another
generation; but there was really nothing to catch hold of, and the power
of any organization to commit such an outrage without being detected--to
break the glass of the King's coach and make the eight piebald ponies
rise up on end in horror--was a power which raised them greatly in the
eyes of all law-abiding people; it suggested an unknown potency for
mischief far more ominous than had discovery and conviction followed.
And so, while squibs and crackers were being thrown at them and sham
bombs hurled into their meetings to show how greatly the law-abiding
people of Jingalo disapproved of them for incurring such
suspicion--politically, the unjustly suspected ones moved a little
nearer to their goal.

As for the King and Queen, they were simply inundated with telegrams and
letters of congratulation. In many instances the loyalty shown was
extraordinarily touching: one instance will suffice. Every schoolboy in
every public school in Jingalo contributed a penny from his pocket money
to a congratulatory telegram sent in the name of the school; and when,
as sometimes happened, the school numbered over six hundred boys the
telegram had necessarily to be lengthy, and proved a severe tax upon the
literary ability of its senders.

Amid all this influx--this passionate outpouring of loyalty to a King
who had stood only a few days before within an ace of abdication, there
were of course messages of a more intimate and personal kind. Every
crowned head in Europe had written with that fellow-feeling which on
such occasions royalty is bound to express. "I know what it is like
myself," wrote one who had had six attempts made on him; "but I have
never had it done to me from behind. How very devastating to the nerves
that must be!" The Prince of Schnapps-Wasser wired that he could find no
language to express himself, but hoped in a few weeks' time to come and
show all that he felt. Max after a brief wire had flown back to town;
and his obvious perturbation and demonstrative affection had made it a
happy meeting.

But, while all these messages flowed, there was one inexplicable
silence. Charlotte neither wrote nor telegraphed; nor did she return
home. That portent dawned upon their Majesties as they breakfasted late
the next morning with correspondence and telegrams piled up beside them.

"What can have become of Charlotte?" cried the Queen. "She must _know_!"

"If she knew, she would be here," said the King, confident in h