SOPHY OF KRAVONIA
game which Sophy's cool submission to his demand had for the moment thwarted, but to which the Prince's headlong anger and fear now gave an opening—the opening which Stafnitz had from the first foreseen. It would need little to make the fiery Prince forget prudence when he was face to face with Mistitch. It was not a safe game for Mistitch personally—both Stafnitz and he knew that. But Captain Hercules was confident. He would not be caught twice by the Volseni trick of sword! The satisfaction of his revenge, and the unstinted rewards that his Colonel offered, made it worth his while to accept the risk, and rendered it grateful to his heart.
Sophy sat smiling. She would fain have averted the encounter, and had shaped her manoeuvres to that end. It was not to be so, it seemed. Now, she did not doubt Monseigneur's success. But she wished that Zerkovitch had not reached Volseni so quickly; that the Prince had stayed behind his walls till his plans were ready; and that she was going a prisoner to Slavna to see the King, trusting to her face, her tongue, her courage, and the star of her own fortune. Never had her buoyant self-confidence run higher.
On the top of the causeway, Max von Hollbrandt looked to his revolver, Peter Vassip loosened his knife in its leather sheath. A window above the gate opened, and Marie Zerkovitch's frightened face looked out. The women-servants jostled old Vassip in the doorway. The grooms stood outside the stables. No one moved only the Prince's little troop came on. When they were fifty yards away, Mistitch cried to his men: "Draw swords!" and himself pricked his horse with his spur and rode up to where Sophy was.
Mistitch drew his horse up parallel to Sophy's, head to tail, on her right side, between her and the ap-
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