restless day."

"We may overtake them yet," said Captain Lexa, who, with two of his riflemen, made up the little party.

"Impossibilities seem possibilities only to geniuses and fools," said Meyer rudely. "It is hardly necessary to state to which category we belong."

"While there is life there is hope," maintained Lexa stubbornly.

Meyer made an exclamation of contempt.

"Supposing the miracle is realised," he said, "and the slower catches the swifter, even then they will certainly outwit us again. In the proverb the tortoise caught the hare--but then the tortoise had brains."

Meyer's sarcasm had anything but a cheering effect on the dismal spirits of the company.

"To think of our never recognising them!" said Saunders bitterly. "To think of Trafford fooling us----"

"Oh, Trafford has imagination and initiative, in strong contradistinction to ourselves!" interrupted Meyer. "He has fooled us before and he would fool us again twenty times if twenty opportunities were offered him. We are not very clever people, my dear Saunders."

"If we are ever to catch them," said Lexa, "it must be by taking every short cut that offers itself. The road to Wallen winds round in and out of the mountains, and our only chance of overtaking the fugitives is to go straight up hill and down dale, no matter how steep and difficult the track."

Meyer groaned. His legs were aching intolerably, and the thought of breasting a steep ascent on skis almost overwhelmed his flagging spirit. No one, however, answered his groan with another suggestion that he should go back. The Jew had expressed his determination to go on to the bitter end, and nothing but complete physical collapse would stop him. They glissaded swiftly and almost recklessly down the hillside, and the rush of keen air somewhat quickened their flagging energies.

"Bend to the left!" called out Saunders, himself executing a fine "Christiania swing," and thereby just saving himself from charging the snow-wall that banked the bob-sleigh run. The others swung round at his call, and for a time proceeded parallel to the track at a reduced speed.

"Man ahead!" called out Saunders presently; and true enough a dark object was advancing slowly towards them up the path bordering the run. The two soldiers cuddled their rifles suggestively, and the others proceeded at an even pace towards the strange walker of the night.

"A wounded soldier finding his way back," suggested Lexa.

"He may be able to give us information," said Von Bilderbaum.

"Or he may be going to shoot us," said Meyer, prepared as usual for the worst. "Hands up, man," he called nervously, "or we fire!"

The man slowly raised his hands above his head, and continued to plod wearily up the path towards them. In the vague moonlight the newcomer seemed of gigantic stature, and his soundless footsteps suggested a being from another world. On he came with upraised arms and bent head, and then suddenly he lifted his face so that the rays of the sinking moon fell full upon it.

Lexa uttered a cry, but the others stood still in frozen silence, believing they dreamed. Then old Bilderbaum called out hoarsely to the soldiers, "Present arms!" and himself stood stiffly at the salute.

"Must I continue to hold my hands in the air?" asked Karl. "I am very tired."

"Your Majesty!" gasped Saunders.

"Good-evening, gentlemen," said the King, at length lowering his arms. "This is an unexpected pleasure. You are indefatigable."

"Pardon me," said Meyer yawning; "we are exceedingly tired. But as I have been constantly reminding my comrades,--almost to the point of boredom,--we are a pack of fools and must pay for our folly by the inconvenience of a night in the snow."

"If you are fools," said Karl, "I am the king of fools. But at least there is something noble in your folly, if it leads you from warmth and shelter to a hopeless search over a snow-bound countryside."

"But you have escaped, sire?" said Bilderbaum.

"Yes and no," replied Karl. "When the grand coup occurred on the bob-sleigh run I was partially stupefied by the fumes of chloroform. I quickly recovered, however, from its effects, and was even beginning to appreciate the fascinations of a moonlight abduction when an accident occurred to the sleigh."

"You were hurt?" inquired Saunders anxiously.

"No; I fell on my head--which is vastly harder than the snow."

"What happened, sire?" asked Lexa.

