At that, like an automaton, Bert pulled his trigger.

It was his first experience of an oxygen-containing bullet. A great
flame spurted from the middle of the Prince, a blinding flare, and
there came a thud like the firing of a gun. Something hot and wet struck
Bert's face. Then through a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he saw
limbs and a collapsing, burst body fling themselves to earth.

Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, and the bird-faced officer
might have cut him to the earth without a struggle. But instead the
bird-faced officer was running away through the undergrowth, dodging as
he went. Bert roused himself to a brief ineffectual pursuit, but he had
no stomach for further killing. He returned to the mangled, scattered
thing that had so recently been the great Prince Karl Albert. He
surveyed the scorched and splashed vegetation about it. He made some
speculative identifications. He advanced gingerly and picked up the hot
revolver, to find all its chambers strained and burst. He became aware
of a cheerful and friendly presence. He was greatly shocked that one so
young should see so frightful a scene.

"'Ere, Kitty," he said, "this ain't no place for you."

He made three strides across the devastated area, captured the kitten
neatly, and went his way towards the shed, with her purring loudly on
his shoulder.

"YOU don't seem to mind," he said.

For a time he fussed about the shed, and at last discovered the rest
of the provisions hidden in the roof. "Seems 'ard," he said, as he
administered a saucerful of milk, "when you get three men in a 'ole like
this, they can't work together. But 'im and 'is princing was jest a bit
too thick!"

"Gaw!" he reflected, sitting on the counter and eating, "what a thing
life is! 'Ere am I; I seen 'is picture, 'eard 'is name since I was a kid
in frocks. Prince Karl Albert! And if any one 'ad tole me I was going to
blow 'im to smithereens--there! I shouldn't 'ave believed it, Kitty.

"That chap at Margit ought to 'ave tole me about it. All 'e tole me was
that I got a weak chess.

"That other chap, 'e ain't going to do much. Wonder what I ought to do
about 'im?"

He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and fingered the gun on his
knee. "I don't like this killing, Kitty," he said. "It's like Kurt said
about being blooded. Seems to me you got to be blooded young.... If
that Prince 'ad come up to me and said, 'Shake 'ands!' I'd 'ave shook
'ands.... Now 'ere's th