by an army of cats, and went, shivering, to
crawl into his mother's bed.

CHAPTER XIX. THE COMMITTEE OF TEN

On the evening of the annual day of mourning, the party returned from
the fortress. The Archduchess slept. The Crown Prince talked, mostly to
Hedwig, and even she said little. After a time the silence affected
the boy's high spirits. He leaned back in his chair on the deck of
the launch, and watched the flying landscape. He counted the riverside
shrines to himself. There were, he discovered, just thirteen between the
fortress and the city limits.

Old Father Gregory sat beside him. He had taken off his flat black hat,
and it lay on his knee. The ends of his black woolen sash fluttered in
the wind, and he sat, benevolent hands folded, looking out.

From guns to shrines is rather a jump, and the Crown Prince found it
difficult.

"Do you consider fighting the duty of a Christian?" inquired the Crown
Prince suddenly.

Father Gregory, whose mind had been far away, with his boys' school at
Etzel, started.

"Fighting? That depends. To defend his home is the Christian duty of
every man."

"But during the last war," persisted Otto, "we went across the mountains
and killed a lot of people. Was that a Christian duty?"

Father Gregory coughed. He had himself tucked up his soutane and walked
forty miles to join the army of invasion, where he had held services,
cared for the wounded, and fired a rifle, all with equal spirit. He
changed the subject to the big guns at the fortress.

"I think," observed the Crown Prince, forgetting his scruples, "that if
you have a pencil and an old envelope to draw on, I'll invent a big gun
myself."

Which he proceeded to do, putting in a great many wheels and levers,
and adding, a folding-table at the side on which the gunners might have
afternoon tea--this last prompted by the arrival just then of cups and
saucers and a tea service.

It was almost dark when the launch arrived at the quay. The red carpet
was still there, and another crowd. Had Prince Ferdinand William Otto
been less taken up with finding one of his kid gloves, which he had
lost, he would have noticed that there was a scuffle going on at the
very edge of the red carpet, and that the beggar of the morning was
being led away, between two policemen, while a third, running up the
river bank, gingerly deposited a small round object in the water, and
stood back. It was merely one of the small incidents of a roy