"They are—where they are. They are free to leave the country without let or hindrance. When things are quieted down and I am firmly in the saddle again, they can come back in their true capacity—as my friends."
"We shall not have to wait long, sire," said Meyer with an unwonted note of jubilation in his voice. "Even before yesterday's battle the tide was running strongly for you at the capital. Henceforth Weidenbruck and the whole country will be loyal. Long live Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!"
"Long live Karl!" echoed Saunders, Von Bilderbaum, and Lexa. "Long live Karl!" reiterated the riflemen, raising their shakos aloft on their musket barrels.
Karl stood still, with eyes that swam. He began to speak, but ended with a shake of his head, as if something had choked him.
"To-morrow, dear friends," he muttered very low. "To-morrow. To-night I am tired, very tired and very happy. Long live George Trafford and his beautiful bride!" he said in stronger tones. "God bless them! God bless our poor country! God help me to rule"—but his voice had sunk again to a whisper and as he spoke he reeled against Saunders.
The latter held the massive but limp frame from falling, while someone produced brandy from a flask and poured a generous measure down the King's throat. Then the soldiers made a seat of their crossed weapons, and shoulder-high and supported by willing arms, Karl of Grimland was borne, half-fainting with exposure and fatigue, but serene of mind, to the winter palace of his beloved Weissheim.
EPILOGUE
Down the great, white highway of the Rylvio Pass a bob-sleigh was speeding in the early hours of a perfect morning. The incense of dawn was in the air, and the magic of stupendous scenery uplifted the souls of the two travellers. Fantastic peaks of incomparable beauty rose up in majesty to meet the amazing turquoise of the heavens. Sparkling cascades of dazzling whiteness hung in streams of frozen foam from dun cliffs and larch-crowned boulders. The roadway down which the sleigh was coursing with unchecked speed wound like a silver ribbon at the edge of precipices, sometimes tunnelling through an arch of brown rock, only to give again, after a moment's gloom, a fresh expanse of argent domes and shimmering declivities. Perched high on perilous crags were ancient castles of grim battlements and enduring masonry, stubborn homes of a stubborn nobility that had levied toll in olden times on all such as passed their inhospitable walls. Below, in the still shadowed valley, were villages of tiny houses, the toy campanili of Lilliputian churches, and a grey-green river rushing over a stony bed to merge itself in the ampler flood of the Danube.
"Oh, could anything be more perfect?" asked Gloria, who, as on the previous night, was doing duty at the wheel. There was a flush on her cheeks that was a tribute to the keen mountain air, and a sparkle in her dark eyes that told of welling happiness and a splendid conscious joy. Radiant as the morn, fragrant as the pine-laden air, she seemed the embodiment of a hundred vitalities crowded into one blithe being.