for you are needed here. There is no other way in which you can explain
a continued presence in Graustark. Is not my plan a good one?"

He gazed in admiration at her flushed cheeks and glowing eyes.

"It is beyond comparison," he said, rising and bowing low. "So shrewd
is this plan that you make me a hostage forever; I shall not escape its
memory if I live to be a thousand."

And so it was settled, in this pretty drama of deception, that Harry
Anguish was to be held in Edelweiss as hostage. At parting she said,
seriously:

"A great deal depends on your discretion. Mr. Anguish. My guards will
watch your every action, for they are not in the secret,--excepting
Quinnox,--and any attempt on your part to communicate with Grenfall
Lorry will be fatal."

"Trust me, your Highness. I have had much instruction in wisdom to-day."

"I hope we shall see you often," she said.

"Daily--as a hostage," he replied, glancing toward the Countess.

"That means until the other man is captured," said that young lady,
saucily.

As he left the castle he gazed at the distant building in the sky and
wondered how it had ever been approached in a carriage. She had not
told him that Allode drove for miles over winding roads that led to the
monastery up a gentler slope from the rear.

The next afternoon Edelweiss thrilled with a new excitement. Prince
Bolaroz of Axphain, mad with grief and rage, came thundering into the
city with his Court at his heels. His wrath had been increased until it
resembled a tornado when he read the reward placard in the uplands. Not
until then did he know that the murderer had escaped and that vengeance
might be denied him.

After, viewing the body of Lorenz as it lay in the sarcophagus of the
royal palace, where it had been borne at the command of the Princess
Yetive, he demanded audience with his son's betrothed, and it was with
fear that she prepared for the trying ordeal, an interview with the
grief-crazed old man. The castle was in a furore; its halls soon
thronged with diplomatists and there was an ugly sense of trouble in the
air, suggestive of the explosion which follows the igniting of a powder
magazine.

The slim, pale-faced Princess met the burly old ruler in the grand
council chamber. He and his nobles had been kept waiting but a short
time. Within a very few minutes after they had been conducted to the
chamber by Count Halfont and other dignitaries, the fair ruler came into
the room and advanc