?" asked Sapt again, for in the dim light he could not see.

"No," I answered.

"Thank God!" said he. And, for Sapt's, the voice was soft.

CHAPTER IX. THE KING IN THE HUNTING LODGE

THE moment with its shock and tumult of feeling brings one judgment,
later reflection another. Among the sins of Rupert of Hentzau I do not
assign the first and greatest place to his killing of the king. It was,
indeed, the act of a reckless man who stood at nothing and held nothing
sacred; but when I consider Herbert's story, and trace how the deed came
to be done and the impulsion of circumstances that led to it, it seems
to have been in some sort thrust upon him by the same perverse fate that
dogged our steps. He had meant the king no harm--indeed it may be argued
that, from whatever motive, he had sought to serve him--and save under
the sudden stress of self-defense he had done him none. The king's
unlooked-for ignorance of his errand, Herbert's honest hasty zeal, the
temper of Boris the hound, had forced on him an act unmeditated and
utterly against his interest. His whole guilt lay in preferring the
king's death to his own--a crime perhaps in most men, but hardly
deserving a place in Rupert's catalogue. All this I can admit now, but
on that night, with the dead body lying there before us, with the story
piteously told by Herbert's faltering voice fresh in our ears, it was
hard to allow any such extenuation. Our hearts cried out for vengeance,
although we ourselves served the king no more. Nay, it may well be that
we hoped to stifle some reproach of our own consciences by a louder
clamor against another's sin, or longed to offer some belated empty
atonement to our dead master by executing swift justice on the man who
had killed him. I cannot tell fully what the others felt, but in me at
least the dominant impulse was to waste not a moment in proclaiming the
crime and raising the whole country in pursuit of Rupert, so that every
man in Ruritania should quit his work, his pleasure, or his bed, and
make it his concern to take the Count of Hentzau, alive or dead. I
remember that I walked over to where Sapt was sitting, and caught him by
the arm, saying:

"We must raise the alarm. If you'll go to Zenda, I'll start for
Strelsau."

"The alarm?" said he, looking up at me and tugging his moustache.

"Yes: when the news is known, every man in the kingdom will be on the
lookout for him, and he can't escape."

"So that he'd be taken?"