official capacity this
outcome of his foolish measures. A few weeks previous to the
occurrence just described, he himself had received a letter; but that
came from "above," and it was enclosed in the fatal "blue envelope."

He had been told in it, in the well-known diplomatic language employed
for such occasions, that H. M. fully valued his faithful services, but
was unable to avail himself of them any longer.

One fine day a huge furniture van stopped in front of the fine house
at the end of the town, where the colonel had made his stately home
for so many years, and into its capacious maw brawny men packed,
shoved, and kicked everything of his household goods that was worth
while transporting to the far-away district near the borders of
Russia, to which the deposed military autocrat was returning, with the
intention of spending the remainder of his days amid the peaceful calm
of his carrot fields and haylofts.

When the colonel and his wife took final leave of the little garrison,
there was nobody at the station to bid him a tearful farewell. His
orderly alone stood on the platform, loaded down with a dozen handbags
and bandboxes the contents of which the Frau Colonel required on her
long journey eastward. When the colonel, his wife, and his extensive
family of younger children had bestowed themselves in the interior of
a vast compartment, he leaned out of the window and handed the orderly
a small coin of the realm. The man looked at it and then spat in
disgust.

Of all those who in the opening chapter of this veracious tale had
assembled around the hospitable board of the Koenigs, barely a handful
remained in "the little garrison." The weeding-out machine had been
set in motion by H. M.'s private military cabinet, and lo! this was
the result.

CHAPTER X

UNTO THIS LAST

It is past eight o'clock of an evening in December. A hurrying crowd
is streaming on its way homeward through the arteries of a large and
busy city. All the shop doors everywhere are being closed with a
thundering noise, and the ear is assailed by the rattling of the iron
shutters by which thievish hands are to be kept out during the night
hours. The brilliant gas jets and the incandescent lights in the
show-windows are turned off in increasing numbers.

On the asphalt pavement dense throngs of people weary from their day's
labor, or else eager for the pleasures and excitement which the
evening has still in store for them, are press