"I cannot become a Prince, Grigosie, and my lady of the breezy morning was a Princess."
"Really, or is that your fanciful name for her?"
"Really a Princess," Ellerey answered. "I wonder why I should be telling this story to you?"
"Is there not sympathy between all who love?" Grigosie answered. "It is the one common bond there is in the world, knowing no difference of creed or nationality."
For two days the little band journeyed in the mountains, keeping to the lower track on account of the horses. Progress was slow, for the going was rough, and the horses often had to be led. The track lay between the lower hills and the main mountain range, and they had lost sight of the open country, which lay below them. It was late in the afternoon of the second day that they crossed a spur which jutted out toward the plain, and from its vantage ground Grigosie was the first to point out the head of the pass, a precipitous opening in the mountains to their left. At the same time Stefan, looking across the open country, pointed out a cloud of dust on the horizon.
"That means a moving body of men," he said.
"In the pass lies our greatest security until we are prepared to meet the enemy," Ellerey answered. "If that castle of yours has not crumbled to dust, Grigosie, it will make excellent quarters for us."
The Drekner pass had long ago ceased to be used. Once, doubtless, it was the highway into Wallaria from the north, but that was long ago, not within the memory of the oldest man. Nature herself had closed the way by casting a great spur of the mountain into the deepest and narrowest part of the defile. It was still possible to climb this, but it had effectually closed the pass for all useful purposes; and the castle, which in old times had been used to guard the way, had fallen into decay. It stood gaunt against the hillside upon a natural plateau, the pathway to it, long and zig-zag, cut out in the hillside. Vegetation had taken root in the crevices of its broken walls, and some of the stonework, shivered by the lightning stroke perhaps, lay in the roadway at the foot of the hill. Silence reigned, and an eagle hovering on the heights above doubtless had his eyrie there. A thin stream of water trickled down the hillside, finding its way from the snow on the mountains, which reared white-hooded heads here and there above their humbler brethren.
"My castle in the hills!" cried Grigosie enthusiastically as a turn of the track brought it in view.
"Peace, Grigosie, and take that child's chatter of yours to the rear," said Ellerey. Then turning to Stefan, he directed him and another of the men to climb up carefully to the plateau. "Some outpost of Vasilici's may hold it," he remarked.