Hedwig was there. She had on a new habit, and a gardenia in her buttonhole, and she gave Nikky her hand to kiss, but only nodded to the Crown Prince.

"Hello, Otto!" she said. "I thought you'd have a ball and chain on your leg to-day."

"There's nothing wrong with my legs," said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, staring at the nets habit. "But yours look rather queer."

Hedwig flushed. The truth was that she was wearing, for the first time, a cross-saddle habit of coat and trousers. And coat and trousers were forbidden to the royal women. She eyed Otto with defiance, and turned an appealing glance to Nikky. But her voice was very dignified.

"I bought them myself," she said. "I consider it a perfectly modest costume, and much safer than the other."

"It is quite lovely--on you, Highness," said Nikky.

In a stiff chair at the edge of the ring Hedwig's lady in waiting sat resignedly. She was an elderly woman, and did not ride. Just now she was absorbed in wondering what would happen to her when the Archduchess discovered this new freak of Hedwig's. Perhaps she would better ask permission to go into retreat for a time. The Archduchess, who had no religion herself, approved of it in others. She took a soft rubber from her pocket, and tried to erase a spot from her white kid gloves.

The discovery that Hedwig had two perfectly good legs rather astounded Prince Ferdinand William Otto. He felt something like consternation.

"I've never seen any one else dressed like that," he observed, as the horses were brought up.

Hedwig colored again. She looked like an absurdly pretty boy. "Don't be a silly," she replied, rather sharply. "Every one does it, except here, where old fossils refuse to think that anything new can be proper.

If you're going to be that sort of a king when you grow up, I'll go somewhere else to live."

Nikky looked gloomy. The prospect, although remote, was dreary. But, as the horses were led out, and he helped Hedwig to her saddle, he brightened. After all, the future was the future, and now was now.

"Catch me!" said Hedwig, and dug her royal heels into her horse's flanks. The Crown Prince climbed into his saddle and followed. They were off.

The riding-school had been built for officers of the army, but was now used by the Court only. Here the King had ridden as a lad with young Mettlich, his close friend even then. The favorite mare of his later years, now old and almost blind, still had a stall in the adjacent royal stables. One of the King's last excursions abroad had been to visit her.

Overhead, up a great runway, were the state chariots, gilt coaches of inconceivable weight, traveling carriages of the post-chaise periods, sleighs in which four horses drove abreast, their panels painted by the great artists of the time; and one plain little vehicle, very shabby, in which the royal children of long ago had fled from a Karnian invasion.

In one corner, black and gold and forbidding, was the imposing hearse in which the dead sovereigns of the country were taken to their long sleep in the vaults under the cathedral. Good, bad, and indifferent, one after the other, as their hour came, they had taken this last journey in the old catafalque, and had joined their forbears. Many they had been: men of iron, men of blood, men of flesh, men of water. And now they lay in stone crypts, and of all the line only two remained.

One and all, the royal vehicles were shrouded in sheets, except on one day of each month when the sheets were removed and the public admitted.

But on that morning the great hearse was uncovered, and two men were working, one at the upholstery, which he was brushing. The other was carefully oiling the wood of the body. Save for them, the wide and dusky loft was empty.

One was a boy, newly come from the country. The other was an elderly man. It was he who oiled.

"Many a king has this carried," said the man. "My father, who was here before me, oiled it for the last one."

"May it be long before it carries another!" commented the boy fervently.

"It will not be long. The old King fails hourly. And this happening of yesterday--"

"What happened yesterday?" queried the boy.

"It was a matter of the Crown Prince."

"Was he ill?"

"He ran away," said the man shortly.

"Ran away?" The boy stopped his dusting, and stared, open-mouthed.

"Aye, ran away. Grew weary of back-bending, perhaps. I do not know. I do not believe in kings."

"Not believe in kings?" The boy stopped his brushing.

"You do, of course," sneered the man. "Because a thing is, it is right.

But I think. I use my brains. I reason. And I do not believe in kings."

Up the runway came sounds from the ring, the thudding of hoofs, followed by a child's shrill, joyous laughter. The man scowled.

"Listen!" he said. "We labor and they play."

"It has always been so. I do not begrudge happiness."

But the man was not listening.

"I do not believe in kings," he said sullenly.

CHAPTER VI. THE CHANCELLOR PAYS A VISIT

The Archduchess was having tea. Her boudoir was a crowded little room.

Nikky had once observed confidentially to Miss Braithwaite that it was exactly like her, all hung and furnished with things that were not needed. The Archduchess liked it because it was warm. The palace rooms were mostly large and chilly. She lad a fire there on the warmest days in spring, and liked to put the coals on, herself. She wrapped them in pieces of paper so she would not soil her hands.

This afternoon she was not alone. Lounging at a window was the lady who was in waiting at the time, the Countess Loschek. Just now she was getting rather a wigging, but she was remarkably calm.

"The last three times," the Archduchess said, stirring her tea, "you have had a sore throat."

"It is such a dull book," explained the Countess.

"Not at all. It is an improving book. If you would put your mind on it when you are reading, Olga, you would enjoy it. And you would learn something, besides. In my opinion," went on the Archduchess, tasting her tea, "you smoke too many cigarettes."

The Countess yawned, but silently, at her window.

Then she consulted a thermometer. "Eighty!" she said briefly, and, coming over, sat down by the tea-table.

The Countess Loschek was thirty, and very handsome, in an insolent way.

She was supposed to be the best-dressed woman at the Court, and to rule Annunciata with an iron hand, although it was known that they quarreled a great deal over small things, especially over the coal fire.

Some said that the real thing that held them together was resentment that the little Crown Prince stood between the Princess Hedwig and the throne. Annunciata was not young, but she was younger than her dead brother, Hubert. And others said it was because the Countess gathered up and brought in the news of the Court--the small intrigues and the scandals that constitute life in the restricted walls of a palace.

There is a great deal of gossip in a palace where the king is old and everything rather stupid and dull.

The Countess yawned again.

"Where is Hedwig?" demanded the Archduchess.