Long Live the King by Mary Roberts Rinehart (page 7)

would be done, but properly and in good time. They had a signed agreement to fall back upon, and were in no hurry to pay his price. Karl left them in a bad temper, well concealed, and had the pleasure of being hissed through the streets.

But he comforted himself with the thought of Hedwig. He had taken her in his arms before he left, and she had made no resistance. She had even, in view of all that was at stake, made a desperate effort to return his kiss, and found herself trembling afterward.

In two weeks he was to return to her, and he whispered that to her.

On the day after the dinner-party Otto went to a hospital with Miss Braithwaite. It was the custom of the Palace to send the flowers from its spectacular functions to the hospitals, and the Crown Prince delighted in these errands.

So they went, escorted by the functionaries of the hospital, past the military wards, where soldiers in shabby uniforms sat on benches in the spring sunshine, to the general wards beyond. The Crown Prince was almost hidden behind the armful he carried. Miss Braithwaite had all she could hold. A convalescent patient, in slippers many sizes too large for him, wheeled the remainder in a barrow, and almost upset the barrow in his excitement.

Through long corridors into wards fresh-scrubbed against his arrival, with white counterpanes exactly square, and patients forbidden to move and disturb the geometrical exactness of the beds, went Prince Ferdinand William Otto. At each bed he stopped, selected a flower, and held it out. Some there were who reached out, and took it with a smile. Others lay still, and saw neither boy nor blossom.

“They sleep, Highness,” the nurse would say.

“But their eyes are open.”

“They are very weary, and resting.”

In such cases he placed the flower on the pillow, and went on.

One such; however, lying with vacant eyes fixed on the ceiling, turned and glanced at the boy, and into his empty gaze crept a faint intelligence. It was not much. He seemed to question with his eyes. That was all. As the little procession moved on, however, he raised himself on his elbow.

“Lie down!” said the man in the next bed sharply.

“Who was that?”

The ward, which might have been interested, was busy keeping its covers straight and in following the progress of the party. For the man had not spoken before.

“The Crown Prince.”

The sick man lay back and dosed his eyes. Soon he slept. His comrade in the next bed beckoned to a Sister.

“He has spoken,” he said. “Either he recovers, or – he dies.”

But again Haeckel did not die. He lived to do his part in the coming crisis, to prove that even the great hands of Black Humbert on his throat were not so strong as his own young spirit; lived, indeed, to confront the Terrorist as one risen from the dead. But that day he lay and slept, by curious irony the flower from Karl’s banquet in a cup of water beside him.

On the day before the Carnival, Hedwig had a visitor, none other than the Countess Loschek. Hedwig, all her color gone now, her high spirit crushed, her heart torn into fragments and neatly distributed between Nikky, who had most of it, the Crown Prince, and the old King. Hedwig, having given her permission to come, greeted her politely but without enthusiasm.

“Highness!” said the Countess, surveying her. And then, “You poor child!” using Karl’s words, but without the same inflection, using, indeed, the words a good many were using to Hedwig in those days.

“I am very tired,” Hedwig explained. “All this fitting, and – everything.”

“I know, perhaps better than you think, Highness.” Also something like Karl’s words. Hedwig reflected with bitterness that everybody knew, but nobody helped her. And, as if in answer to the thought, Olga Loschek came out plainly.

“Highness,” she said, “may I speak to you frankly?”

“Please do,” Hedwig replied. “Everybody does, anyhow. Especially when it is something disagreeable.”

Olga Loschek watched her warily. She knew the family as only the outsider could know it; knew that Hedwig, who would have disclaimed the fact, was like her mother in some things, notably in a disposition to be mild until a certain moment, submissive, even acquiescent, and then suddenly to become, as it were, a royalty and grow cold, haughty. But if Hedwig was driven in those days, so was the Countess, desperate and driven to desperate methods.

“I am presuming, Highness, on your mother’s kindness to me, and your own, to speak frankly.”

“Well, go on,” said Hedwig resignedly. But the next words brought her up in her chair.

“Are you going to allow your life to be ruined?” was what the Countess said.

Careful! Hedwig had thrown up her head and looked at her with hostile eyes. But the next moment she had forgotten she was a princess, and the granddaughter to the King, and remembered only that she was a woman, and terror-stricken. She flung out her arms, and then buried her face in them.

“How can I help it?” she said.

“How can you do it?” Olga Loschek countered. “After all, it is you who must do this thing. No one else. It is you they are offering on the altar of their ambition.”

“Ambition?”

“Ambition. What else is it? Surely you do not believe these tales they tell – old wives’ tales of plot and counterplot!”

“But the Chancellor – “

“Certainly the Chancellor!” mocked Olga Loschek. “Highness, for years he has had a dream. A great dream. It is not for you and me to say it is not noble. But, to fulfill his dream to bring prosperity and greatness to the country, and naturally, to him who plans it, there is a price to pay. He would have you pay it.”

Hedwig raised her face and searched the other woman’s eyes.

“That is all, then?” she said. “All this other, this fright, this talk of treason and danger, that is not true?”

“Not so true as he would have you believe,” replied Olga Loschek steadily. “There are malcontents everywhere, in every land. A few madmen who dream dreams, like Mettlich himself, only not the same dream. It is all ambition, one dream or another.”

“But my grandfather -“

“An old man, in the hands of his Ministers!”

Hedwig rose and paced the floor, her fingers twisting nervously. “But it is too late,” she cried at last. “Everything is arranged. I cannot refuse now. They would – I don’t know what they would do to me!”

“Do! To the granddaughter of the King. What can they do?”

That aspect of things; to do her credit, had never occurred to Hedwig. She had seen herself, hopeless and alone, surrounded by the powerful, herself friendless. But, if there was no danger to save her family from? If her very birth, which had counted so far for so little, would bring her immunity and even safety?

She paused in front of the Countess. “What can I do?” she asked pitifully.

“That I dare not presume to say. I came because I felt – I can only say what, in your place, I should do.”

“I am afraid. You would not be afraid.” Hedwig shivered. “What would you do? “

“If I knew, Highness, that some one, for whom I cared, himself cared deeply enough to make any sacrifice, I should demand happiness. I rather think I should lose the world, and gain something like happiness.”

“Demand!” Hedwig said hopelessly. “Yes, you would demand it. I cannot demand things. I am always too frightened.”

The Countess rose. “I am afraid I have done an unwise thing,” she said., “If your mother knew -” She shrugged her shoulders.

“You have only been kind. I have so few who really care.”

The Countess curtsied, and made for the door. “I must go,” she said, “before I go further, Highness. My apology is that I saw you unhappy, and that I resented it, because – “

“Yes?”

“Because I considered it unnecessary.”

She was a very wise woman. She left then, and let the next step come from Hedwig. It followed, as a matter of record, within the hour, at least four hours sooner than she had anticipated. She was in her boudoir, not reading, not even thinking, but sitting staring ahead, as Minna had seen her do repeatedly in the past weeks. She dared not think, for that matter.

Although she was still in waiting, the Archduchess was making few demands on her. A very fever of preparation was on Annunciata. She spent hours over laces and lingerie, was having jewels reset for Hedwig, after ornate designs of her own contribution, was the center of a cyclone of boxes, tissue paper, material, furs, and fashion books, while maids scurried about and dealers and dressmakers awaited her pleasure. She was, perhaps, happier than she had been for years, visited her father, absently and with pins stuck in her bosom, and looked dowdier and busier than the lowliest of the seamstresses who, by her thrifty order, were making countless undergarments in a room on an upper floor.

Hedwig’s notification that she would visit her, therefore, found the Countess at leisure and alone. She followed the announcement almost immediately, and if she had shown cowardice before, she showed none now. She disregarded the chair Olga Loschek offered, and came to the point with a directness that was like the King’s.

“I have come,” she said simply, “to find out what to do.”

The Countess was as direct.

“I cannot tell you what to do, Highness. I can only tell you what I would do.”

“Very well.” Hedwig showed a touch of impatience. This was quibbling, and it annoyed her.

“I should go away, now, with the person I cared about.”

“Where would you go?”

“The world is wide, Highness.”

“Not wide enough to hide in, I am afraid.”

“For myself,” said the Countess, “the problem would not be difficult. I should go to my place in the mountains. An old priest, who knows me well, would perform the marriage. After that they might find me if they liked. It would be too late.”

Emergency had given Hedwig insight. She saw that the woman before her, voicing dangerous doctrine, would protect herself by letting the initiative come from her.

“This priest – he might be difficult.”

“Not to a young couple, come to him, perhaps, in peasant costume. They are glad to marry, these fathers. There is much irregularity. I fancy,” she added, still with her carefully detached manner, “that a marriage could be easily arranged.”

