can travel, I will come."

"If madame wishes, I can take a letter."

She pondered over that, interlacing her fingers nervously as she
reflected.

"I will send no letter," she decided, "but I will give you a message,
which you can deliver."

"Yes, madame."

"Say to the Committee," she began, and paused. She had thought and
thought until her brain burned with thinking, but she had found no way
out. And yet she could not at once bring herself to speech. But at last
she said it: "Say to the Committee that I have reflected and that I
will do what they ask. As far," she added, "as lies in my power. I can
only--"

"That is all the Committee expects," he said civilly, and with a relief
that was not lost on her. "With madame's intelligence, to try is to
succeed."

Nevertheless, he left her well guarded. Even Minna, slipping off for an
evening hour with a village sweetheart, was stealthily shadowed. Before
this, fine ladies had changed garments with their maids and escaped from
divers unpleasantnesses.

Olga Loschek lay in her bed, and always there were bells. The cattle
were being driven up into the mountains for the summer grazing,
great, soft-eyed herds, their bells tinkling slowly as they made their
deliberate, soft-footed progress along the valley; the silvery bells for
mass; the clock striking the hour with its heavy, vibrating clamor of
bronze.

When she sank into the light sleep of fever, they roused her, or
she slept on; hearing in their tones the great bell of St. Stefan's
announcing the King's death. Bells, always bells.

At the end of two days she was able to be up again. She moved languidly
about her room, still too weak to plan. There were times when she
contemplated suicide, but she knew herself to be too cowardly to do more
than dream of it.

And on the fourth day came the Crown Prince of Livonia on a pilgrimage.

The manner of his coming was this:

There are more ways than one of reaching the hearts of an uneasy people.
Remission of taxes is a bad one. It argues a mistake in the past,
in exacting such tithes. Governments may make errors, but must not
acknowledge them. There is the freeing of political prisoners, but that,
too, is dangerous, when such prisoners breathe sedition to the very
prison walls.

And there is the appeal to sentiment. The Government, pinning all its
hopes to one small boy, would further endear him to the people. Wily
statesman that he was, the Chancellor had hit on this