st come with me to Zenda, and I wanted a man to guard what I
loved most in all the world, and suffer me to set about my task of
releasing the King with a quiet mind.

The Marshal received me with most loyal kindness. To some extent, I took
him into my confidence. I charged him with the care of the princess,
looking him full and significantly in the face as I bade him let no one
from her cousin the duke approach her, unless he himself were there and
a dozen of his men with him.

"You may be right, sire," said he, shaking his grey head sadly. "I have
known better men than the duke do worse things than that for love."

I could quite appreciate the remark, but I said:

"There's something beside love, Marshal. Love's for the heart; is there
nothing my brother might like for his head?"

"I pray that you wrong him, sire."

"Marshal, I'm leaving Strelsau for a few days. Every evening I will
send a courier to you. If for three days none comes, you will publish an
order which I will give you, depriving Duke Michael of the governorship
of Strelsau and appointing you in his place. You will declare a state of
siege. Then you will send word to Michael that you demand an audience of
the King--You follow me?"

"Ay, sire."

"--In twenty-four hours. If he does not produce the King" (I laid my
hand on his knee), "then the King is dead, and you will proclaim the
next heir. You know who that is?"

"The Princess Flavia."

"And swear to me, on your faith and honour and by the fear of the living
God, that you will stand by her to the death, and kill that reptile, and
seat her where I sit now."

"On my faith and honour, and by the fear of God, I swear it! And may
Almighty God preserve your Majesty, for I think that you go on an errand
of danger."

"I hope that no life more precious than mine may be demanded," said I,
rising. Then I held out my hand to him.

"Marshal," I said, "in days to come, it may be--I know not--that you
will hear strange things of the man who speaks to you now. Let him be
what he may, and who he may, what say you of the manner in which he has
borne himself as King in Strelsau?"

The old man, holding my hand, spoke to me, man to man.

"I have known many of the Elphbergs," said he, "and I have seen you.
And, happen what may, you have borne yourself as a wise King and a brave
man; ay, and you have proved as courteous a gentleman and as gallant a
lover as any that have been of the House."

"Be that my epit