But, before long, she had dropped her pretense of aloofness, and was taking the lead. Hedwig, weary with the struggle, and now trembling with nervousness, put herself in her hands, listening while she planned, agreed eagerly to everything. Something of grim amusement came into Olga Loschek’s face after a time. By doing this thing she would lose everything. It would be impossible to conceal her connivance. No one, knowing Hedwig, would for a moment imagine the plan hers. Or Nikky’s, either, for that matter.

She, then, would lose everything, even Karl, who was already lost to her. But – and her face grew set and her eyes hard – she would let those plotters in their grisly catacombs do their own filthy work. Her hands would be clean of that. Hence her amusement that at this late day she, Olga Loschek, should be saving her own soul.

So it was arranged, to the last detail. For it must be done at once. Hedwig, a trifle terrified, would have postponed it a day or so, but the Countess was insistent. Only she knew how the very hours counted, had them numbered, indeed, and watched them flying by with a sinking heart.

She made a few plans herself, in those moments when Hedwig relapsed into rapturous if somewhat frightened dreams. She had some money and her jewels. She would go to England, and there live quietly until things settled down. Then, perhaps, she would go some day to Karl, and with this madness for Hedwig dead, of her marriage, perhaps – ! She planned no further.

If she gave a fleeting thought to the Palace, to the Crown Prince and his impending fate, she dismissed it quickly. She had no affection for Annunciata, and as to the boy, let them look out for him. Let Mettlich guard his treasure, or lose it to his peril. The passage under the gate was not of her discovery or informing.

CHAPTER XXXII

NIKKY AND HEDWIG

Nikky had gone back to his lodging, where his servant was packing his things. For Nikky was now of His Majesty’s household, and must exchange his shabby old rooms for the cold magnificence of the Palace.

Toto had climbed to the chair beside him, and was inspecting his pockets, one by one. Toto was rather a problem, in the morning. But then everything was a problem now. He decided to leave the dog with the landlady, and to hope for a chance to talk the authorities over. Nikky himself considered that a small boy without a dog was as incomplete as, for instance, a buttonhole without a button.

He was very downhearted. To the Crown Prince, each day, he gave the best that was in him, played and rode, invented delightful nonsense to bring the boy’s quick laughter, carried pocketfuls of bones, to the secret revolt of his soldierly soul, was boyish and tender, frivolous or thoughtful, as the occasion seemed to warrant.

And always he was watchful, his revolver always ready and in touch, his eyes keen, his body, even when it seemed most relaxed, always tense to spring. For Nikky knew the temper of the people, knew it as did Mathilde gossiping in the market, and even better; knew that a crisis was approaching, and that on this small boy in his charge hung that crisis.

The guard at the Palace had been trebled, but even in that lay weakness.

“Too many strange faces,” the Chancellor had said to him, shaking his head. “Too many servants in livery, and flunkies whom no one knows. How can we prevent men, in such livery, from impersonating our own agents? One, two, a half-dozen, they could gain access to the Palace, could commit a mischief under our very eyes.”

So Nikky trusted in his own right arm and in nothing else. At night the Palace guard was smaller, and could be watched. There were no servants about to complicate the situation. But in the daytime, and especially now with the procession of milliners and dressmakers, messengers and dealers, it was more difficult. Nikky watched these people, as he happened on them, with suspicion and hatred. Hatred not only of what they might be, but hatred of what they were, of the thing they typified, Hedwig’s approaching marriage.

The very size of the Palace, its unused rooms, its long and rambling corridors, its rambling wings and ancient turrets, was against its safety.

Since the demonstration against Karl, the riding-school hour had been given up. There were no drives in the park. The illness of the King furnished sufficient excuse, but the truth was that the royal family was practically besieged; by it knew not what. Two police agents had been found dead the morning after Karl’s departure, on the outskirts of the city, lying together in a freshly ploughed field. They bore marks of struggle, and each had been stabbed through the veins of the neck, as though they had been first subdued and then scientifically destroyed.

Nikky, summoned to the Chancellor’s house that morning, had been told the facts, and had stood, rather still and tense, while Mettlich recounted them.

“Our very precautions are our danger,” said the Chancellor. “And the King – ” He stopped and sat, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“And the King, sir?”

“Almost at the end. A day or two.”

On that day came fresh news, alarming enough. More copies of the seditious paper were in circulation in the city and the surrounding country, passing from hand to hand. The town was searched for the press which had printed them, but it was not located. Which was not surprising, since it had been lowered through a trap into a sub-cellar of the house on the Road of the Good Children, and the trapdoor covered with rubbish.

Karl, with Hedwig in his thoughts, had returned to mobilize his army not far from the border for the spring maneuvers, and at a meeting of the King’s Council the matter of a mobilization in Livonia was seriously considered.

Fat Friese favored it, and made an impassioned speech, with sweat thick on his heavy face.

“I am not cowardly,” he finished. “I fear nothing for myself or for those belonging to me. But the duty of this Council is to preserve the throne for the Crown Prince, at any cost. And, if we cannot trust the army, in what can we trust?”

“In God,” said the Chancellor grimly.

In the end nothing was done. Mobilization might precipitate the crisis, and there was always the fear that the army, in parts, was itself disloyal.

It was Marschall, always nervous and now pallid with terror, who suggested abandoning the marriage between Hedwig and Karl.

“Until this matter came up,” he said, avoiding Mettlich’s eyes, “there was danger, but of a small party only, the revolutionary one. One which, by increased effort on the part of the secret police, might have been suppressed. It is this new measure which is fatal. The people detest it. They cannot forget, if we can, the many scores of hatred we still owe to Karnia. We have, by our own act, alienated the better class of citizens. Why not abandon this marriage, which, gentlemen, I believe will be fatal. It has not yet been announced. We may still withdraw with honor.”

He looked around the table with anxious, haunted eyes, opened wide so that the pupils appeared small and staring in their setting of blood-shot white. The Chancellor glanced around, also.

“It is not always easy to let the people of a country know what is good for them and for it. To retreat now is to show our weakness, to make an enemy again of King Karl, and to gain us nothing, not even safety. As well abdicate, and turn the country over to the Terrorists! And, in this crisis, let me remind you of something you persistently forget. Whatever the views of the solid citizens may be as to this marriage, – and once it is effected, they will accept it without doubt, – the Crown Prince is now and will remain the idol of the country. It is on his popularity we must depend. We must capitalize it. Mobs are sentimental. Whatever the Terrorists may think, this I know: that when the bell announces His Majesty’s death, when Ferdinand William Otto steps out on the balcony, a small and lonely child, they will rally to him. That figure, on the balcony, will be more potent than a thousand demagogues, haranguing in the public streets.”

The Council broke up in confusion. Nothing had been done, or would be done. Mettlich of the Iron Hand had held them, would continue to hold them. The King, meanwhile, lay dying, Doctor Wiederman in constant attendance, other physicians coming and going. His apartments were silent. Rugs covered the corridors, that no footfall disturb his quiet hours. The nursing Sisters attended him, one by his bedside, one always on her knees at the Prie-dieu in the small room beyond. He wanted little – now and then a sip of water, the cooled juice of fruit.

Injections of stimulants, given by Doctor Wiederman himself, had scarred his old arms with purplish marks, and were absorbed more and more slowly as the hours went on.

He rarely slept, but lay inert and not unhappy. Now and then one of his gentlemen, given permission, tiptoed into the room, and stood looking down at his royal master. Annunciata came, and was at last stricken by conscience to a prayer at his bedside. On one of her last visits that was. She got up to find his eyes fixed on her.

“Father,” she began.

He made no motion.

“Father, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I – I have been a bad daughter to you. I am sorry. It is late now to tell you, but I am sorry. Can I do anything?”

“Otto,” he said, with difficulty.

“You want to see him?

“No.”

She knew what he meant by that. He would have the boy remember him as he had seen him last.

“You are anxious about him?”

“Very – anxious.”

“Listen, father,” she said, stooping over him. “I have been hard and cold. Perhaps you will grant that I have had two reasons for it. But I am going to do better. I will take care of him and I will do all I can to make him happy. I promise.”

Perhaps it was relief. Perhaps even then the thought of Annunciata’s tardy and certain-to-be bungling efforts to make Ferdinand William Otto happy amused him. He smiled faintly.

Nikky, watching his rooms being dismantled, rescuing an old pipe now and then, or a pair of shabby but beloved boots, – Nikky, whistling to keep up his courage, received a note from Hedwig late that afternoon. It was very brief:

To-night at nine o’clock I shall go to the roof beyond Hubert’s old rooms, for air.
HEDWIG.

