crown for yourself, to keep your tongue between
your teeth.

"Now lend me a hand with these saddles, and help bring them out
quickly when I give the word."

The horses resaddled and turned in their stables ready to be
brought out without a moment's delay, Rupert took his place at the
entrance, and watched the door leading from the hotel. In ten
minutes it opened, and the marquis, followed by Adele, came out.

"Quick with that horse," Rupert said to the ostler; and seeing to
the other, they were in the yard as soon as the marquis came up.

"An officer and eight men," he whispered to Rupert as he leapt into
the saddle, while Rupert lifted Adele on to the pillion.

"Mounted?"

"No."

"Then we have a good half-hour's start.

"Which is the way to the west gate?"

"Straight on, till you reach the wall; follow that to the right, it
will bring you to the gate."

Rupert vaulted into his saddle, and the party rode out into the
street; and then briskly, but without any appearance of
extraordinary haste, until they reached the gate.

The guardian of the gate was sitting on a low block of wood at the
door of the guardroom. There was, Rupert saw, no soldier about.
Indeed, the place was quiet, for the evening was falling, and but
few people cared to be about in those times after nightfall.

An idea flashed across Rupert's mind, and he rode up to the
marquis:

"Please lead my horse," he said. "Wait for me a hundred yards on. I
will be with you in three minutes."

Without waiting for an answer, he leapt from his horse, threw the
reins to the marquis, and ran back to the gate, which was but
thirty yards back.

"A word with you, good man," he said, going straight into the
guardroom.

"Hullo!" the man said, getting up and following him in. "And who
may you be, I should like to know, who makes so free?"

Rupert, without a word, sprang upon the man and bore him to the
ground. Then, seeing that there was an inner room, he lifted him,
and ran him in there, the man being too astonished to offer the
slightest resistance. Then Rupert locked him in, and taking down
the great key of the gate, which hung over the fireplace, went out,
closed the great gate of the town, locked it on the outside, and
threw the key into the moat. Then he went off at a run and joined
the marquis, who with Adele was waiting anxiously at the distance
he had asked him.

"What have you been doing, Rupert?"

"I have just locked the great gate and