rd passionately on the ground and cried
to Fritz to ride after him. But Fritz stopped his horse, and leapt down
and ran to me, and knelt, putting his arm about me. And indeed it was
time, for the wound that Detchard had given me was broken forth afresh,
and my blood was staining the ground.

"Then give me the horse!" I cried, staggering to my feet and throwing
his arms off me. And the strength of my rage carried me so far as where
the horse stood, and then I fell prone beside it. And Fritz knelt by me
again.

"Fritz!" I said.

"Ay, friend--dear friend!" he said, tender as a woman.

"Is the King alive?"

He took his handkerchief and wiped my lips, and bent and kissed me on
the forehead.

"Thanks to the most gallant gentleman that lives," said he softly, "the
King is alive!"

The little farm-girl stood by us, weeping for fright and wide-eyed for
wonder; for she had seen me at Zenda; and was not I, pallid, dripping,
foul, and bloody as I was--yet was not I the King?

And when I heard that the King was alive, I strove to cry "Hurrah!" But
I could not speak, and I laid my head back in Fritz's arms and closed
my eyes, and I groaned; and then, lest Fritz should do me wrong in his
thoughts, I opened my eyes and tried to say "Hurrah!" again. But I could
not. And being very tired, and now very cold, I huddled myself close up
to Fritz, to get the warmth of him, and shut my eyes again and went to
sleep.

CHAPTER 20

The Prisoner and the King

In order to a full understanding of what had occurred in the Castle of
Zenda, it is necessary to supplement my account of what I myself saw
and did on that night by relating briefly what I afterwards learnt
from Fritz and Madame de Mauban. The story told by the latter explained
clearly how it happened that the cry which I had arranged as a stratagem
and a sham had come, in dreadful reality, before its time, and had thus,
as it seemed at the moment, ruined our hopes, while in the end it
had favoured them. The unhappy woman, fired, I believe by a genuine
attachment to the Duke of Strelsau, no less than by the dazzling
prospects which a dominion over him opened before her eyes, had followed
him at his request from Paris to Ruritania. He was a man of strong
passions, but of stronger will, and his cool head ruled both. He was
content to take all and give nothing. When she arrived, she was not
long in finding that she had a rival in the Princess Flavia; rendered
desperate, sh