Nikky, who in all his incurious young life had never thought of the roof of the Palace, save as a necessary shelter from the weather, a thing of tiles and gutters, vastly large, looked rather astounded.

“The roof!” he said, surveying the note. And fell to thinking, such a mixture of rapture and despair as only twenty-three, and hopeless, can know.

Somehow or other he got through the intervening hours, and before nine he was on his way. He had the run of the Palace, of course. No one noticed him as he made his way toward the empty suite which so recently had housed its royal visitor. Annunciata’s anxiety had kept the doors of the suite unlocked. Knowing nothing, but fearing everything, she slept with the key to the turret door under her pillow, and an ear opened for untoward sounds.

In the faint moonlight poor Hubert’s rooms, with their refurbished furnishings covered with white linen, looked cold and almost terrifying. A long window was open, and the velvet curtain swayed as though it shielded some dismal figure. But, when he had crossed the room and drawn the curtain aside, it was to see a bit of fairyland, the roof moonlit and transformed by growing things into a garden. There was, too, the fairy.

Hedwig, in a soft white wrap over her dinner dress, was at the balustrade. The moon, which had robbed the flowers of their colors and made them ghosts of blossoms, had turned Hedwig into a pale, white fairy with extremely frightened eyes. A very dignified fairy, too, although her heart thumped disgracefully. Having taken a most brazen step forward, she was now for taking two panicky ones back.

Therefore she pretended not to hear Nikky behind her, and was completely engrossed in the city lights.

So Hedwig intended to be remote, and Nikky meant to be firm and very, very loyal. Which shows how young and inexperienced they were. Because any one who knows even the beginnings of love knows that its victims suffer from an atrophy of both reason and conscience, and a hypertrophy of the heart.

Whatever Nikky had intended – of obeying his promise to the letter, of putting his country before love, and love out of his life – failed him instantly. The Nikky, ardent-eyed and tender-armed, who crossed the roof and took her almost fiercely in his arms, was all lover – and twenty-three.

“Sweetheart!” he said. “Sweetest heart!”

When, having kissed her, he drew back a trifle for the sheer joy of again catching her to him, it was Hedwig who held out her arms to him.

“I couldn’t bear it,” she said simply. “I love you. I had to see you again. Just once.”

If he had not entirely lost his head before, he lost it then. He stopped thinking, was content for a time that her arms were about his neck, and his arms about her, holding her close. They were tense, those arms of his, as though he would defy the world to take her away.

But, although he had stopped thinking, Hedwig had not. It is, at such times, always the woman who thinks. Hedwig, plotting against his honor and for his happiness and hers, was already, with her head on his breast, planning the attack. And, having a strategic position, she fired her first gun from there.

“Never let me go, Nikky,” she whispered. “Hold me, always.”

“Always!” said Nikky, valiantly and absurdly.

“Like this?”

“Like this,” said Nikky, who was, like most lovers, not particularly original. He tightened his strong arms about her.

“They are planning such terrible things.” Shell number two, and high explosive. “You won’t let them take me from you, will you?”

“God!” said poor Nikky, and kissed her hair. “If we could only be like this always! Your arms, Hedwig, – your sweet arms!” He kissed her arms.

Gun number three now: “Tell me how much you love me.”

“I – there are no words, darling. And I couldn’t live long enough to tell you, if there were.” Not bad that, for inarticulate Nikky.

“More than anybody else?”

He shook her a trifle, in his arms. “How can you?” he demanded huskily. “More than anything in the world. More than life, or anything life can bring. More, God help me, than my country.”

But his own words brought him up short. He released her, very gently, and drew back a step.

“You heard that?” he demanded. “And I mean it. It’s incredible, Hedwig, but it is true.”

“I want you to mean it,” Hedwig replied, moving close to him, so that her soft draperies brushed him; the very scent of the faint perfume she used was in the air he breathed. “I want you to, because Nikky, you are going to take me away, aren’t you?”

Then, because she dared not give him time to think, she made her plea, – rapid, girlish, rather incoherent, but understandable enough. They would go away together and be married. She had it all planned and some of it arranged. And then they would hide somewhere, and – “And always be together,” she finished, tremulous with anxiety.

And Nikky? His pulses still beating at her nearness, his eyes on her upturned, despairing young face, turned to him for hope and comfort, what could he do? He took her in his arms again and soothed her, while she cried her heart out against his tunic. He said he would do anything to keep her from unhappiness, and that he would die before he let her go to Karl’s arms. But if he had stopped thinking before, he was thinking hard enough then.

“To-night?” said Hedwig, raising a tear-stained face. “It is early. If we wait something will happen. I know it. They are so powerful, they can do anything.”

After all, Nikky is poor stuff to try to make a hero of. He was so human, and so loving. And he was very, very young, which may perhaps be his excuse. As well confess his weakness and his temptation. He was tempted. Almost he felt he could not let her go, could not loosen his hold of her. Almost – not quite.

He put her away from him at last, after he had kissed her eyelids and her forehead, which was by way of renunciation. And then he folded his arms, which were treacherous and might betray him. After that, not daring to look at her, but with his eyes fixed on the irregular sky-line of the city roofs, he told her many things, of his promise to the King, of the danger, imminent now and very real, of his word of honor not to make love to her, which he had broken.

Hedwig listened, growing cold and still, and drawing away a little. She was suffering too much to be just. All she could see was that, for a matter of honor, and that debatable, she was to be sacrificed. This danger that all talked of – she had heard that for a dozen years, and nothing had come of it. Nothing, that is, but her own sacrifice.

She listened, even assented, as he pleaded against his own heart, treacherous arms still folded. And if she saw his arms and not his eyes, it was because she did not look up.

Halfway through his eager speech, however, she drew her light wrap about her and turned away. Nikky could not believe that she was going like that, without a word. But when she had disappeared through the window, he knew, and followed her. He caught her in Hubert’s room, and drew her savagely into his arms.

But it was a passive, quiescent, and trembling Hedwig who submitted, and then, freeing herself, went out through the door into the lights of the corridor. Nikky flung himself, face down, on a shrouded couch and lay there, his face buried in his arms.

Olga Loschek’s last hope was gone.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE DAY OF THE CARNIVAL

On the day of the Carnival, which was the last day before the beginning of Lent, Prince Ferdinand William Otto wakened early. The Palace still slept, and only the street-sweepers were about the streets. Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat up in bed and yawned. This was a special day, he knew, but at first he was too drowsy to remember.

Then he knew – the Carnival! A delightful day, with the Place full of people in strange costumes – peasants, imps, jesters, who cut capers on the grass in the Park, little girls in procession, wearing costumes of fairies with gauze wings, students who paraded and blew noisy horns, even horses decorated, and now and then a dog dressed as a dancer or a soldier.

He would have enjoyed dressing Toto in something or other. He decided to mention it to Nikky, and with a child’s faith he felt that Nikky would, so to speak, come up to the scratch.

He yawned again, and began to feel hungry. He decided to get up and take his own bath. There was nothing like getting a good start for a gala day. And, since with the Crown Prince to decide was to do, which is not always a royal trait, he took his own bath, being very particular about his ears, and not at all particular about the rest of him. Then, no Oskar having yet appeared with fresh garments he ducked back into bed again, quite bare as to his small body, and snuggled down in the sheets.

Lying there, he planned the day. There were to be no lessons except fencing, which could hardly be called a lesson at all, and as he now knew the “Gettysburg Address,” he meant to ask permission to recite it to his grandfather. To be quite sure of it, he repeated it to himself as he lay there: –

“‘Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’

“Free and equal,” he said to himself. That rather puzzled him. Of course people were free, but they did not seem to be equal. In the summer, at the summer palace, he was only allowed to see a few children, because the others were what his Aunt Annunciata called “bourgeois.” And there was in his mind also something Miss Braithwaite had said, after his escapade with the American boy.

“If you must have some child to play with,” she had said severely, “you could at least choose some one approximately your equal.”

“But he is my equal,” he had protested from the outraged depths of his small democratic heart.

“In birth,” explained Miss Braithwaite.

“His father has a fine business,” he had said, still rather indignant. “It makes a great deal of money. Not everybody can build a scenic railway and get it going right. Bobby said so.”

Miss Braithwaite had been silent and obviously unconvinced. Yet this Mr. Lincoln, the American, had certainly said that all men were free and equal. It was very puzzling.

