uld you like to go around again?" asked Bobby, quite casually.

His Highness gasped with joy. "If--if you would be so kind!" he said.

And at the lordly wave of Bobby's hand, the car moved on.

CHAPTER III. DISGRACED

At eight o'clock that evening the Crown Prince Ferdinand William Otto
approached the Palace through the public square. He approached it
slowly, for two reasons. First, he did not want to go back. Second, he
was rather frightened. He had an idea that they would be disagreeable.

There seemed to be a great deal going on at the palace. Carriages
were rolling in under the stone archway and, having discharged their
contents, mostly gentlemen in uniform, were moving off with a thundering
of hoofs that reechoed from the vaulted roof of the entrance. All the
lights were on in the wing where his grandfather, the King, lived alone.
As his grandfather hated lights, and went to bed early, Prince Ferdinand
William Otto was slightly puzzled.

He stood in the square and waited for a chance to slip in unobserved.

He was very dirty. His august face was streaked with soot, and his
august hands likewise. His small derby hat was carefully placed on the
very back of his head at the angle of the American boy's cap. As his
collar had scratched his neck, he had, at Bobby's suggestion, taken it
off and rolled it up. He decided, as he waited in the square, to put it
on again. Miss Braithwaite was very peculiar about collars.

Came a lull in the line of carriages. Prince Ferdinand William Otto took
a long breath and started forward. As he advanced he stuck his hands in
his pockets and swaggered a trifle. It was, as nearly as possible, an
exact imitation of Bobby Thorpe's walk. And to keep up his courage, he
quoted that young gentleman's farewell speech to himself: "What d' you
care? They won't eat you, will they?"

At the entrance to the archway stood two sentries. They stood as if they
were carved out of wood. Only their eyes moved. And within, in the court
around which the Palace was built, were the King's bodyguards. Mostly
they sat on a long bench and exchanged conversation, while one of them
paced back and forth, his gun over his shoulder, in front of them.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto knew them all. More than once he had
secured cigarettes from Lieutenant Larisch and dropped them from one of
his windows, which were just overhead. They would look straight ahead
and not see them, until the officer's back was tu