his way impatiently. The temper of the mob
was growing ugly. It was suspicious, frightened, potentially dangerous.

The cry of "To the Palace!" greeted his ears he finally emerged
breathless from the throng.

He stepped boldly to the old stone archway, and faced a line of soldiers
there. "I would see the Chancellor!" he gasped, and saluted.

The captain of the guard stepped out. "What is it you want?" he
demanded.

"The Chancellor," he lowered his voice. "I have news of the Crown
Prince."

Magic words, indeed. Doors opened swiftly before them. But time was
flying, too. In his confusion the old man had only one thought, to reach
the Chancellor. It would have been better to have told his news at once.
The climbing of stairs takes time when one is old and fatigued, and has
but one leg.

However, at last it way done. Past a room where sat Nikky Larisch,
swordless and self-convicted of treason, past a great salon where a
terrified Court waited, and waiting, listened to the cries outside, the
beating of many drums, the sound of multitudinous feet, old Adelbert
stumped to the door of the room where the Council sat debating and the
Chancellor paced the floor.

Small ceremony tow. Led by soldiers, who retired and left him to enter
alone, old Adelbert stumbled into the room. He was out of breath and
dizzy; his heart beat to suffocation. There was not air enough in all
the world to breathe. He clutched at the velvet hangings of the door,
and swayed, but he saw the Chancellor.

"The Crown Prince," he said thickly, "is at the home of the Americans."
He stared about him. Strange that the room should suddenly be filled
with a mist. "But there be those--who wait--there--to capture him."

He caught desperately at the curtains, with their royal arms embroidered
in blue and gold. Shameful, in such company, to stagger so!

"Make--haste," he said, and slid stiffly to the ground. He lay without
moving.

The Council roused then. Mettlich was the first to get to him. But it
was too late.

Old Adelbert had followed the mist to the gates it concealed. More than
that, sham traitor that he was, he had followed his King.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN THE ROAD OF THE GOOD CHILDREN

Haeckel crept to a window and looked out. Bonfires were springing up
in the open square in front of the Government House. Mixed with the red
glare came leaping yellow flames. The wooden benches were piled together
and fired, and by each such pyre stood a