e.
On seeing the minister, the stripling was about to retire. Maria,
however, called him in, and bade him deliver his message. "You come,"
she said to the youth, who still hesitated to speak--"you come from
the younger Glinski: speak openly--what is it he has commissioned you
to say?"

"This, my lady," answered the page, "that he has ridden in all haste
from the camp--that he must quit the city again before nightfall, and
craves an audience if only for one minute."

Maria looked towards her father, and thus referred the answer to him.

Count Laski was silent.

"Will you not," said his daughter, "tell this messenger, whether his
master may come here or not?"

"My child, he _cannot!_ he is at this moment under my arrest. Return,
sir page," and he motioned him from the room--"but return to the
fortress of----; you will find your master there a prisoner, under
charge of high treason."

"Oh, spare him! spare him!" cried Maria, as she sank back almost
senseless with terror and alarm.

"My child! my child!" exclaimed the minister in heart-breaking
anguish, as he bent over his weeping daughter.

CHAPTER IV.

After having in some measure soothed the terrors of his daughter, the
chancellor called to him his trusty Hakem. He briefly explained to him
that the Duke of Lithuania was at that moment in open rebellion
against his Majesty, and placed in his hands a warrant for his
execution. "The law cannot reach him through its usual servants," he
said; "it is a bold enterprise I propose to you--to decapitate a
general at the head of his troops."

If this was a measure which hardly another minister than Laski would
have contemplated, it was one also which he would have hardly found
another than Hakem to undertake and accomplish. The bravery of this
man was all but miraculous, and was only rescued from madness by the
extreme skill and address by which it was supported. In battle, he
rushed on danger as a bold and delighted swimmer plunges in the waves,
which to him are as innocuous as the breeze that is freshening them.
Yet, when the excitement was passed, he relapsed into a state of
apparent apathy. He had been taken captive in one of those
engagements, at this time not unfrequent, between the Poles and the
Turks, with the latter of whom he had served as a soldier of fortune.
To say that he was taken prisoner, is hardly correct; for he was found
lying half dead on the field of battle, and was brought home by the
P