get ahead of me! I did not mind being taken for the King, but to
be confounded with this infernal descendant of a gamekeeper--was
too much! Yet with a superhuman effort I remained calm--and even
smiled.

"You are not well?" said the Princess earnestly. "I thought you
were taking too much of the Strasbourg pie at supper! And you are
not going, surely--so soon?" she added, as I rose.

"I must go at once," I said. "I have forgotten some important
business at Bock."

"Not boar hunting again?" she said poutingly.

"No, I'm hunting a red dear," I said with that playful subtlety
which would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was
only thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I
bowed and withdrew.

In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at Bock. These
are lightning changes, I know--and the sovereignty of
Trulyruralania WAS somewhat itinerant--but when a kingdom and a
beautiful Princess are at stake, what are you to do? Fritz had
begged me to take him along, but I arranged that he should come
later, and go up unostentatiously in the lift. I was going by way
of the moat. I was to succor the King, but I fear my real object
was to get at Rupert of Glasgow.

I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain pipe,
decreed by the Bock County Council, ran from the moat to the third