Sapt smoked on for a moment in silence.

"That cursed old woman!" he broke out. "She must have attracted their
attention somehow. I see the game. They came up to kidnap the King,
and--as I say--somehow they found him. If you hadn't gone to Strelsau,
you and I and Fritz had been in heaven by now!"

"And the King?"

"Who knows where the King is now?" he asked.

"Come, let's be off!" said I; but he sat still. And suddenly he burst
into one of his grating chuckles:

"By Jove, we've shaken up Black Michael!"

"Come, come!" I repeated impatiently.

"And we'll shake him up a bit more," he added, a cunning smile
broadening on his wrinkled, weather-beaten face, and his teeth working
on an end of his grizzled moustache. "Ay, lad, we'll go back to
Strelsau. The King shall be in his capital again tomorrow."

"The King?"

"The crowned King!"

"You're mad!" I cried.

"If we go back and tell the trick we played, what would you give for our