It was six o’clock now, and we had no time to lose. Sapt hurried me into the King’s room, and I dressed myself in the uniform of a colonel of the Guard, finding time as I slipped on the King’s boots to ask Sapt what he had done with the old woman.

“She swore she’d heard nothing,” said he; “but to make sure I tied her legs together and put a handkerchief in her mouth and bound her hands, and locked her up in the coal-cellar, next door to the King. Josef will look after them both later on.”

Then I burst out laughing, and even old Sapt grimly smiled.

“I fancy,” said he, “that when Josef tells them the King is gone they’ll think it is because we smelt a rat. For you may swear Black Michael doesn’t expect to see him in Strelsau today.”

I put the King’s helmet on my head. Old Sapt handed me the King’s sword, looking at me long and carefully.

“Thank God, he shaved his beard!” he exclaimed.

“Why did he?” I asked.

“Because Princess Flavia said he grazed her cheek when he was graciously pleased to give her a cousinly kiss. Come though, we must ride.”

“Is all safe here?”

“Nothing’s safe anywhere,” said Sapt, “but we can make it no safer.”

Fritz now rejoined us in the uniform of a captain in the same regiment as that to which my dress belonged. In four minutes Sapt had arrayed himself in his uniform. Josef called that the horses were ready. We jumped on their backs and started at a rapid trot. The game had begun. What would the issue of it be?

The cool morning air cleared my head, and I was able to take in all Sapt said to me. He was wonderful. Fritz hardly spoke, riding like a man asleep, but Sapt, without another word for the King, began at once to instruct me most minutely in the history of my past life, of my family, of my tastes, pursuits, weaknesses, friends, companions, and servants. He told me the etiquette of the Ruritanian Court, promising to be constantly at my elbow to point out everybody whom I ought to know, and give me hints with what degree of favour to greet them.

“By the way,” he said, “you’re a Catholic, I suppose?”

“Not I,” I answered.

“Lord, he’s a heretic!” groaned Sapt, and forthwith he fell to a rudimentary lesson in the practices and observances of the Romish faith.

“Luckily,” said he, “you won’t be expected to know much, for the King’s notoriously lax and careless about such matters. But you must be as civil as butter to the Cardinal. We hope to win him over, because he and Michael have a standing quarrel about their precedence.”

We were by now at the station. Fritz had recovered nerve enough to explain to the astonished station master that the King had changed his plans. The train steamed up. We got into a first-class carriage, and Sapt, leaning back on the cushions, went on with his lesson. I looked at my watch—the King’s watch it was, of course. It was just eight.

“I wonder if they’ve gone to look for us,” I said.