But, as the morning advanced, as, clothed and fed, the Crown Prince faced the new day, he began to feel a restraint in the air. People came and went, his grandfather’s Equerry, the Chancellor, the Lord Chamberlain, other gentlemen, connected with the vast and intricate machinery of the Court, and even Hedwig, in a black frock, all these people came, and talked together, and eyed him when he was not looking. When they left they all bowed rather more than usual, except Hedwig, who kissed him, much to his secret annoyance.

Every one looked grave, and spoke in a low tone. Also there was something wrong with Nikky, who appeared not only grave, but rather stern and white. Considering that it was the last day before Lent, and Carnival time, Prince Ferdinand William Otto felt vaguely defrauded, rather like the time he had seen “The Flying Dutchman,” which had turned out to be only a make-believe ship and did not fly at all. To add to the complications, Miss Braithwaite had a headache.

Nikky Larisch had arrived just as Hedwig departed, and even the Crown Prince had recognized something wrong. Nikky had stopped just inside the doorway, with his eyes rather desperately and hungrily on Hedwig, and Hedwig, who should have been scolded, according to Prince Otto, had passed him with the haughtiest sort of nod.

The Crown Prince witnessed the nod with wonder and alarm.

“We are all rather worried,” he explained afterward to Nikky, to soothe his wounded pride. “My grandfather is not so well to-day. Hedwig is very unhappy.”

“Yes,” said Nikky miserably, “she does look unhappy.”

“Now, when are we going out?” briskly demanded Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “I can hardly wait. I’ve seen the funniest people already – and dogs. Nikky, I wonder if you could dress Toto, and let me see him somewhere.”

“Out! You do not want to go out in that crowd, do you?”

“Why – am I not to go?”

His voice was suddenly quite shaky. He was, in a way, so inured to disappointments that he recognized the very tones in which they were usually announced. So he eyed Nikky with a searching glance, and saw there the thing he feared.

“Well,” he said resignedly, ” I suppose I can see something from the windows. Only – I should like to have a really good time occasionally.” He was determined not to cry. “But there are usually a lot of people in the Place.”

Then, remembering that his grandfather was very ill, he tried to forget his disappointment in a gift for him. Not burnt wood this time, but the drawing of a gun, which he explained as he worked, that he had invented. He drew behind the gun a sort of trestle, with little cars, not unlike the Scenic Railway, on which ammunition was delivered into the breech by something strongly resembling a coal-chute.

There was, after all, little to see from the windows. That part of the Place near the Palace remained empty and quiet, by order of the King’s physicians. And although it was Carnival, and the streets were thronged with people, there was little of Carnival in the air. The city waited.

Some loyal subjects waited and grieved that the King lay dying. For, although the Palace had carefully repressed his condition, such things leak out, and there was the empty and silent Place to bear witness.

Others waited, too, but not in sorrow. And a certain percentage, the young and light-hearted, strutted the streets in fantastic costume, blew horns and threw confetti and fresh flowers, still dewy from the mountain slopes. The Scenic Railway was crowded with merry-makers, and long lines of people stood waiting their turn at the ticket-booth, where a surly old veteran, pinched with sleepless nights, sold them tickets and ignored their badinage. Family parties, carrying baskets and wheeling babies in perambulators, took possession of the Park and littered it with paper bags. And among them, committing horrible crimes, dispatching whole families with a wooden gun from behind near-by trees and taking innumerable prisoners, went a small pirate in a black mask and a sash of scarlet ribbon, from which hung various deadly weapons, including a bread-knife, a meat-cleaver, and a hatchet.

Attempts to make Tucker wear a mask having proved abortive, he was attired in a pirate flag of black, worn as a blanket, and having on it, in white muslin, what purported to be a skull and cross-bones but which looked like the word “ox” with the “O” superimposed over the “X.”

Prince Ferdinand William Otto stood at his window and looked out. Something of resentment showed itself in the lines of his figure. There was, indeed, rebellion in his heart. This was a real day, a day of days, and no one seemed to care that he was missing it. Miss Braithwaite looked drawn about the eyes, and considered carnivals rather common, and certainly silly. And Nikky looked drawn about the mouth, and did not care to play.

Rebellion was dawning in the soul of the Crown Prince, not the impassive revolt of the “Flying Dutchman” and things which only pretended to be, like the imitation ship and the women who were not really spinning. The same rebellion, indeed, which had set old Adelbert against the King and turned him traitor, a rebellion against needless disappointment, a protest for happiness.

Old Adelbert, forbidden to march in his new uniform, the Crown Prince, forbidden his liberty and shut in a gloomy palace, were blood-brothers in revolt.

Not that Prince Ferdinand William Otto knew he was in revolt. At first it consisted only of a consideration of his promise to the Chancellor. But while there had been an understanding, there had been no actual promise, had there?

Late in the morning Nikky took him to the roof. “We can’t go out, old man,” Nikky said to him, rather startled to discover the unhappiness in the boy’s face, “but I’ve found a place where we can see more than we can here. Suppose we try it.”

“Why can’t we go out? I’ve always gone before.”

“Well,” Nikky temporized, “they’ve made a rule. They make a good many rules, you know. But they said nothing about the roof.”

“The roof!”

“The roof. The thing that covers us and keeps out the weather. The roof, Highness.” Nikky alternated between formality and the other extreme with the boy.

“It slants, doesn’t it?” observed his Highness doubtfully.

“Part of it is quite flat. We can take a ball up there, and get some exercise while we’re about it.”

As a matter of fact, Nikky was not altogether unselfish. He would visit the roof again, where for terrible, wonderful moments he had held Hedwig in his arms. On a pilgrimage, indeed, like that of the Crown Prince to Etzel, Nikky would visit his shrine.

So they went to the roof. They went through silent corridors, past quiet rooms where the suite waited and spoke in whispers, past the very door of the chamber where the Council sat in session, and where reports were coming in, hour by hour, as to the condition of things outside. Past the apartment of the Archduchess Annunciata, where Hilda, released from lessons, was trying the effect of jet earrings against her white skin, and the Archduchess herself was sitting by her fire, and contemplating the necessity for flight. In her closet was a small bag, already packed in case of necessity. Indeed, more persons than the Archduchess Annunciata had so prepared. Miss Braithwaite, for instance, had spent a part of the night over a traveling-case containing a small boy’s outfit, and had wept as she worked, which was the reason for her headache.

The roof proved quite wonderful. One could see the streets crowded with people, could hear the soft blare of distant horns.

“The Scenic Railway is in that direction,” observed the Crown Prince, leaning on the balustrade. “If there were no buildings we could see it.”

“Right here,” Nikky was saying to himself. “At this very spot. She held out her arms, and I- “

“It looks very interesting,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “Of course we can’t see the costumes, but it is better than nothing.”

“I kissed her,” Nikky was thinking, his heart swelling under his very best tunic. “Her head was on my breast, and I kissed her. Last of. all, I kissed her eyes – her lovely eyes.”

“If I fell off here,” observed the Crown Prince in a meditative voice, ” I would be smashed to a jelly, like the child at the Crystal Palace.”

“But now she hates me,” said Nikky’s heart, and dropped about the distance of three buttons. “She hates me. I saw it in her eyes this morning. God!”

“We might as well play ball now.”

Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned away from the parapet with a sigh. This strange quiet that filled the Palace seemed to have attacked Nikky too. Otto hated quiet.

They played ball, and the Crown Prince took a lesson in curves. But on his third attempt, he described such a compound- curve that the ball disappeared over an adjacent part of the roof, and although Nikky did some blood-curdling climbing along gutters, it could not be found.

It was then that the Majordomo, always a marvelous figure in crimson and gold, and never seen without white gloves – the Majordomo bowed in a window, and observed that if His Royal Highness pleased, His Royal Highness’s luncheon was served.

In the shrouded room inside the windows, however, His Royal Highness paused and looked around.

“I’ve been here before,” he observed. “These were my father’s rooms. My mother lived here, too. When I am older, perhaps I can have them. It would be convenient on account of my practicing curves on the roof. But I should need a number of balls.”

He was rather silent on his way back to the schoolroom. But once he looked up rather wistfully at Nikky.

“If they were living,” he said, “I am pretty sure they would take me out to-day.”

Olga Loschek had found the day one of terror. Annunciata had demanded her attendance all morning, had weakened strangely and demanded fretfully to be comforted.

“I have been a bad daughter,” she would say. “It was my nature. I was warped and soured by wretchedness.”

“But you have not been a bad daughter,” the Countess would protest, for the thousandth time. “You have done your duty faithfully. You have stayed here when many another would have been traveling on the Riviera, or – “

“It was no sacrifice,” said Annunciata, in her peevish voice. “I loathe traveling. And now I am being made to suffer for all I have done. He will die, and the rest of us – what will happen to us?” She shivered.

