would have wasted in profligacy the wealth so cruelly wrung from
long-suffering subjects. From extortion he was driven by his desperate
need of money into flagrant dishonesty. At a stroke of the pen he had
reduced the value of the paper currency by one-third--a reduction so
violent and sudden that, whilst it impoverished many, it involved
some in absolute ruin--and this that he might gratify his appetite
for magnificence and enrich the rapacious favourites who shared his
profligacy.

The unrest in the kingdom spread. It was no longer a question of the
resentment of a more or less docile peasantry whose first stirrings of
revolt were easily quelled. The lesser nobility of Sweden were angered
by a measure--following upon so many others--that bore peculiarly
heavily upon themselves; and out of that anger, fanned by one man--John
Jacob Ankarstrom--who had felt the vindictive spirit of royal injustice,
flamed in secret the conspiracy against the King's life which Bjelke had
discovered.

He had discovered it by the perilous course of joining the conspirators.
He had won their confidence, and they recognized that his collaboration
was rendered invaluable by the position he held so near the King. And
in his subtle wisdom, at considerable danger to himself, Bjelke had kept
his counsel. He had waited until now, until the moment when the blow was
about to fall, before making the disclosure which should not only save
Gustavus, but enable him to cast a net in which all the plotters must be
caught. And he hoped that when Gustavus perceived the narrowness of his
escape, and the reality of the dangers amid which he walked, he would
consider the wisdom of taking another course in future.

He had reached the door of the last ante-chamber, when a detaining
hand was laid upon his arm. He found himself accosted by a page--the
offspring of one of the noblest families in Sweden, and the son of one
of Bjelke's closest friends, a fair-haired, impudent boy to whom the
secretary permitted a certain familiarity.

"Are you on your way to the King, Baron?" the lad inquired.

"I am, Carl. What is it?"

"A letter for His Majesty--a note fragrant as a midsummer rose--which a
servant has just delivered to me. Will you take it?"

"Give it to me, impudence," said Bjelke, the ghost of a smile lighting
for a moment his white face.

He took the letter and passed on into the last antechamber, which was
empty of all but a single chamberlain-in-waiting