de through the cobbled streets of
Kunitz. Priscilla was very shaky on a bicycle, and so was Fritzing.
Some years before this, when it had been the fashion, she had bicycled
every day in the grand ducal park on the other side of the town. Then,
tired of it, she had given it up; and now for the last week or two,
ever since Fritzing had told her that if they fled it would have to be
on bicycles, she had pretended a renewed passion for it, riding every
day round and round a circle of which the chilled and astonished
Countess Disthal, whose duty it was to stand and watch, had been the
disgusted central point. But the cobbles of Kunitz are very different
from those smooth places in the park. All who bicycle round Kunitz
know them as trying to the most skilful. Naturally, then, the
fugitives advanced very slowly, Fritzing's heart in his mouth each
time they passed a brightly-lit shop or a person who looked at them.
Conceive how nearly this poor heart must have jumped right out of his
mouth, leaving him dead, when a policeman who had been watching them
strode suddenly into the middle of the street, put up his hand, and
said, "Halt."

Fritzing, unstrung man, received a shock so awful that he obeyed by
falling off. Priscilla, wholly unused to being told to halt and
absorbed by the difficulties of the way, did not grasp that the order
was meant for her and rode painfully on. Seeing this, the policeman
very gallantly removed her from her bicycle by putting his arms round
her and lifting her off. He set her quite gently on her feet, and was
altogether a charming policeman, as unlike those grim and ghastly eyes
of the law that glare up and down the streets of, say, Berlin, as it
is possible to imagine.

But Priscilla was perfectly molten with rage, insulted as she had
never been in her life. "How dare you--how dare you," she stammered,
suffocating; and forgetting everything but an overwhelming desire to
box the giant's ears she had actually raised her hand to do it, which
would of course have been the ruin of her plan and the end of my tale,
when Fritzing, recovering his presence of mind, cried out in tones of
unmistakable agony, "Niece, be calm."

She calmed at once to a calm of frozen horror.

"Now, sir," said Fritzing, assuming an air of brisk bravery and
guiltlessness, "what can we do for you?"

"Light your lamps," said the policeman, laconically.

They did; or rather Fritzing did, while Priscilla stood passive.

"I too