to be crowned. Rassendyll here
doesn't know our pretty Michael. What think you, Fritz, has Michael no
king ready? Has half Strelsau no other candidate? As God's alive, man
the throne's lost if the King show himself not in Strelsau today. I know
Black Michael."

"We could carry him there," said I.

"And a very pretty picture he makes," sneered Sapt.

Fritz von Tarlenheim buried his face in his hands. The King breathed
loudly and heavily. Sapt stirred him again with his foot.

"The drunken dog!" he said; "but he's an Elphberg and the son of his
father, and may I rot in hell before Black Michael sits in his place!"

For a moment or two we were all silent; then Sapt, knitting his bushy
grey brows, took his pipe from his mouth and said to me:

"As a man grows old he believes in Fate. Fate sent you here. Fate sends
you now to Strelsau."

I staggered back, murmuring "Good God!"

Fritz looked up with an eager, bewildered gaze.

"Impossible!" I muttered. "I should be known."

"It's a risk--against a certainty," said Sapt. "If you shave, I'll wager
you'll not be known. Are you afraid?"

"Sir!"

"Come, lad, there, there; but it's your life, you know, if you're
known--and mine--and Fritz's here. But, if you don't go, I swear to you
Black Michael will sit tonight on the throne, and the King lie in prison
or his grave."

"The King would never forgive it," I stammered.

"Are we women? Who cares for his forgiveness?"

The clock ticked fifty times, and sixty and seventy times, as I stood in
thought. Then I suppose a look came over my face, for old Sapt caught me
by the hand, crying:

"You'll go?"

"Yes, I'll go," said I, and I turned my eyes on the prostrate figure of
the King on the floor.

"Tonight," Sapt went on in a hasty whisper, "we are to lodge in the
Palace. The moment they leave us you and I will mount our horses--Fritz
must stay there and guard the King's room--and ride here at a gallop.
The King will be ready--Josef will tell him--and he must ride back with
me to Strelsau, and you ride as if the devil were behind you to the
frontier."

I took it all in in a second, and nodded my head.

"There's a chance," said Fritz, with his first sign of hopefulness.

"If I escape detection," said I.

"If we're detected," said Sapt. "I'll send Black Michael down below
before I go myself, so help me heaven! Sit in that chair, man."

I obeyed him.

He darted from the room, calling "Josef! Josef!" In three minut