"I'm afraid not. He has already lived through several showers of bullets."
"But he can't die here!—here under the very eyes of the Princess!" she insisted.
"Then," said Smith, "the Princess will have to pull him through. It's up to her now."
The girl knelt there in excited silence, studying the problem intently.
It was bad business. The battlements bristled with bayonets; outside, cavalry, infantry, artillery were massed to destroy the gentleman in the bowler hat.
Presently the flush deepened on the girl's[105] cheeks; she took the bowler hat between her gloved fingers and set its owner in the middle of the moat again.
"Doesn't he crawl into the drain?" asked Smith anxiously.
"No. But the soldiers in the castle think he does. So," she continued with animation, "the brutal commander rushes downstairs, seizes a candle, and enters the drain from the castle court with about a thousand soldiers!"
"But——"
"With about ten thousand soldiers!" she repeated firmly. "And no sooner—no sooner—does their brutal and cowardly commander enter that drain with his lighted candle than the Princess runs downstairs, seizes a hatchet, severs the gas main with a single blow, and pokes the end of the pipe into the drain!"