which was not your message, I obeyed your
directions which were not your directions."

"You went to the lodge?"

"Certainly."

"And you found Sapt there?--Anybody else?"

"Why, not Sapt at all."

"Not Sapt? But surely they laid a trap for you?"

"Very possibly, but the jaws didn't bite." Rupert crossed his legs and
lit a cigarette.

"But what did you find?"

"I? I found the king's forester, and the king's boar-hound, and--well, I
found the king himself, too."

"The king at the lodge?"

"You weren't so wrong as you thought, were you?"

"But surely Sapt, or Bernenstein, or some one was with him?"

"As I tell you, his forester and his boar-hound. No other man or beast,
on my honor."

"Then you gave him the letter?" cried Rischenheim, trembling with
excitement.

"Alas, no, my dear cousin. I threw the box at him, but I don't think he
had time to open it. We didn't get to that stage of the conversation at
which I had intended to produce the letter."

"But why not--why not?"

Rupert rose to his feet, and, coming just opposite to where Rischenheim
sat, balanced himself on his heels, and looked down at his cousin,
blowing the ash from his cigarette and smiling pleasantly.

"Have you noticed," he asked, "that my coat's torn?"

"I see it is."

"Yes. The boar-hound tried to bite me, cousin. And the forester would
have stabbed me. And--well, the king wanted to shoot me."

"Yes, yes! For God's sake, what happened?"

"Well, they none of them did what they wanted. That's what happened,
dear cousin."

Rischenheim was staring at him now with wide-opened eyes. Rupert smiled
down on him composedly.

"Because, you see," he added, "Heaven helped me. So that, my dear
cousin, the dog will bite no more, and the forester will stab no more.
Surely the country is well rid of them?"

A silence followed. Then Rischenheim, leaning forward, said in a low
whisper, as though afraid to hear his own question:

"And the king?"

"The king? Well, the king will shoot no more."

For a moment Rischenheim, still leaning forward, gazed at his cousin.
Then he sank slowly back into his chair.

"My God!" he murmured: "my God!"

"The king was a fool," said Rupert. "Come, I'll tell you a little more
about it." He drew a chair up and seated himself in it.

While he talked Rischenheim seemed hardly to listen. The story gained in
effect from the contrast of Rupert's airy telling; his companion's pale
face and twitching hands tick