g outward
with a plaintive moaning, like that of a man roused out of his sleep,
and Max found himself in an ancient guard-room, now used as a kind of
secondary stable. The men dismounted.

"This way, Herr Ellis," said the colonel, with a mocking bow. He
pointed toward a broad stone staircase.

"All I ask," said Max, "is a fair chance to explain my presence here."

"All in due time. Forward! The prince is waiting, and his temper may
not be as smooth as usual."

With two troopers in front of him and two behind, Max climbed the steps
readily enough. They wouldn't dare kill him, whatever they did. He
tried to imagine himself the hero of some Scott or Dumas tale, with a
grim cardinal somewhere above, and oubliettes and torture chambers
besetting his path. But the absurdity of his imagination, so
thoroughly Americanized, evoked a ringing laughter. The troopers eyed
him curiously. He might laugh later, but it was scarcely probable. A
tramp through a dark corridor and they came to the west wing of the
castle. It was here that the old prince lived, comfortably and
luxuriously enough, you may take my word for it.

A door opened, flooding the corridor with light. Max felt himself
gently pushed over the threshold. He stood in the great living-room of
the modern Doppelkinns. The first person he saw was the princess. She
sat on an oriental divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect;
her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her
pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was
almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in
her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when
a man begins to use the superlative adjectives!)

The other occupant of the room was an old man, fat and bald, with a
nose like a russet pear. He was stalking--if it is possible for a
short man to stalk--up and down the length of the room, and, judging
from the sonorous, rumbling sound, was communing half-aloud.
Betweenwhiles he was rubbing his tender nose, carefully and lovingly.
When a man's nose resembles a russet pear it generally is tender.
Whoever he was, Max saw that he was vastly agitated about something.

This old gentleman was (or supposed he was) the last of his line, the
Prince of Doppelkinn, famous for his wines and his love of them. There
was, so his subjects said, but one tender spot in the heart of this old
man, and that was the memo