t, a body of horsemen, who presently proved themselves to be
soldiers. To rush back to the inn and give the alarm was the work of a
few minutes.

"The soldiers! the soldiers!" cried the lads, bursting together into the
room where their mother was busily engaged in preparing a last meal for
us.

Their father rose to his feet.

"You know what to do, wife?" he said quietly, and then entered the room
where we were sitting listening to the dreadful tidings.

"The soldiers are coming, your Majesty," he remarked, still quite
unperturbed. "You must be away before they reach the house."

"But how is it to be done?" inquired my mother anxiously. "I see no way
of escape, and there are the children to be thought of."

"When the little princes are ready, I'll show your Majesty a way, never
fear," the man replied, and surely enough, as soon as our outdoor
garments had been donned, he took me in his arms and led the way through
the house to the back. The great blank wall of the cliff abutted close
upon it, but how this was to help us I could not understand. At one
place his eldest son was busily engaged removing a pile of brushwood,
and making straight for this he put me down and began to assist the boy.
When the stack had been partially removed, a circular hole in the cliff,
about the size of a large barrel, became apparent.

"If your Majesties will follow me, I don't think the soldiers will catch
you," he said, and forthwith went down upon all-fours. A moment later
the King and Queen of Pannonia and their somewhat fastidious children
might have been seen on their hands and knees, crawling into safety, if
I may so express it, through a hole in the wall.

CHAPTER III.

I have described the ignominious fashion in which our family, led by the
giant innkeeper, made its way through the hole in the cliff, and thus
escaped the soldiers, who otherwise would certainly have arrested us. As
soon as Gabriel, my father's valet, who was the last of our party to
enter, had disappeared, the innkeeper's son, who remained outside, once
more covered the aperture with brushwood, thus effectually concealing
its existence. Provided the soldiers did not become aware of our
subterranean hiding-place as they were scarcely likely to do, we had
every right to consider ourselves safe, at least for the time being.

Much to our relief the small tunnel through which it was necessary for
us to crawl was only a few feet in length; for this reason