Trafford cracked his whip, and set his horse in motion towards the prison house.
"To the Strafeburg! Make way there! way for the Queen!" he cried. And in a seething unison of struggling limbs and straining throats, the vast crowd of men and women, soldiers and civilians, pressed irresistibly towards the doomed prison house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TEMPTATION OF ULRICH
Von Hügelweiler,—standing with his paltry hundred men facing the wild throng,—wondered what this new press and surge of human billows might portend. So far he had done his duty loyally and well: hour after hour he had stood at his post watching the varying temper of the people, as it seethed and cooled and then rose suddenly again to more than boiling heat. Nor did this fresh mood of aggression affright him with its terrifying unanimity and savage outburst of song. He was essentially a man of temperament. Egotist, in the sense that he valued his own happiness and well-being above all things, he was no coward. Egotists, in fact, seldom are, for their swollen self-esteem cannot lightly suffer so humiliating a burden as a suspicion of timidity. Moreover, he was young and virile, a scion of a warlike family, and the vibrant roar of a thousand voices served but to string his nerves to the heroic pitch. Had he foreseen the post that was to be assigned him that evening his dark cheek might have blanched at the prospect, and his spirit sickened before the appalling ferocity of the hungering mob. But the actual situation,—serious beyond all expectation,—found him not merely calm and determined, but actually desirous of bringing matters to the touch.
Perhaps the "Rothlied's" wild measure had mounted his brain and made him drunk with its pulsing beat, for he almost wished that these wild men and women who surged towards him so threateningly were his comrades in some task of note or honour. Yet, if they were his foes, he prayed that they would attack at once and give swift scope to his itching sword-arm. So, blade in hand, with bright eye and scornful lip,—no mean figure of a soldier in his grey-blue surcoat,—he stood at the head of his company before the portals of the Strafeburg.
But his astonishment was great when, with a swaying of the mob and a louder note of acclaim, the sleigh driven by Trafford emerged into the open space held by the patrolling Dragoons. He failed for the moment to recognise in the driver his late rival of the Rundsee, but his eye quickly detected the fur-enveloped figure of the Princess on the back seat. For a moment his heart stood still, for the Dragoons were galloping up from the right-hand corner of the building, and he feared that in the shock of the encounter violence or mischance might lay low the fair creature whom he loved more than his honour or his King. But the temper of the people was not to let their new-found heroine be seized or trampled on before their eyes, and a section of the mob, stiffened by the mutinied soldiers, thrust a stout wedge between the Princess and the oncoming cavalry.
Trafford rose to his feet on the summit of the box. Quicker of perception than Von Hügelweiler, he recognised the latter in an instant.
"Good-evening, Herr Captain!" he called out genially; "kindly open the door of the Strafeburg,—your Queen desires it."
Von Hügelweiler's eyes wore a daze of wonderment. What on earth was the American doing on the box of the Princess's sleigh?