he was too late to avoid the springs of
the baited trap, it was here that they should snap upon him. Yet all was
still. A single lamp on a table in the middle of the vast chamber shed
a feeble, flickering light, yet sufficient to assure him that no one
waited here. He sighed relief, wrapped his cloak about him, and set out
swiftly to cross the hall.

But even as he passed, four shadows detached themselves from the tall
stove, resolved themselves into armed men, and sprang after him.

He heard them, wheeled about, flung off his cloak, and disengaged his
sword, all with the speed of lightning and the address of the man who
for ten years had walked amid perils, and learned to depend upon his
blade. That swift action sealed his doom. Their orders were to take him
living or dead, and standing in awe of his repute, they were not the men
to incur risks. Even as he came on guard, a partisan grazed his head,
and another opened his breast.

He went down, coughing and gasping, blood dabbling his bright golden
hair, and staining the priceless Mechlin at his throat, yet his right
hand still desperately clutching his useless sword.

His assassins stood about him, their partisans levelled to strike again,
and summoned him to yield. Then, beside one of them, he suddenly beheld
the Countess von Platen materializing out of the surrounding shadows as
it seemed, and behind her the squat, ungraceful figure of the Elector.
He fought for breath. "I am slain," he gasped, "and as I am to appear
before my Maker I swear to you that the Princess Sophia is innocent.
Spare her at least, your Highness."

"Innocent!" said the Elector hoarsely. "Then what did you now in her
apartments?

"It was a trap set for us by this foul hag, who..."

The heel of the vindictive harridan ground viciously upon the lips of
the dying man and choked his utterance. Thereafter the halberts finished
him off, and he was buried there and then, in lime, under the floor of
the Hall of Knights, under the very spot where he had fallen, which was
long to remain imbrued with his blood.

Thus miserably perished the glittering Koenigsmark, a martyr to his own
irrepressible romanticism.

As for Sophia, better might it have been for her had she shared his fate
that night. She was placed under arrest next morning, and Prince George
was summoned back from Berlin at once.

The evidence may have satisfied him that his honour had not suffered,
for he was disposed to let the ma