ged; by it knew not what. Two police agents had been
found dead the morning after Karl's departure, on the outskirts of the
city, lying together in a freshly ploughed field. They bore marks of
struggle, and each had been stabbed through the veins of the neck, as
though they had been first subdued and then scientifically destroyed.

Nikky, summoned to the Chancellor's house that morning, had been
told the facts, and had stood, rather still and tense, while Mettlich
recounted them.

"Our very precautions are our danger," said the Chancellor. "And the
King--" He stopped and sat, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair.

"And the King, sir?"

"Almost at the end. A day or two."

On that day came fresh news, alarming enough. More copies of the
seditious paper were in circulation in the city and the surrounding
country, passing from hand to hand. The town was searched for the
press which had printed them, but it was not located. Which was not
surprising, since it had been lowered through a trap into a sub-cellar
of the house on the Road of the Good Children, and the trapdoor covered
with rubbish.

Karl, with Hedwig in his thoughts, had returned to mobilize his army not
far from the border for the spring maneuvers, and at a meeting of the
King's Council the matter of a mobilization in Livonia was seriously
considered.

Fat Friese favored it, and made an impassioned speech, with sweat thick
on his heavy face.

"I am not cowardly," he finished. "I fear nothing for myself or for
those belonging to me. But the duty of this Council is to preserve the
throne for the Crown Prince, at any cost. And, if we cannot trust the
army, in what can we trust?"

"In God," said the Chancellor grimly.

In the end nothing was done. Mobilization might precipitate the crisis,
and there was always the fear that the army, in parts, was itself
disloyal.

It was Marschall, always nervous and now pallid with terror, who
suggested abandoning the marriage between Hedwig and Karl.

"Until this matter came up," he said, avoiding Mettlich's eyes, "there
was danger, but of a small party only, the revolutionary one. One which,
by increased effort on the part of the secret police, might have been
suppressed. It is this new measure which is fatal. The people detest it.
They cannot forget, if we can, the many scores of hatred we still owe to
Karnia. We have, by our own act, alienated the better class of citizens.
Why not abandon this marriage, wh