The Countess would take the cue, would enlarge on the precautions for safety, on the uselessness of fear, on the popularity of the Crown Prince. And Annunciata, for a time at least, would relax. In her new remorse she made frequent visits to the sickroom, passing, a long, thin figure, clad in black, through lines of bowing gentlemen, to stand by the bed and wring her hands. But the old King did not even know she was there.

The failure of her plan as to Nikky and Hedwig was known to the Countess the night before. Hedwig had sent for her and faced her in her boudoir, very white and calm.

“He refuses,” she said. “There is nothing more to do.”

“Refuses!”

“He has promised not to leave Otto.”

Olga Loschek had been incredulous, at first. It was not possible. Men in love did not do these things. It was not possible, that, after all, she had failed. When she realized it, she would have broken out in bitter protest, but Hedwig’s face warned her. “He is right, of course,” Hedwig had said. “You and I were wrong, Countess. There is nothing to do – or say.”

And the Countess had taken her defeat quietly, with burning eyes and a throat dry with excitement. “I am sorry, Highness,” she said from the doorway. “I had only hoped to save you from unhappiness. That is all. And, as you say, there is nothing to be done.” So she had gone away and faced the night, and the day which was to follow.

The plot was arranged, to the smallest detail. The King, living now only so long as it was decreed he should live; would, in mid-afternoon, commence to sink. The entire Court would be gathered in anterooms and salons near his apartments. In his rooms the Crown Prince would be kept, awaiting the summons to the throne-room, where, on the King’s death, the regency would be declared, and the Court would swear fealty to the new King, Otto the Ninth. By arrangement with the captain of the Palace guard, who was one of the Committee of Ten, the sentries before the Crown Prince’s door were to be of the revolutionary party. Mettlich would undoubtedly be with the King. Remained then to be reckoned with only the Prince’s personal servants, Miss Braithwaite, and Nikky Larisch.

The servants offered little difficulty. At that hour, four o’clock, probably only the valet Oskar would be on duty, and his station was at the end of a corridor, separated by two doors from the schoolroom. It was planned that the two men who were to secure the Crown Prince were to wear the Palace livery, and to come with a message that the Crown Prince was to accompany them. Then, instead of going to the wing where the Court was gathered, they would go up to Hubert’s rooms, and from there to the roof and the secret passage.

Two obstacles were left for the Countess to cope with, and this was her part of the work. She had already a plan for Miss Braithwaite. But Nikky Larisch?

Over that problem, during the long night hours, Olga Loschek worked. It would be possible to overcome Nikky, of course. There would be four men, with the sentries, against him. But that would mean struggle and an alarm. It was the plan to achieve the abduction quietly, so quietly that for perhaps an hour – they hoped for an hour – there would be no alarm. Some time they must have, enough to make the long journey through the underground passage. Otherwise the opening at the gate would be closed, and the party caught like rats in a hole.

The necessity for planning served one purpose, at least. It kept her from thinking. Possibly it saved her reason, for there were times during that last night when Olga Loschek was not far from madness. At dawn, long after Hedwig had forgotten her unhappiness in sleep, the Countess went wearily to bed. She had dismissed Minna hours before, and as she stood before her mirror, loosening her heavy hair, she saw that all that was of youth and loveliness in her had died in the night. A determined, scornful, and hard-eyed woman, she went drearily to bed.

During the early afternoon the Chancellor visited the Crown Prince. Waiting and watching had made inroads on him, too, but he assumed a sort of heavy jocularity for the boy’s benefit.

“No lessons, eh?” he said. “Then there have been no paper balls for the tutors’ eyes, eh?”

“I never did that but once, sir,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto gravely.

“So! Once only!”

“And I did that because he was always looking at Hedwig’s picture.”

The Chancellor eyed the picture. “I should be the last to condemn him for that,” he said, and glanced at Nikky.

“We must get the lad out somewhere for some air,” he observed. “It is not good to keep him shut up like this.” He turned to the Crown Prince. “In a day or so,” he said, “we shall all go to the summer palace. You would like that, eh?”

“Will my grandfather be able to go?”

The Chancellor sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I – he will go to the country also. He has loved it very dearly.”

He went, shortly after three o’clock. And, because he was restless and uneasy, he made a round of the Palace, and of the guards. Before he returned to his vigil outside the King’s bedroom, he stood for a moment by a window and looked out. Evidently rumors of the King’s condition had crept out, in spite of their caution. The Place, kept free of murmurs by the police, was filling slowly with people; people who took up positions on benches, under the trees, and even sitting on the curb of the street. An orderly and silent crowd it seemed, of the better class. Here and there he saw police agents in plain clothes, impassive but watchful, on the lookout for the first cry of treason.

An hour or two, or three – three at the most and the fate of the Palace would lie in the hands of that crowd. He could but lead the boy to the balcony, and await the result.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE PIRATE’S DEN

Miss Braithwaite was asleep on the couch in her sitting-room, deeply asleep, so that when Prince Ferdinand William Otto changed the cold cloth on her head, she did not even move. The Countess Loschek had brought her some medicine.

“It cured her very quickly,” said the Crown Prince, shuffling the cards with clumsy fingers. He and Nikky were playing a game in which matches represented money. The Crown Prince had won nearly all of them and was quite pink with excitement. “It’s my deal, it? When she goes to sleep like that, she nearly always wakens up much better. She’s very sound asleep.”

Nikky played absently, and lost the game. The Crown Prince triumphantly scooped up the rest of the matches. “We’ve had rather a nice day,” he observed, “even if we didn’t go out. Shall we divide them again, and start all over?”

Nikky, however, proclaimed himself hopelessly beaten and a bad loser. So the Crown Prince put away the cards, which belonged to Miss Braithwaite, and with which she played solitaire in the evenings. Then he lounged to the window, his hands in his pockets. There was something on his mind which the Chancellor’s reference to Hedwig’s picture had recalled. Something he wished to say to Nikky, without looking at him.

So he clearer throat, and looked out the window, and said, very casually:

“Hilda says that Hedwig is going to get married.”

“So I hear, Highness.”

“She doesn’t seem to be very happy about it. She’s crying, most of the time.”

It was Nikky’s turn to clear his throat. “Marriage is a serious matter,” he said. “It is not to be gone into lightly.”

“Once, when I asked you about marriage, you said marriage was when two people loved each other, and wanted to be together the rest of their lives.”

“Well,” hedged Nikky, “that is the idea, rather.”

“I should think,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, slightly red, “that you would marry her yourself.”

Nikky, being beyond speech for an instant and looking, had His Royal Highness but seen him, very tragic and somewhat rigid, the Crown Prince went on:

“She’s a very nice girl,” he said; “I think she would make a good wife.”

There was something of reproach in his tone. He had confidently planned that Nikky would marry Hedwig, and that they could all live on forever in the Palace. But, the way things were going, Nikky might marry anybody, and go away to live, and he would lose him.

“Yes,” said Nikky, in a strange voice, “she – I am sure she would make a good wife.”

At which Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned and looked at him. “I wish you would marry her yourself,” he said with his nearest approach to impatience. “I think she’d be willing. I’ll ask her, if you want me to.”

Half-past three, then, and Nikky trying to explain, within the limits of the boy’s understanding of life, his position. Members of royal families, he said, looking far away, over the child’s head, had to do many things for the good of the country. And marrying was one of them. Something of old Mettlich’s creed of prosperity for the land he gave, something of his own hopelessness, too, without knowing it. He sat, bent forward, his hands swung between his knees, and tried to visualize, for Otto’s understanding and his own heartache, the results of such a marriage.

Some of it the boy grasped. A navy, ships, a railroad to the sea – those he could understand. Treaties were beyond his comprehension. And, with a child’s singleness of idea, he returned to the marriage.

“I’m sure she doesn’t care about it,” he said at last. “If I were King I would not let her do it. And” – he sat very erect and swung his short legs – “when I grow up, I shall fight for a navy, if I want one, and I shall marry whoever I like.”

At a quarter to four Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if she still slept,

“I think you are a very good doctor,” he said, smiling, and went out to Miss Braithwaite’s sitting room.

It was then that Olga Loschek played the last card, and won. She moved quickly to Nikky’s side.

“I have a message for you,” she said.

A light leaped into Nikky’s eyes. “For me?”

“Do you know where my boudoir is?”

“I – yes, Countess.”

“If you will go there at once and wait, some one will see you there as soon as possible.” She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t be foolish and proud,” she said. “She is sorry about last night, and she is very unhappy.”

The light faded out of Nikky’s eyes. She was unhappy and he could do nothing. They had a way, in the Palace, of binding one’s hands and leaving one helpless. He could not even go to her.

