The George Barr McCutcheon MEGAPACK ®. George Barr McCutcheon

the mountains many leagues north of this pass. Had you taken that route instead of this, you would by this time have left Labbot for the town of Erros, a half-day’s journey from Ganlook. Instead of vagabonds, your escort would have been made up of loyal soldiers, well-fed, well-clad, and well satisfied with themselves, at least.”

      “But no braver, no truer than my soldiers of fortune,” she said earnestly. “By the way, are you informed as to the state of affairs in Dawsbergen?”

      “Scarcely as well as your highness must be,” he replied.

      “The young prince—what’s his name?” she paused, looking to him for the name.

      “Dantan?”

      “Yes, that’s it. What has become of him? I am terribly interested in him.”

      “He is a fugitive, they say.”

      “They haven’t captured him, then? Good! I am so glad.”

      Baldos exhibited little or no interest in the fresh topic.

      “It is strange you should have forgotten his name,” he said wearily.

      “Oh, I do so many ridiculous things!” complained Beverly, remembering who she was supposed to be. “I have never seen him, you know,” she added.

      “It is not strange, your highness. He was educated in England and had seen but little of his own country when he was called to the throne two years ago. You remember, of course, that his mother was an Englishwoman—Lady Ida Falconer.”

      “I—I think I have heard some of his history—a very little, to be sure,” she explained lamely.

      “Prince Gabriel, his half brother, is the son of Prince Louis the Third by his first wife, who was a Polish countess. After her death, when Gabriel was two years old, the prince married Lady Ida. Dantan is their son. He has a sister—Candace, who is but nineteen years of age.”

      “I am ashamed to confess that you know so much more about my neighbors than I,” she said.

      “I lived in Dawsbergen for a little while, and was ever interested in the doings of royalty. That is a poor man’s privilege, you know.”

      “Prince Gabriel must be a terrible man,” cried Beverly, her heart swelling with tender thoughts of the exiled Dantan and his little sister.

      “You have cause to know,” said he shortly, and she was perplexed until she recalled the stories of Gabriel’s misdemeanors at the court of Edelweiss.

      “Is Prince Dantan as handsome as they say he is?” she asked.

      “It is entirely a matter of opinion,” he replied. “I, for one, do not consider him at all prepossessing.”

      The day went on, fatiguing, distressing in its length and its happenings. Progress was necessarily slow, the perils of the road increasing as the little cavalcade wound deeper and deeper into the wilderness. There were times when the coach fairly crawled along the edge of a precipice, a proceeding so hazardous that Beverly shuddered as if in a chill. Aunt Fanny slept serenely most of the time, and Baldos took to dreaming with his eyes wide open. Contrary to her expectations, the Axphainians did not appear, and if there were robbers in the hills they thought better than to attack the valorous-looking party. It dawned upon her finally that the Axphainians were guarding the upper route and not the one over which she was traveling. Yetive doubtless was approaching Ganlook over the northern pass, provided the enemy had not been encountered before Labbot was reached. Beverly soon found herself fearing for the safety of the princess, a fear which at last became almost unendurable.

      Near nightfall they came upon three Graustark shepherds and learned that Ganlook could not be reached before the next afternoon. The tired, hungry travelers spent the night in a snug little valley through which a rivulet bounded onward to the river below. The supper was a scant one, the foragers having poor luck in the hunt for food. Daybreak saw them on their way once more. Hunger and dread had worn down Beverly’s supply of good spirits; she was having difficulty in keeping the haggard, distressed look from her face. Her tender, hopeful eyes were not so bold or so merry as on the day before; cheerfulness cost her an effort, but she managed to keep it fairly alive. Her escort, wretched and half-starved, never forgot the deference due to their charge, but strode steadily on with the doggedness of martyrs. At times she was impelled to disclose her true identity, but discretion told her that deception was her best safeguard.

      Late in the afternoon of the second day the front axle of the coach snapped in two, and a tedious delay of two hours ensued. Baldos was strangely silent and subdued. It was not until the misfortune came that Beverly observed the flushed condition of his face. Involuntarily and with the compassion of a true woman she touched his hand and brow. They were burning-hot. The wounded man was in a high fever. He laughed at her fears and scoffed at the prospect of blood-poisoning and the hundred other possibilities that suggested themselves to her anxious brain.

      “We are close to Ganlook,” he said, with the setting of the sun. “Soon you may be relieved of your tiresome, cheerless company, your highness.”

      “You are going to a physician,” she said, resolutely, alive and active once more, now that the worst part of the journey was coming to an end. “Tell that man to drive in a gallop all the rest of the way!”

      CHAPTER VIII

      THROUGH THE GANLOOK GATES

      By this time they were passing the queer little huts that marked the outskirts of a habitable community. These were the homes of shepherds, hunters and others whose vocations related especially to the mountains. Farther on there were signs of farming interests; the homes became more numerous and more pretentious in appearance. The rock-lined gorge broadened into a fertile valley; the road was smooth and level, a condition which afforded relief to the travelers. Ravone had once more dressed the wounds inflicted by the lion; but he was unable to provide anything to subdue the fever. Baldos was undeniably ill. Beverly, between her exclamations of joy and relief at being in sight of Ganlook, was profuse in her expressions of concern for the hero of the Hawk and Raven. The feverish gleam in his dark eyes and the pain that marked his face touched her deeply. Suffering softened his lean, sun-browned features, obliterating the mocking lines that had impressed her so unfavorably at the outset. She was saying to herself that he was handsome after a most unusual cast; it was an unforgetable face.

      “Your highness,” he said earnestly, after she had looked long and anxiously at his half-closed eyes, “we are within an hour of Ganlook. It will be dark before we reach the gates, I know, but you have nothing to fear during the rest of the trip. Franz shall drive you to the sentry post and turn over the horses to your own men. My friends and I must leave you at the end of the mountain road. We are—”

      “Ridiculous!” she cried. “I’ll not permit it! You must go to a hospital.”

      “If I enter the Ganlook gates it will be the same as entering the gates of death,” he protested.

      “Nonsense! You have a fever or you wouldn’t talk like that. I can promise you absolute security.”

      “You do not understand, your highness.”

      “Nevertheless, you are going to a hospital,” she firmly said. “You would die out here in the wilds, so what are the odds either way? Aunt Fanny, will you be careful? Don’t you know that the least movement of those bags hurts him?”

      “Please, do not mind me, your highness. I am doing very well,” he said, smiling.

      The coach brought up in front of a roadside inn. While some of the men were watering the horses others gathered about its open window. A conversation in a tongue utterly incomprehensible to Beverly took place between Baldos and his followers. The latter seemed to be disturbed about something, and there was no mistaking the solicitous air with which they regarded their leader. The pseudo-princess was patient as long as possible and then broke into the discussion.

      “What do they want?” she demanded in English.

      “They