seemed to summon a last rallying energy from the failing
heart. The man's gaze showed that he understood. From the free
baron's eye flashed a glance of savage power and force.

"Speak!" he repeated, cruelly, imperatively.

The mustachios quivered; the leader bent his head low, so low his face
almost touched the soldier's. A voice--was it a voice, so faint it
sounded?--breathed a few words:

"The emperor--Spain--Caillette gone!"

Quickly the free baron sprang to his feet. The soldier seemed to fall
asleep; his face calm and tranquil as a campaigner's before the bivouac
fire at the hour of rest; the ugliness of his features glossed by a
new-found dignity; only his mustachios strangely fierce, vivid,
formidable, against the peace and pallor of his countenance. The leech
looked at him; stopped stirring the drug; leaned over him; straightened
himself; took the vial once more from the table and threw the medicine
out of the window. Then he methodically began gathering up bottles and
other receptacles, which he placed neatly in a handbag. The free baron
passed through the door, leaving the cheerless practitioner still
gravely engaged in getting together his small belongings.

Soberly the king's guest walked down the echoing stairway out into the
open air of the court. The emperor in Spain? It seemed not unlikely.
Charles spent much of his time in that country, nor was it improbable
he had gone there quietly, without flourish of trumpet, for some
purpose of his own. His ways were not always manifest; his personality
and mind-workings were characterized by concealment. If the emperor
had gone to Spain, a messenger, riding post-haste, could reach Charles
in time to enable that monarch to interpose in the nuptials and
override the confidence the free baron had established for himself in
the court of Francis. An impediment offered by Charles would be
equivalent to the abandonment of the entire marital enterprise.

Pausing before a massive arched doorway that led into a wing of the
castle where the free baron knew the jesters and certain of the
gentlemen of the chamber lodged, the master of Hochfels, in answer to
his inquiries from a servant, learned that Caillette had not been in
his apartments since the day before; that he had ridden from the
tournament, ostensibly to return to his rooms, but nothing had been
heard of him since. And the oddest part of it was, as the old woman
volubly explained when the free baro