And then the King went on to tell that when Trafford enfiladed Saunders' trench with curling-stones he had won the first trick in the game and unwittingly lost the last. That the stones went gaily down the bob-sleigh run en route for Riefinsdorf, and might have gone Heaven knows where had not a subsidence of snow, caused doubtless by the reverberation of the guns, blocked the track. "The snow held the stones up," he concluded, "and the Providence, which manages the unstable affairs of kings and tobogganers, arranged that our runners should strike a large pink stone with a blue ribbon on it."

"Splendid!" cried Bilderbaum enthusiastically. "The 'bob' was wrecked, and the Princess and Trafford being stunned or disabled, you escaped from their clutches."

"Your imagination does you infinite credit, General," said Karl dryly, "but it outruns fact. No one was stunned or disabled; of the three, I was distinctly the most shaken."

"But how----"

"The situation was simple," said Karl. "The 'bob,' as you surmise, was wrecked. My abduction, therefore, was rendered abortive. There were only two courses open to my enemies--to kill me and make their way on foot to Wallen, where their friends were awaiting them, or to set me free and themselves fly the country. Those of you who know Trafford and his charming wife----"

"Wife!" interrupted Saunders.

"Yes," affirmed Karl; "the Princess Gloria was secretly married some days ago to your friend Trafford in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg. They are a healthy-minded couple, and they refused to entertain seriously the idea of murder."

"They set you free!" ejaculated Saunders. "Well done, Nervy Trafford! I am not so ashamed of my friend after all."

"He is a splendid fellow," said Karl, "and incidentally, my cousin by marriage. I assure you I for my part am not ashamed of the relationship."

"But where are they now?" asked Meyer.

"They are--where they are. They are free to leave the country without let or hindrance. When things are quieted down and I am firmly in the saddle again, they can come back in their true capacity--as my friends."

"We shall not have to wait long, sire," said Meyer with an unwonted note of jubilation in his voice. "Even before yesterday's battle the tide was running strongly for you at the capital. Henceforth Weidenbruck and the whole country will be loyal. Long live Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!"

"Long live Karl!" echoed Saunders, Von Bilderbaum, and Lexa. "Long live Karl!" reiterated the riflemen, raising their shakos aloft on their musket barrels.

Karl stood still, with eyes that swam. He began to speak, but ended with a shake of his head, as if something had choked him.

"To-morrow, dear friends," he muttered very low. "To-morrow. To-night I am tired, very tired and very happy. Long live George Trafford and his beautiful bride!" he said in stronger tones. "God bless them! God bless our poor country! God help me to rule"--but his voice had sunk again to a whisper and as he spoke he reeled against Saunders.

The latter held the massive but limp frame from falling, while someone produced brandy from a flask and poured a generous measure down the King's throat. Then the soldiers made a seat of their crossed weapons, and shoulder-high and supported by willing arms, Karl of Grimland was borne, half-fainting with exposure and fatigue, but serene of mind, to the winter palace of his beloved Weissheim.

EPILOGUE

Down the great, white highway of the Rylvio Pass a bob-sleigh was speeding in the early hours of a perfect morning. The incense of dawn was in the air, and the magic of stupendous scenery uplifted the souls of the two travellers. Fantastic peaks of incomparable beauty rose up in majesty to meet the amazing turquoise of the heavens. Sparkling cascades of dazzling whiteness hung in streams of frozen foam from dun cliffs and larch-crowned boulders. The roadway down which the sleigh was coursing with unchecked speed wound like a silver ribbon at the edge of precipices, sometimes tunnelling through an arch of brown rock, only to give again, after a moment's gloom, a fresh expanse of argent domes and shimmering declivities. Perched high on perilous crags were ancient castles of grim battlements and enduring masonry, stubborn homes of a stubborn nobility that had levied toll in olden times on all such as passed their inhospitable walls. Below, in the still shadowed valley, were villages of tiny houses, the toy campanili of Lilliputian churches, and a grey-green river rushing over a stony bed to merge itself in the ampler flood of the Danube.

