“Yes; we have walked into a hideous trap. Worse, we have taken that divine girl into it with us.”
“May I be hanged if I understand it,” Ompertz observed, in a mystified tone.
“I think I do,” Ludovic returned gloomily.
“You believe the ladies have not left the castle?”
“I am sure of it.” He turned and looked towards the point where the great square tower was just visible above the ravine, and stamped his foot in impotent desperation. “And I have been calling Fate my friend,” he exclaimed bitterly. “Of all the hideous tricks she has ever played man, surely this is the most crushing. To lose everything at one stroke by the hand of a brute in human form such as that. To be helpless here, our very lives not worth an hour’s purchase, and the Princess——ah, why did we not let those five fellows kill us just now, and end this misery worse than death?”
“For my part I am just as pleased they did not,” Ompertz said dryly; “and it is some satisfaction to know that if we have but an hour or two to live, we have accounted for five of as scurvy a company of scoundrels as ever it has been my luck to encounter. Now, sire, if, as our law is short enough to make time of some account, I may speak under pardon, we have two courses more or less open to us. To run away, or stay and do our best to rescue the ladies. I need hardly ask which, even with a kingdom at stake, your Highness chooses.”
The sharp gust of despondency which had swept over Ludovic had soon passed away. “No need, truly,” he replied. “If we have but one thing more to do in this world it must be to find the Princess and Countess Minna and get them out of the clutches of this execrable villain. It is a desperate venture, and our lives will, almost surely, pay forfeit for the attempt; but it must be made.”
Ompertz had become thoughtful. “It is a poor chance,” he said at length; “so desperate that I doubt whether your Highness be justified in taking it. Hear me out, sire,” for Ludovic had, by an impatient gesture, imposed silence upon him; “I am far from counselling a policy of cowardice. This rescue cries out to be accomplished; it is the one thing under Heaven to-day which can brook no disregard. But the means, sire? Are you right in almost surely throwing your life away on a forlorn hope? Will you hear my simple plan? That the Princess Ruperta is held a prisoner in the castle of this rascally Count has but to be known abroad, and her rescue is but the question of a regiment’s march hither, nay of a word from our late acquaintance, Chancellor Rollmar. Her kidnapper is ignorant of her identity; he little knows what he is doing.”
“I doubt whether, did he know it, the matter would not be made worse,” Ludovic said. “I seem now to have heard of this Count Irromar as one who has spent his life in defying all law, national and moral, and has long been at issue with the government to which he should owe allegiance. An outlaw, a very brigand, or I am much mistaken; and his conduct corroborates my suspicion. That we, of all people, should have put our necks under his heel.”
“It is like enough,” Ompertz replied composedly. “But that the rightful and, I trust, soon reigning King of one State, and the Princess of another, should remain in such a situation is monstrous, inconceivable. Now, sire, my plan is this: Let me stay here alone, using what poor strength and wit I have to find out and free the Princess, while your Highness hurries post-haste back to Rollmar. There can be nothing to fear from him now, this peril will be paramount over every other consideration.”