have found no one, your Highness; yet I have left my men to search
again, though in truth we have inspected every inch of all the rooms.'

He looked at Johanna Elizabetha curiously as he spoke. Did he guess her
mad? She felt guilty, suspected. Could that horrid vision, that creeping,
lurking man, have been a phantom? A thing, then, of her own creation, not
a ghost of the castle--no, a spectre of her own!

'You cannot have searched everywhere,' she said. 'There are no ghosts in
the castle save the White Lady, and I saw a man skulking in my
apartments.'

'Your Highness, the search has----,' he began.

'I will direct your men, Monsieur,' she interrupted hurriedly, and
entered the audience-chamber. Carefully the soldiers went through the
rooms again, probing each dark corner and under the hangings with their
swords, but no one was to be found. The sweat stood on her Highness's
brow. She knew she would give all she possessed for the man to be
discovered. If he were not, she knew that she must become insane--nay,
she would be proved already mad to her own knowledge.

Suddenly a shout went up from the soldiers who had penetrated to her
Highness's praying-room, which, owing to its bareness and small size, had
received at first but a cursory glance from the searchers.

Against the balustrade in the angle of the small balcony the murderer
crouched. The soldiers dragged him forward and flung him, an unresisting,
trembling heap, on to the middle of the floor. Her Highness hearing the
commotion hurried forward.

'You have found him, then? Oh, thank God!' she cried.

'Pardon, pardon, by your mother's heart, I implore!' moaned the miserable
wretch, dragging himself like a crawling, wriggling animal towards the
Duchess. He was immediately hauled back by the soldiers.

'Stand up, you worm, and give account of yourself,' said the captain
sternly, bestowing a kick on the man's ribs.

'I meant no harm! By Christ! I meant no harm!' the prisoner wailed.

'How came you in her Highness's apartments? Speak!'

'I am a stranger in Stuttgart,' replied the man.

'Here's a lie for you,' broke in a trooper; 'he's the Graevenitz's private
servant. I have often seen him at Tuebingen.'

'Yes! yes! yes! I am the Comtesse d'Urach's secretary; but I return to
Italy soon, and I wished to see the Duchess's famous black rooms before I
left! Curiosity has been my undoing! Pardon! pardon!'

'If you only wanted to see my rooms,' said her Highnes