“I cannot go, Countess,” he said. “She must understand. To-day, of all days – “

“You mean that you cannot leave the Crown Prince?” She shrugged her shoulders. “You, too! Never have I seen so many faint hearts, such rolling eyes, such shaking knees! And for what! Because a few timid souls see a danger that does not exist.”

“I think it does exist,” said Nikky obstinately.

“I am to take the word to her, then, that you will not come?”

“That I cannot.”

“You are a very foolish boy,” said the Countess, watching him. “And since you are so fearful, I myself will remain here. There are sentries at the doors, and a double guard everywhere. What, in the name of all that is absurd, can possibly happen?”

That was when she won. For Nikky, who has never been, in all this history, anything of a hero, and all of the romantic and loving boy, – Nikky wavered and fell.

When Prince Ferdinand William Otto returned, it was with the word that Miss Braithwaite still slept, and that she looked very comfortable, Nikky was gone, and the Countess stood by a window, holding to the sill to support her shaking body.

It was done. The boy was in her hands. There was left only to deliver him to those who, even now, were on the way. Nikky was safe. He would wait in her boudoir, and Hedwig would not come. She had sent no message. She was, indeed, at that moment a part of one of those melancholy family groups which, the world over, in palace or peasant’s hut, await the coming of death.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto chatted. He got out the picture-frame for Hedwig, which was finished now, with the exception of burning his initials in the lower left-hand corner. After inquiring politely if the smell of burning would annoy her, the Crown Prince drew a rather broken-backed “F,” a weak-kneed “W,” and an irregular “O” in the corner and proceeded to burn them in. He sat bent over the desk, the very tip of his tongue protruding, and worked conscientiously and carefully. Between each letter he burned a dot.

Suddenly, Olga Loschek became panic-stricken. She could not stay, and see this thing out. Let them follow her and punish her. She could not. She had done her part. The governess lay in, a drugged sleep. A turn of the key, and the door to the passage beyond which Oskar waited would be closed off. Let follow what must, she would not see it.

The boy still bent over his work. She wandered about the room, casually, as if examining the pictures on the wall. She stopped, for a bitter moment, before Hedwig’s photograph, and, for a shaken one, before those of Prince Hubert and his wife. Then she turned the key, and shut Oskar safely away.

“Highness,” she said, “Lieutenant Larisch will be here in a moment. Will you permit me to go?”

Otto was off his chair in an instant. “Certainly,” he said, his mind still on the “O” which he was shading.

Old habit was strong in the Countess. Although the boy’s rank was numbered by moments, although his life was possibly to be counted by hours, she turned at the doorway and swept him a curtsy. Then she went out, and closed the door behind her.

The two sentries stood outside. They were of the Terrorists. She knew, and they knew she knew. But neither one made a sign. They stared ahead, and Olga Loschek went out between them.

Now the psychology of the small boy is a curious thing. It is, for one thing, retentive. Ideas become, given time, obsessions. And obsessions are likely to lead to action.

The Crown Prince Ferdinand William Otto was only a small boy, for all his title and dignity. And suddenly he felt lonely. Left alone, he returned to his expectations for the day, and compared them with the facts. He remembered other carnivals, with his carriage moving through the streets, and people showering him with fresh flowers. He rather glowed at the memory. Then he recalled that the Chancellor had said he needed fresh air.

Something occurred to him, something which combined fresh air with action, yet kept to the letter of his promise – or was there a promise? – not to leave the Palace.

The idea pleased him. It set him to smiling, and his bright hair to quivering with excitement. It was nothing less than to go up on the roof and find the ball. Nikky would be surprised, having failed himself. He would have to be very careful, having in mind the fate of that unlucky child at the Crystal Palace. And he would have to hurry. Nikky would be sure to return soon.

He opened the door on to the great corridor, and stepped out, saluting the sentries, as he always did.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he informed them. He was always on terms of great friendliness with the guard, and he knew these men by sight. “Are you going to be stationed here now?” he inquired pleasantly.

The two guards were at a loss. But one of them, who had a son of his own, and hated the whole business, saluted and replied that he knew not.

“I hope you are,” said Ferdinand William Otto, and went on.

The sentries regarded one another. “Let him go!” said the one who was a father.

The other one moved uneasily. “Our orders cover no such contingency,” he muttered. “And, besides, he will come back.” He bore a strong resemblance to the boy, who, in the riding-school, had dusted the royal hearse. “I hope to God he does not come back,” he said stonily.

Five minutes to four.

The Crown Prince hurried. The corridors were almost empty. Here and there he met servants, who stood stiff against the wall until he had passed. On the marble staircase, leading up, he met no one, nor on the upper floor. He was quite warm with running and he paused in his father’s suite to mop his face. Then he opened a window and went out on the roof. It seemed very large and empty now, and the afternoon sun, sinking low, threw shadows across it.

Also, from the balustrade, it looked extremely far to the ground.

Nevertheless, although his heart beat a trifle fast, he was still determined. A climb which Nikky with his long legs had achieved in a leap, took him up to a chimney. Below – it seemed a long way below was the gutter. There was a very considerable slant. If one sat down, like Nikky, and slid, and did not slide over the edge, one should fetch up in the gutter.

He felt a trifle dizzy. But Nikky’s theory was, that if one is afraid to do a thing, better to do it and get over being afraid.

“I was terribly afraid of a bayonet attack,” Nikky had observed, “until I was in one. The next one I rather enjoyed!”

So the Crown Prince sat down on the sloping roof behind the chimney, and gathered his legs under him for a slide.

Then he heard a door open, and footsteps. Very careful footsteps. He was quite certain Nikky had followed him. But there were cautious voices, too, and neither was Nikky’s. It occurred to Prince Ferdinand William Otto that a good many people, certainly including Miss Braithwaite, would not approve of either his situation or his position. Miss Braithwaite was particularly particular about positions.

So he sat still beside the chimney, well shielded by the evergreens in tubs, until the voices and the footsteps were gone. Then he took all his courage in his hands, and slid. Well for him that the ancient builders of the Palace had been reckless with lead, that the gutter was both wide and deep. Well for Nikky, too, waiting in the boudoir below and hard- driven between love and anxiety.

The Crown Prince, unaccustomed to tiles, turned over halfway down, and rolled. He brought up with a jerk in the gutter, quite safe, but extremely frightened. And the horrid memory of the Crystal Palace child filled his mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He sat there for quite a few minutes. There was no ball in sight, and the roof looked even steeper from this point.

Being completely self-engrossed, therefore, he did not see that the roof had another visitor. Had two visitors, as a matter of fact. One of them wore a blanket with a white “O” over a white “X” on it, and the other wore a mask, and considerable kitchen cutlery fastened to his belt. They had come out of a small door in the turret and were very much at ease. They leaned over the parapet and admired the view. They strutted about the flat roof, and sang, at least one of them sang a very strange refrain, which was something about

“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest; Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”

And then they climbed on one of the garden chairs and looked over the expanse of the roof, which was when they saw Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and gazed at him.

“Gee whiz!” said the larger pirate, through his mask. “What are you doing there?”

The Crown Prince started, and stared. “I am sitting here,” explained the Crown Prince, trying to look as though he usually sat in lead gutters. “I am looking for a ball.”

“You’re looking for a fall, I guess,” observed the pirate. “You don’t remember me, kid, do you?”

“I can’t see your face, but I know your voice.” His voice trembled with excitement.

“Lemme give you a hand,” said the pirate, whipping off his mask. “You make me nervous, sitting there. You’ve got a nerve, you have.”

The Crown Prince looked gratified. “I don’t need any assistance, thank you,” he said. “Perhaps, now I’m here, I’d better look for the ball.”

“I wouldn’t bother about the old ball,” said the pirate, rather nervously for an old sea-dog. “Yon better get back to a safe place. Say, what made you pretend that our Railway made you nervous?”

Prince Ferdinand William Otto climbed up the tiles, trying to look as though tiles were his native habitat. The pirates both regarded him with admiration, as he dropped beside them.

“How did you happen to come here?” asked the Crown Prince. “Did you lose your aeroplane up here?”

“We came on business,” said the pirate importantly. “Two of the enemy entered our cave. We were guarding it from the underbrush, and saw them go in. We trailed them. They must die!”

“Really – die?”

“Of course. Death to those who defy us.”

“Death to those who defy us!” repeated the Crown Prince, enjoying himself hugely, and quite ready for bloodshed.

“Look here, Dick Deadeye,” said the larger pirate to the smaller, who stood gravely at attention, “I think he belongs to our crew. What say, old pal?”

