le in power and size to the kingdom which she coveted.
Madame the duchess was relying on some greater power, else her plans
were madness.

As for the prince, he had but one thought: to reach Bleiberg. The
confinement, together with mental suffering, anxiety and forced
inaction, began to tell on him. Twice he tripped and fell, and Maurice
had to return to assist him to his feet. However could they cross
the mountains, a feat which needed both courage and extreme physical
endurance?

"I am so weak," said the prince, "so pitiably weak! I thought to
frighten the woman by starving myself, poor fool that I was!"

And they went on again. Maurice was beginning to feel the effect of his
wine-bibbing; he had a splitting headache.

"Silence!" he suddenly whispered, sinking and dragging the prince with
him.

A hundred yards in advance of them stood a sentinel, his body bent
forward and a hand to his ear. Presently he, too, lay down. Five minutes
passed. The sentinel rose, and convinced that his ears had tricked him,
resumed his lonely patrol. He disappeared toward the west, while the
fugitives made off in an easterly direction. Maurice was a soldier
again. Every two or three hundred yards he knelt and pressed his ear to
the cold, damp earth and waited for a familiar jar. The prince watched
these movements with interest.

"You have been a soldier?" he asked.

"Yes. Perhaps we had better strike out for the mountains. The sentry
line can not extend as far as this."

But now they could see the drab peaks of the mountains which loomed
between the partly dismantled trees. Beyond lay the kingdom. Would they
ever reach it? There was only one pass; this they dared not make. Yet
if they attempted to cross the mountains in a deserted place, they
might very easily get lost; for in some locations it was fully six miles
across the range, and this, with the ups and downs and windings in
and out, might lengthen into twenty miles. They struck out toward the
mountains, and after half an hour they came upon an unforeseen obstacle.
They sat down in despair. This obstacle was the river, not very, wide,
but deep, turbulent and impassable.

"We shall have to risk the pass," said Maurice, gloomily; "though heaven
knows how we are to get through it. We have ten shots between us."

They followed the river. The roar of it deadened all other sounds. For
a mile they plodded on, silent, watchful and meditative. The prince
thought of his love; Mauri