ut of a window overlooking the
courtyard, and the line of soldiers underneath in most surprising
confusion. The officer of the day was not in sight.

Nikky, entering the stone-paved court, and feeling extremely glum, had
been amazed to see the line of guards, who usually sat on a bench, with
a sentry or picket, or whatever they called him, parading up and down
before them--Nikky was amazed to see them one by one leaping into the
air, in the most undignified manner. Nikky watched the performance. Then
he stalked over. They subsided sheepishly. In the air was the cause of
the excitement, a cigarette dangling at the end of a silk thread, and
bobbing up and down. No one was to be seen at the window above.

Nikky was very tall. He caught the offending atom on its next leap, and
jerked it off. As he had suspected, it was one of his own, bearing an
"N" and his coat of arms.

The Crown Prince received that day, with the cigarette as an excuse,
a considerable amount of Nikky's general unhappiness and rage at the
world.

"Well," said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, when it was over, "I have to
do something, don't I?"

It was Miss Braithwaite's conviction that this prank, and several other
things, such as sauntering about with his hands in his pockets, and
referring to his hat as a "lid," were all the result of his meeting that
American boy.

"He is really not the same child," she finished. "Oskar found him the
other day with a rolled-up piece of paper lighted at the end, pretending
he was smoking."

The Chancellor came now and then, but not often. And his visits were not
cheering. The Niburg affair had left its mark on him. The incident of
the beggar on the quay was another scar. The most extreme precautions
were being taken, but a bad time was coming, and must be got over
somehow.

That bad time was Karl's visit.

No public announcement of the marriage had yet been made. It was bound
to be unpopular. Certainly the revolutionary party would make capital of
it. To put it through by force, if necessary, and, that accomplished,
to hold the scourge of Karnia's anger over a refractory people, was his
plan. To soothe them with the news of the cession of the seaport strip
was his hope.

Sometimes, in the early morning, when the King lay awake, and was
clearer mentally than later in the day, he wondered. He would not live
to see the result of all this planning. But one contingency presented
itself constantly. Suppose the Cro