d which also communicated with the
monarch's private apartments, a youth, nearly a man but not quite was
impatiently striding up and down. He stopped every now and then to
glance out of the low window, from which a view could be obtained over
the great Forest of Fontainebleau, where Philip Augustus in the old
days, centuries before, loved to go hunting. It seemed as though to the
young man there was a chafing disquietude in the silence, the inaction,
of the afternoon, when the inmates of the palace, like the inhabitants
of the tiny little white town, retired to rest for a time in order to be
ready for the evening, when life began to be lived once more.

It was a very handsome chamber in which the young man was evidencing a
species of disquietude, as of awaiting the coming of somebody, or a
summons. As he stopped once in his feverish pacing up and down, a
massive clock was heard to strike three. Rich mats lay on the polished
floor, and the _salon_ was so lofty that high-up it seemed almost grey
dusk by contrast with the bars of sunshine which came through the
window.

From outside there came the challenging clarion note of a trumpet.

"Changing guard," he muttered, "already!" And then he fell to thinking
of other things, for there was beneath the thud of horses' feet, the
baying of a dog and a loud shout.

He turned away from the window at last and tapped the dark arras with
which the walls were draped.

He was a tall, dark-eyed, well-made lad, looking handsome enough in his
rich velvet doublet, evidently one who spent a large part of his time in
the open air, in the chase, or perhaps in sterner work still.

"How much danger?" he murmured, and he went to one side of the room,
raising the heavy folds of a curtain which concealed a door, and
listening intently a minute, before dropping the drapery and then
impatiently springing on to a chair. The chair stood before a long,
narrow, slit-like window, and from it likewise there was little to be
seen but forest, all deep green and silent, and a strip of blue sky. He
sprang down again with a sigh, crossed to the other side of the chamber,
lifted the curtain again, opened a door, and looked out, before closing
the door, dropping the curtain, and resuming his restless walk, as if
saying, "What shall I do with myself?" Somehow the answer seemed to
come to that question, for he suddenly clapped his hand to its side,
drew a long, thin, triangular-bladed sword from its