As the girl hastened toward the spot where the two had disappeared, she was startled to see three troopers of the palace cavalry headed by an officer break through the trees at a short distance from where the battle had waged. The four men ran rapidly toward her.
“What has happened here?” shouted the officer to Emma von der Tann; and then, as he came closer: “Gott! Can it be possible that it is your highness?”
The girl paid no attention to the officer. Instead, she hurried down the steep embankment toward the underbrush into which the two men had fallen. There was no sound from below, and no movement in the bushes to indicate that a moment before two desperately battling human beings had dropped among them.
The soldiers were close upon the girl’s heels, but it was she who first reached the two quiet figures that lay side by side upon the stony ground halfway down the hillside.
When the officer stopped beside her she was sitting on the ground holding the head of one of the combatants in her lap.
A little stream of blood trickled from a wound in the forehead. The officer stooped closer.
“He is dead?” he asked.
“The king is dead,” replied the Princess Emma von der Tann, a little sob in her voice.
“The king!” exclaimed the officer; and then, as he bent lower over the white face: “Leopold!”
The girl nodded.