"Oh, could anything be more perfect?" asked Gloria, who, as on the previous night, was doing duty at the wheel. There was a flush on her cheeks that was a tribute to the keen mountain air, and a sparkle in her dark eyes that told of welling happiness and a splendid conscious joy. Radiant as the morn, fragrant as the pine-laden air, she seemed the embodiment of a hundred vitalities crowded into one blithe being.

"We are on our honeymoon," returned Trafford, "and it would be a cold, dank day that could depress my soaring spirits. As it is, the impossible beauty of our surroundings is so intoxicating my bewildered brain that I am neglecting my duties as brakesman in a most alarming manner. We shall be over a precipice in a minute, if I don't master my exaltation of spirits."

"Perfect love casteth out fear," laughed Gloria.

"Is it perfect?" he asked.

"Absolutely--now, dear," she replied. "From the first you captured my fancy; that was why I did not lie to you in Herr Krantz's wine-shop. Then, when I thought you had killed Karl in the Iron Maiden, my heart grew sick and cold, for I believed you were, as the others, without ruth or mercy. The news that you had saved his life while pretending to take it, put new fire into my soul; but there was ever a war in my breast between true tenderness and the lust of power. I had inherited ambition from a long line of callous ancestors; my whole life had been a tale of scheming, deadening opportunism. And Bernhardt, as we know, with his great domineering personality, was as death to sentiment. And then, last night, well, you took the bit between your teeth and let yourself go. You over-rode my will, you set at nought my interests: you were master, and I handmaid, and my whole soul went out to you in admiration of your strength, and love of the way you used it."

Trafford drank in the words as he drank in the clear, sweet air of the mountain-side, and happiness--the heroic happiness that befel poets and warriors in the days of the world's youth, when men were demi-gods and gods were demi-mortals--took him with golden wings and exalted him, so that the soaring mountain and the wheeling bird and the forest and the crag and the river were as his brothers and sisters, fellow members of the worshipful company of rejoicing creation.

Onward and downward they flew, while the beams of the rising sun climbed down the valley walls, ledge by ledge and rock by rock, turning brown cliffs to gold, and snowy slopes to diamond and silver. Already they were far below the supreme height of the Weissheim plateau, and the air, dry though it was in reality, seemed almost damp in comparison after the moistureless atmosphere of the lofty tableland they had quitted. The snow held everywhere, but it was the thin covering of an English hill-side in January, not the sumptuous and universal mantle of frost-bound Weissheim. The larch and fir of the uplands were giving gradual place to the stunted oak and the starved chestnut. A thin hedge maintained a scrubby, struggling line at the edge of the roadside, and on the southern slopes the fields were furrowed in endless terraces for the vine.

"We shall reach the frontier in an hour," said Trafford.

"And then?"

"Then we must quit our faithful 'bob.' The road ceases to run downhill at Morgenthal, and a bob-sleigh will not defy the laws of gravity even for the happiest couple in Christendom."

"Then what are our plans?" asked Gloria.

"Plans!" he echoed; "we have no plans. The poor, the unhappy, and the hungry have plans, for they must scheme to improve their condition. But you and I are rich in every gift, and life will be one delicious and unending bob-sleigh ride through gorgeous scenery and vitalising air."

The Princes sighed luxuriously. Then, after a pause--

"We must reach the valley some day," she said.

"Some day, yes," he acquiesced. "Some day the ride will be done, and the road end in the great shadows which no human eye can pierce. But that day will find us hand in hand, with no fear in our hearts, and ready for a longer, stranger, and even more beautiful journey."

As he spoke the valley widened out, and the hills on either side receded at a broad angle. The roofs of Morgenthal were plain to their gaze, and the tinkling of goats' bells broke the silence.

"Austria!" cried Gloria.

"Austria, Vienna, Paris, London," he said, "Southampton, and then the very first boat bound for little old New York. But in our hearts Grimland--always Grimland."