Dick Deadeye wagged his tail.

Some two minutes later, the Crown Prince of Livonia, having sworn the pirate oath of no quarter, except to women and children, was on his way to the pirate cave.

He was not running away. He was not disobedient. He was breaking no promises. Because, from the moment he saw the two confederates, and particularly from the moment he swore the delightful oath, his past was wiped away. There was, in his consciousness, no Palace, no grandfather, no Miss Braithwaite, even no Nikky. There was only a boy and a dog, and a pirate den awaiting him.

CHAPTER -XXXV

THE PAPER CROWN

Strange that the old Palace roof should, in close succession; have seen Nikky forgetting his promise to the Chancellor, and Otto forgetting that he was not to run away. Strange places, roofs, abiding places, since long ago, of witches.

“How’d you happen to be in that gutter?” Bobby demanded, as they started down the staircase in the wall. “Watch out, son, it’s pretty steep.”

“I was getting a ball.”

“Is this your house?”

“Well, I live here,” temporized Prince Ferdinand William Otto. A terrible thought came to him. Suppose this American boy, who detested kings and princes, should learn who he was!

“It looks like a big place. Is it a barracks?”

“No.” He hesitated. “But there are a good many soldiers here. I – I never saw these steps before.”

“I should think not,” boasted Bobby. “I discovered them. I guess nobody else in the world knows about them. I put up a flag at the bottom and took possession. They’re mine.”

“Really!” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, quite delighted. He would never have thought of such a thing.

A door of iron bars at the foot of the long flight of steps – there were four of them – stood open. Here daylight, which had been growing fainter, entirely ceased. And here Bobby, having replaced his mask, placed an air-rifle over his shoulder, and lighted a candle and held it out to the Crown Prince.

“You can carry it,” he said. “Only don’t let it drip on you. You’ll spoil your clothes.” There was a faintly scornful note in his voice, and Ferdinand William Otto was quick to hear it.

“I don’t care at all about my clothes,” he protested. And to prove it he deliberately tilted the candle and let a thin stream of paraffin run down his short jacket.

“You’re a pretty good sport,” Bobby observed. And from that time on he addressed His Royal Highness as “old sport.”

“Walk faster, old sport,” he would say. “That candle’s pretty short, and we’ve got a long way to go.” Or – “Say, old sport, I’ll make you a mask like this, if you like. I made this one.”

When they reached the old dungeon the candle was about done. There was only time to fashion another black mask out of a piece of cloth that bore a strange resemblance to a black waistcoat. The Crown Prince donned this with a wildly beating heart. Never in all his life had he been so excited. Even Dick Deadeye was interested, and gave up his scenting of the strange footsteps that he had followed through the passage, to watch the proceedings.

“We can get another candle, and come back and cook something,” said the senior pirate, tying the mask on with Pieces of brown string. “It gets pretty smoky, but I can cook, you’d better believe.”

So this wonderful boy could cook, also! The Crown Prince had never met any one with so many varied attainments. He gazed through the eyeholes, which were rather too far apart, in rapt admiration.

“As you haven’t got a belt,” Bobby said generously, “I’ll give you the rifle. Ever hold a gun?”

“Oh, yes,” said. the Crown Prince. He did not explain that he had been taught to shoot on the rifle-range of his own regiment, and had won quite a number of medals. He possessed, indeed, quite a number of small but very perfect guns.

With the last gasp of the candle, the children prepared to depart. The senior pirate had already forgotten the two men he had trailed through the passage, and was eager to get outdoors.

“Ready!” he said. “Now, remember, old sport, we are pirates. No quarter, except to women and children. Shoot every man.”

“Even if he is unarmed?” inquired the Crown Prince, who had also studied strategy and tactics, and felt that an unarmed man should be taken prisoner.

“Sure. We don’t really shoot them, silly. Now. Get in step.

“‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.'”

They marched up the steps and out through the opening at the top. If there were any who watched, outside the encircling growth of evergreens, they were not on the lookout for two small boys and a dog. And, as became pirates, the children made a stealthy exit.

Then began, for the Crown Prince, such a day of joy as he had never known before. Even the Land of Delight faded before this new bliss of stalking from tree to tree, of killing unsuspecting citizens who sat on rugs on the ground and ate sausages and little cakes. Here and there, where a party had moved on, they salvaged a bit of food – the heel of a loaf, one of the small country apples. Shades of the Court Physicians, under whose direction the Crown Prince was daily fed a carefully balanced ration!

When they were weary, they stretched out on the ground, and the Crown Prince, whose bed was nightly dried with a warming-pan for fear of dampness, wallowed blissfully on earth still soft with the melting frosts of the winter. He grew muddy and dirty. He had had no hat, of course, and his bright hair hung over his forehead in moist strands. Now and then he drew a long breath of sheer happiness.

Around them circled the gayety of the Carnival, bands of students in white, with the tall peaked caps of Pierrots. Here and there was a scarlet figure, a devil with horns, who watched the crowd warily. A dog, with the tulle petticoats of a dancer tied around it and a great bow on its neck, made friends with Dick Deadeye, alias Tucker, and joined the group.

But, as dusk descended, the crowd gradually dispersed, some to supper, but some to gather in the Place and in the streets around the Palace. For the rumor that the King was dying would not down.

At last the senior pirate consulted a large nickel watch.

“Gee! it’s almost supper time,” he said.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto consulted his own watch, the one with the inscription: “To Ferdinand William Otto, from his grandfather, on the occasion of his taking his first communion.”

“Why can’t you come home to supper with me?” asked the senior pirate. “Would your folks kick up a row?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Would your family object?”

“There is only one person who would mind,” reflected the Crown Prince, aloud, “and she will be angry anyhow. I – do you think your mother will be willing? “

“Willing? Sure she will! My governess – but I’ll fix her. She’s a German, and they’re always cranky. Anyhow, it’s my birthday. I’m always allowed a guest on birthdays.”

So home together, gayly chatting, went the two children, along the cobble-paved streets of the ancient town, past old churches that had been sacked and pillaged by the very ancestors of one of them, taking short cuts through narrow passages that twisted and wormed their way between, and sometimes beneath, century-old stone houses; across the flower-market, where faint odors of dying violets and crushed lilies-of-the-valley still clung to the bare wooden booths; and so, finally, to the door of a tall building where, from the concierge’s room beside the entrance, came a reek of stewing garlic.

Neither of the children had noticed the unwonted silence of the streets, which had, almost suddenly, succeeded the noise of the Carnival. What few passers-by they had seen had been hurrying in the direction of the Palace. Twice they had passed soldiers, with lanterns, and once one had stopped and flashed a light on them.

“Well, old sport!” said Bobby in English, “anything you can do for me?”

The soldier had passed on, muttering at the insolence of American children. The two youngsters laughed consumedly at the witticism. They were very happy, the lonely little American boy and the lonely little Prince – happy from sheer gregariousness, from the satisfaction of that strongest of human inclinations, next to love – the social instinct.

The concierge was out. His niece admitted them, and went back to her interrupted cooking. The children hurried up the winding stone staircase, with its iron rail and its gas lantern, to the second floor.

In the sitting-room, the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. With an irritable gesture she took off her slipper, and, putting one coarse-stockinged foot on the fender, proceeded to darn by putting the slipper into the stocking and working over it.

Things looked unpropitious. The Crown Prince ducked behind Bobby.

The Fraulein looked at the clock.

“You are fifteen minutes late,” she snapped, and bit the darning thread – not with rage, but because she had forgotten her scissors.

“I’m sorry, but you see – “

“Whom have you there?”

The Prince cowered. She looked quite like his grandfather when his tutor’s reports had been unfavorable.

“A friend of mine,” said Bobby, not a whit daunted.

The governess put down the stocking and rose. In so doing, she caught her first real glimpse of Ferdinand William Otto, and she staggered back.

“Holy Saints!” she said, and went white. Then she stared at the boy, and her color came back. “For a moment,” she muttered ” – but no. He is not so tall, nor has he the manner. Yes, he is much smaller!”

Which proves that, whether it wears it or not, royalty is always measured to the top of a crown.

In the next room Bobby’s mother was arranging candles on a birthday cake in the center of the table. Pepy had iced the cake herself, and had forgotten one of the “b’s” in “Bobby” so that the cake really read: “Boby – XII.”

However, it looked delicious, and inside had been baked a tiny black china doll and a new American penny, with Abraham Lincoln’s head on it. The penny was for good fortune, but the doll was a joke of Pepy’s, Bobby being aggressively masculine.

Bobby, having passed the outpost, carried the rest of the situation by assault. He rushed into the dining-room and kissed his mother, with one eye on the cake.

