willing guest.

After a time the men tired of the sport of king-baiting, for Barney
showed neither rancor nor outraged majesty at their keenest thrusts,
instead, often joining in the laugh with them at his own expense.
They thought it odd that the king should hold his dignity in so low
esteem, but that he was king they never doubted, attributing his
denials to a disposition to deceive them, and rob them of the
"king's ransom" they had already commenced to consider as their own.

Shortly after Barney arrived at the rendezvous he saw a messenger
dispatched by Yellow Franz, and from the repeated gestures toward
himself that had accompanied the giant's instructions to his
emissary, Barney was positive that the man's errand had to do with
him.

After the men had left his prison, leaving the boy standing
awkwardly in wide-eyed contemplation of his august charge, the
American ventured to open a conversation with his youthful keeper.

"Aren't you rather young to be starting in the bandit business,
Rudolph?" asked Barney, who had taken a fancy to the youth.

"I do not want to be a bandit, your majesty," whispered the lad;
"but my father owes Yellow Franz a great sum of money, and as he
could not pay the debt Yellow Franz stole me from my home and says
that he will keep me until my father pays him, and that if he does
not pay he will make a bandit of me, and that then some day I shall
be caught and hanged until I am dead."

"Can't you escape?" asked the young man. "It would seem to me that
there would be many opportunities for you to get away undetected."

"There are, but I dare not. Yellow Franz says that if I run away he
will be sure to come across me some day again and that then he will
kill me."

Barney laughed.

"He is just talking, my boy," he said. "He thinks that by
frightening you he will be able to keep you from running away."

"Your majesty does not know him," whispered the youth, shuddering.
"He is the wickedest man in all the world. Nothing would please him
more than killing me, and he would have done it long since but for
two things. One is that I have made myself useful about his camp,
doing chores and the like, and the other is that were he to kill me
he knows that my father would never pay him."

"How much does your father owe him?"

"Five hundred marks, your majesty," replied Rudolph. "Two hundred of
this amount is the original debt, and the balance Yellow Franz has
added since he captured me,