m, but there was another question dinning in my ears so
loudly that it drowned all other sounds--"Who is Yolanda?"

Yolanda was entering the door of the House under the Wall less than five
minutes before I saw the duke pass through the Postern. Marcus Grote had
told me there were but two openings to the castle, the Postern and the
great gate on the other side of the castle by the donjon keep. To reach
the great gate one must pass out by Cambrai or the Somme Gate and go
around the city walls--an hour's journey.

With an air of carelessness I asked Hymbercourt concerning the various
entrances to the castle. He confirmed what Grote had said. Considering
all the facts, I was forced to this conclusion: If the Princess Mary had
met the duke at the Postern, Yolanda was not the Princess Mary.

The next day I reconnoitred the premises, and again reached the
conclusion that Yolanda could not have met the duke inside the Postern
unless she were a witch with wings that could fly thither over the
castle walls; ergo, she was not the princess. With equal certainty she
was not a burgher girl.

In seeking an identity that would fit her I groped among many absurd
propositions. Yolanda might be the duke's ward, or she might be his
daughter, though not bearing his name. My brain was in a whirl. If she
were the princess, I wished to remain in Peronne to pursue the small
advantage Max had assuredly gained in winning her favor. The French
marriage might miscarry. But if she were not the princess, I could not
get my Prince Max away from her dangerous neighborhood too quickly. I
could not, of course, say to Max, "You shall remain in Peronne," or "You
shall leave Peronne at once;" but my influence over him was great, and
he trusted my fidelity, my love, and my ability to advise him rightly. I
had always given my advice carefully, but, above all, I had given him
the only pleasurable moments he had ever known. That, by the way, may
have been the greatest good I could have offered him.

When Max was a child, the pleasure of his amusements was smothered by
officialism. My old Lord Aurbach, though gouty and stiff of joint, was
eager to "run" his balls or his arrows, and old Sir Giles Butch could be
caught so easily at tag or blind man's buff that there was no sport for
Max in doing it. Everything the boy did was done by the heir of Styria,
except on rare occasions when he and I stole away from the castle. Then
we were boys together, and then it w