life. But I would not give a kreutzer for a young fellow who does not
feel that life is worthless without his lady-love.

Yolanda did not take kindly to clouds of any sort, and she soon
scattered those that Max had conjured up. After we had resumed our
journey Max fell back to ride with her.

"Sir Max," she said, "if you allow yourself to become The Knight
Doleful, I will not only cease having speech with you, but I will
laugh at you."

The latter she did then and there. This from a burgher girl of Peronne
to a prince of the House of Hapsburg! The good duke and duchess would
have swooned with horror had they known of it. Max was inclined to be
angry, but, unfortunately for his ill-humor, he caught a glimpse of her
face, and he, too, laughed.

"I fear I am a great fool," he said. Yolanda did not contradict him. She
simply shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "That unfortunate condition
is apt, at times, to overtake the best of men."

Soon our little cavalcade came together, and we rode, laughing, and all
talking at once, for a league or more.

Our road had parted from the river at one of its great bends, and for an
hour we had been slowly climbing a long hill. When we reached the top,
we unsaddled for dinner in the shade of a tree by the wayside. A hundred
yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the
edge of the forest. Off to the east flowed the majestic Rhine, a league
distant, and to the north ran the road like a white ribbon, stretching