ose to his feet, tiptoed past the
Archduchess Annunciata, who did not move, and looked around him from the
doorway.

The Chancellor slept. In the royal dressing-room behind the box a lady
in waiting was sitting and crocheting. She did not care for opera.
A maid was spreading the royal ladies' wraps before the fire. The
princesses had shed their furred carriage boots just inside the door.
They were in a row, very small and dainty.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto picked up his hat and concealed it by his
side. Then nonchalantly, as if to stretch his legs by walking ten feet
up the corridor and back, he passed the dressing-room door. Another
moment, and he was out of sight around a bend of the passageway, and
before him lay liberty.

Not quite! At the top of the private staircase reserved for the royal
family a guard commonly stood. He had moved a few feet from his post,
however, and was watching the stage through the half-open door of a
private loge. His rifle, with its fixed bayonet, leaned against the
stair-rail.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto passed behind him with outward calmness.
At the top of the public staircase, however, he hesitated. Here,
everywhere, were brass-buttoned officials of the Opera House. A
garderobe woman stared at him curiously. There was a noise from the
house, too,--a sound of clapping hands and "bravos." The little Prince
looked at the woman with appeal in his eyes. Then, with his heart
thumping, he ran past her, down the white marble staircase, to where the
great doors promised liberty.

Olga, the wardrobe woman, came out from behind her counter, and stood
looking down the marble staircase after the small flying figure.

"Blessed Saints!" she said, wondering. "How much that child resembled
His Royal Highness!"

The old soldier who rented opera glasses at the second landing, and who
had left a leg in Bosnia, leaned over the railing. "Look at that!"
he exclaimed. "He will break a leg, the young rascal! Once I could
have--but there, he is safe! The good God watches over fools and
children."

"It looked like the little Prince," said the wardrobe woman. "I have
seen him often--he has the same bright hair."

But the opera-glass man was not listening. He had drawn a long sausage
from one pocket and a roll from the other, and now, retiring to a far
window, he stood placidly eating--a bite of sausage, a bite of bread.
His mind was in Bosnia, with his leg. And because old Adelbert's mind
was