“Mother, here’s company to supper! Oh, look at the cake! B-O-B-Y’! Mother! That’s awful!”

Mrs. Thorpe looked at the cake. “Poor Pepy,” she said. “Suppose she had made it ‘Booby’?” Then she saw Ferdinand William Otto, and went over, somewhat puzzled, with her hand out. “I am very glad Bobby brought you,” she said. “He has so few little friends – “

Then she stopped, for the Prince had brought his heels together sharply, and, bending over her hand, had kissed it, exactly as he kissed his Aunt Annunciata’s when he went to have tea with her. Mrs. Thorpe was fairly startled, not at the kiss, but at the grace with which the tribute was rendered.

Then she looked down, and it restored her composure to find that Ferdinand William Otto, too, had turned eyes toward the cake. He was, after all, only a hungry small boy. With quick tenderness she stooped and kissed him gravely on the forehead. Caresses were strange to Ferdinand William Otto. His warm little heart leaped and pounded. At that moment, he would have died for her!

Mr. Thorpe came home a little late. He kissed Bobby twelve times, and one to grow on. He shook hands absently with the visitor, and gave the Fraulein the evening paper – an extravagance on which he insisted, although one could read the news for nothing by going to the caf‚ on the corner. Then he drew his wife aside.

“Look here!” he said. “Don’t tell Bobby – no use exciting him, and of course it’s not our funeral anyhow but there’s a report that the Crown Prince has been kidnapped. And that’s not all. The old King is dying!”

“How terrible!”

“Worse than that. The old King gone and no Crown Prince! It may mean almost any sort of trouble! I’ve closed up at the Park for the night.” His arm around his wife, he looked through the doorway to where Bobby and Ferdinand were counting the candles. “It’s made me think pretty hard,” he said. “Bobby mustn’t go around alone the way he’s been doing. All Americans here are considered millionaires. If the Crown Prince could go, think how easy – “

His arm tightened around his wife, and together they went in to the birthday feast. Ferdinand William Otto was hungry. He ate eagerly – chicken, fruit compote, potato salad – again shades of the Court physicians, who fed him at night a balanced ration of milk, egg, and zwieback! Bobby also ate busily, and conversation languished.

Then the moment came when, the first cravings appeased, they sat back in their chairs while Pepy cleared the table and brought in a knife to cut the cake. Mr. Thorpe had excused himself for a moment. Now he came back, with a bottle wrapped in a newspaper, and sat down again.

“I thought,” he said, “as this is a real occasion, not exactly Robert’s coming of age, but marking his arrival at years of discretion, the period when he ceases to be a small boy and becomes a big one, we might drink a toast to it.”

“Robert!” objected the big boy’s mother.

“A teaspoonful each, honey,” he begged. “It changes it from a mere supper to a festivity.”

He poured a few drops of wine into the children’s glasses, and filled them up with water. Then he filled the others, and sat smiling, this big young man, who had brought his loved ones across the sea, and was trying to make them happy up a flight of stone stairs, above a concierge’s bureau that smelled of garlic.

“First,” he said, ” I believe it is customary to toast the King. Friends, I give you the good King and brave soldier, Ferdinand of Livonia.”

They stood up to drink it, and even Pepy had a glass.

Ferdinand William Otto was on his feet first. He held his glass up in his right hand, and his eyes shone. He knew what to do. He had seen the King’s health drunk any number of times.

“To His Majesty, Ferdinand of Livonia,” he said solemnly. “God keep the King!”

Over their glasses Mrs. Thorpe’s eyes met her husband’s. How they trained their children here!

But Ferdinand William Otto had not finished. “I give you,” he said, in his clear young treble, holding his glass, ” the President of the United States – The President!”

“The President!” said Mr. Thorpe.

They drank again, except the Fraulein, who disapproved of children being made much of, and only pretended to sip her wine.

“Bobby,” said his mother, with a catch in her voice, “haven’t you something to suggest – as a toast?”

Bobby’s eyes were on the cake; he came back with difficulty.

“Well,” he meditated, ” I guess – would ‘Home’ be all right?”

“Home!” they all said, a little shakily, and drank to it.

Home! To the Thorpes, a little house on a shady street in America; to the Fraulein, a thatched cottage in the mountains of Germany and an old mother; to Pepy, the room in a tenement where she went at night; to Ferdinand William Otto, a formal suite of apartments in the Palace, surrounded by pomp, ordered by rule and precedent, hardened by military discipline, and unsoftened by family love, save for the grim affection of the old King.

Home!

After all, Pepy’s plan went astray, for the Fraulein got the china baby, and Ferdinand William Otto the Lincoln penny.

“That,” said Bobby’s father, “is a Lincoln penny, young man. It bears the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Have you ever heard of him?”

The Prince looked up. Did he not know the “Gettysburg Address” by heart?

“Yes, sir,” he said. “The – my grandfather thinks that President Lincoln was a very great man.”

“One of the world’s greatest. I hardly thought, over here – ” Mr. Thorpe paused and looked speculatively at the boy. “You’d better keep that penny where you won’t lose it,” he said soberly. “It doesn’t hurt us to try to be good. If you’re in trouble, think of the difficulties Abraham Lincoln surmounted. If you want to be great, think how great he was.” He was a trifle ashamed of his own earnestness. “All that for a penny, young man!”

The festivities were taking a serious turn. There was a little packet at each plate, and now Bobby’s mother reached over and opened hers.

“Oh!” she said, and exhibited a gaudy tissue paper bonnet. Everybody had one. Mr. Thorpe’s was a dunce’s cap, and Fraulein’s a giddy Pierrette of black and white. Bobby had a military cap. With eager fingers Ferdinand William Otto opened his; he had never tasted this delicious paper-cap joy before.

It was a crown, a sturdy bit of gold paper, cut into points and set with red paste jewels – a gem of a crown. He was charmed. He put it on his head, with the unconsciousness of childhood, and posed delightedly.

The Fraulein looked at Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and slowly the color left her lean face. She stared. It was he, then, and none other. Stupid, not to have known at the beginning! He, the Crown Prince, here in the home of these barbarous Americans, when, by every plan that had been made, he should now be in the hands of those who would dispose of him.

” I give you,” said Mr. Thorpe, raising his glass toward his wife, “the giver of the feast. Boys, up with you!”

It was then that the Fraulein, making an excuse, slipped out of the room.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE KING IS DEAD

Now at last the old King’s hour had come. Mostly he slept, as though his body, eager for its long rest, had already given up the struggle. Stimulants, given by his devoted physician, had no effect. Other physicians there were, a group of them, but it was Doctor Wiederman who stood by the bed and waited.

Father Gregory, his friend of many years, had come again from Etzel, and it was he who had administered the sacrament. The King had roused for it, and had smiled at the father.

“So!” he said, almost in a whisper, “you would send me clean! It is hard to scour an old kettle.”

Doctor Wiederman bent over the bed. “Majesty,” he implored, “if there is anything we can do to make you comfortable – “

“Give me Hubert’s picture,” said the King. When his fingers refused to hold it, Annunciata came forward swiftly and held it before him. But his heavy eyes closed. With more intuition than might have been expected of her, the Archduchess laid it on the white coverlet, and placed her father’s hand on it.

The physicians consulted in an alcove. Annunciata went back to her restless, noiseless pacing of the room. Father Gregory went to a window, and stared out. He saw, not the silent crowd in the Place, but many other things; the King, as a boy, chafing under the restraint of Court ceremonial; the King, as a young man, taking a wife who did not love him. He saw the King madly in love with his wife, and turning to excesses to forget her. Then, and for this the old priest thanked the God who was so real to him, he saw the Queen bear children, and turning to her husband because he was their father. They had lived to love deeply and’ truly.

Then had come the inevitable griefs. The Queen had died, and had been saved a tragedy, for Hubert had been violently done to death. And now again a tragedy had come, but one the King would never know.

The two Sisters of Mercy stood beside the bed, and looked down at the quiet figure.

“I should wish to die so,” whispered the elder. “A long life, filled with many deeds, and then to sleep away!”

“A long life, full of many sorrows!” observed the younger one, her eyes full of tears. “He has outlived all that he loved.”

“Except the little Otto.”

Their glances met, for even here there was a question.

As if their thought had penetrated the haze which is, perhaps, the mist that hides from us the gates of heaven, the old King opened his eyes.

“Otto!” he said. “I – wish – “

Annunciata bent over him. “He is coming, father,” she told him, with white lips.

She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and looked up to Doctor Wiederman with appealing eyes.

“I am afraid,” she whispered. “Can you not – ?”