re it. It was
closed, and dreary. But old Adelbert saw it not at all. He stumped
along, panting with haste and exhaustion, to do the thing he had set
himself to do.

Here was the Palace. Before it were packed dense throngs of silent
people. Now and then a man put down a box, and rising on it, addressed
the crowd, attempting to rouse them. Each time angry hands pulled him
down, and hisses greeted him as he slunk away.

Had old Adelbert been alive to anything but his mission, he would have
seen that this was no mob of revolutionists, but a throng of grieving
people, awaiting the great bell of St. Stefan's with its dire news.

Then, above their heads, it rang out, slow, ominous, terrible. A sob ran
through the crowd. In groups, and at last as a whole, the throng knelt.
Men uncovered and women wept.

The bell rang on. At its first notes old Adelbert stopped, staggered,
almost fell. Then he uncovered his head.

"Gone!" he said. "The old King! My old King!"

His face twitched. But the horror behind him drove him on through the
kneeling crowd. Where it refused to yield, he drove the iron point of
his wooden leg into yielding flesh, and so made his way.

Here, in the throng, Olga of the garderobe met him, and laid a trembling
hand on his arm. He shook her off, but she clung to him.

"Know you what they are saying?" she whispered. "That the Crown Prince
is stolen. And it is true. Soldiers scour the city everywhere."

"Let me go," said old Adelbert, fiercely.

"They say," she persisted, "that the Chancellor has made away with him,
to sell us to Karnia."

"Fools!" cried old Adelbert, and pushed her off. When she refused to
release him, he planted his iron toe on her shapely one and worked his
way forward. The crowd had risen, and now stood expectantly facing the
Palace. Some one raised a cry and others took it up.

"The King!" they cried. "Show us the little King!"

But the balcony outside the dead King's apartments remained empty. The
curtains at the long windows were drawn, save at one, opened for air.
The breeze shook its curtains to and fro, but no small, childish figure
emerged. The cries kept up, but there was a snarl in the note now.

"The King! Long live the King! Where is he?"

A man in a red costume, near old Adelbert, leaped on a box and lighted a
flaming torch. "Aye!" he yelled, "call for the little King. Where is he?
What have they done with him?"

Old Adelbert pushed on. The voice of the revolution