nd his eyes against
the dreadful sight he felt sure awaited them on the quay at Dover--the
sight of incensed authorities ready to pounce on him and drag him away
for ever from his Princess.

Priscilla gazed at him in astonishment. He was taking no notice of
her, and was looking fearfully up and down the row of faces that were
watching the turbine's arrival.

"Fritzi, if you are worried it must be because you've not slept,"
said Priscilla, laying her hand with a stroking little movement on his
sleeve; for what but overwrought nerves could make him look so odd? It
was after all Fritzing who had behaved with the braveness of a lion
the night before in that matter of the policeman; and it was he who
had asked in stern tones of rebuke, when her courage seemed aflicker,
whether she repented. "You do not repent?" she asked, imitating that
sternness.

"Ma'am--" he began in a low and dreadful voice, his eyes ceaselessly
ranging up and down the figures on the quay.

"Sh--sh--Niece," interrupted Priscilla, smiling.

He turned and looked at her as a man may look for the last time at the
thing in life that has been most dear to him, and said nothing.

IV

But nobody was waiting for them at Dover. Fritzing's agonies might all
have been spared. They passed quite unnoticed through the crowd of
idlers to the train, and putting Priscilla and her maid into it he
rushed at the nearest newspaper-boy, pouncing on him, tearing a
handful of his papers from him, and was devouring their contents
before the astonished boy had well finished his request that he should
hold hard. The boy, who had been brought up in the simple faith that
one should pay one's pennies first and read next, said a few things
under his breath about Germans--crude short things not worth
repeating--and jerking his thumb towards the intent Fritzing, winked
at a detective who was standing near. The detective did not need the
wink. His bland, abstracted eyes were already on Fritzing, and he was
making rapid mental notes of the goggles, the muffler, the cap pulled
down over the ears. Truly it is a great art, that of running away, and
needs incessant practice.

And after all there was not a word about the Princess in the papers.
They were full, as the Englishmen on the turbine had been full, of
something the Russians, who at that time were always doing something,
had just done--something that had struck England from end to end into
a blaze of indignation and t