n had pushed his way into the
tastefully furnished chambers of the absent fool, the jester had been
desperately wounded; had groaned much when the duke's _plaisant_ had
assisted him from the field, and had been barely able to mount his
horse with the assistance of a squire.

Meditatively, while absorbing this prattle, the visitor gazed about
him. The bed had been unslept in, and here and there were evidences of
a hasty and unpremeditated leave-taking. Upon an open desk lay a
half-finished poem, obviously intended for no eyes save the writer's.
Several dainty missives and a lace handkerchief, with a monogram,
invited the unscrupulous and prying glance of the inquisitive
newsmonger.

But as these details offered nothing additional to the one great germ
of information embodied in the loquacity of the narrator, the free
baron turned silently away, breaking the thread of her volubility by
unceremoniously disappearing. No further doubt remained in his mind
that the duke's _plaisant_ had sent a comrade in motley to the emperor,
and, as he would not have inspired a mere fool's errand, Charles
without question was in Spain, several days nearer to the court of the
French monarch than the princess' betrothed had presumed. Caillette
had now been four-and-twenty hours on his journey; it would be useless
to attempt pursuit, as the jester was a gallant horseman, trained to
the hunt. Such a man would be indefatigable in the saddle, and the
other realized that, strive as he might, he could never overcome the
handicap.

Then of what avail was one fool in the dungeon, with a second--on the
road? Should he abandon his quest, be driven from his purpose by a
nest of motley meddlers? The idea never seriously entered his mind; he
would fight it out doggedly upon the field of deception. But how? As
surely as the sun rose and set, before many days had come and gone the
hand of Charles would be thrust between him and his projects.
Circumspect, suspicious, was the emperor; he would investigate, and
investigation meant the downfall of the structure of falsehood that had
been erected with such skill and painstaking by the subtile architect.
The maker had pride in his work, and, to see it totter and tumble, was
a misfortune he would avert with his life--or fall with it.

As he had no intention, however, of being buried beneath the wreckage
of his endeavors, he sought to prop the weakening fabric of invention
and mendacity by new shuffli