the three girls in his speech but in reality addressing
himself to Betty. He spoke English with only the slightest foreign
accent. "These happen to be my woods and I have been greatly annoyed
recently by trespassers who destroy my game at a season of the year when
there can be neither profit nor pleasure in it. And this when the park
is posted with signs warning intruders."

"I am sorry that we did not chance to see the signs," Esther murmured.

"You can understand that we are strangers in this neighborhood,
Americans," Polly defended more hotly. "But of course we should not have
wandered in here without inquiring of some one whether or not we had the
privilege. In the United States we know very little about game preserves
and people are willing to have you enjoy the beauty of their forests.
But we shall leave immediately and promise never to trouble you again."

"But that means that you have not forgiven me and I ask your pardon with
all my heart. It is my pride, my great pleasure to have you consider my
place worthy of your attention. Miss Ashton," the young foreigner now
turned directly to Betty, "surely you can appreciate and pardon my
mistake."

Neither of the other two girls had been paying any special attention to
Betty, but at the stranger's surprising knowledge of her name they
turned toward her at once. And both decided that they had never seen
her look so pretty or so angry in her life. Apparently she had not
spoken before because she had not been willing to trust herself. And
Polly had a sudden sense of satisfaction in the knowledge that the
Princess did not lose her poise and self-control in her anger, as she so
invariably did.

"You ask us to understand and pardon your mistake," Betty now began
quietly. "But suppose that the bullet which you fired so carelessly had
killed my sister. Would you still have expected us to make the same
answer? Of course we are just as much intruders upon your property as if
we were men instead of American girls. But I presume that when you
fired, thinking that we might be poachers, you would have been
indifferent had you wounded one of us. For I believe in Germany it is
the fashion for the soldiers who are intended for the defense of their
country to have little respect for the lives of their country_men_."

This was a long and bitter speech for a young girl to have made. But
remember that Betty Ashton had been living in Germany for the past two
years at a time when the