Instantly the page rushed off, and once more Johanna Elizabetha was alone with the owner of that yellow, hairy hand, but with a bolted door between her and death this time. Still she held the door-handle firmly, and she felt it being gently tried from inside. Then she heard distinctly stealthy footsteps stealing away across the audience-chamber. The guard clattered into the ante-hall--fifty men in yellow and silver uniforms, with drawn swords, and pistols showing grimly at their sides. The captain of the guard inquired her Highness's pleasure. The page had summoned him, saying her Highness was in danger of her life. 'Yes,' said Johanna Elizabetha shortly, 'assassination. Search my apartments, the doors are locked.' The men poured in: some straight through the audience-chamber, others through the narrow corridor leading round at the back of the Duchess's sleeping apartment. In a short time the captain returned. 'We have found no one, your Highness; yet I have left my men to search again, though in truth we have inspected every inch of all the rooms.' He looked at Johanna Elizabetha curiously as he spoke. Did he guess her mad? She felt guilty, suspected. Could that horrid vision, that creeping, lurking man, have been a phantom? A thing, then, of her own creation, not a ghost of the castle--no, a spectre of her own! 'You cannot have searched everywhere,' she said. 'There are no ghosts in the castle save the White Lady, and I saw a man skulking in my apartments.' 'Your Highness, the search has----,' he began. 'I will direct your men, Monsieur,' she interrupted hurriedly, and entered the audience-chamber. Carefully the soldiers went through the rooms again, probing each dark corner and under the hangings with their swords, but no one was to be found. The sweat stood on her Highness's brow. She knew she would give all she possessed for the man to be discovered. If he were not, she knew that she must become insane--nay, she would be proved already mad to her own knowledge. Suddenly a shout went up from the soldiers who had penetrated to her Highness's praying-room, which, owing to its bareness and small size, had received at first but a cursory glance from the searchers. Against the balustrade in the angle of the small balcony the murderer crouched. The soldiers dragged him forward and flung him, an unresisting, trembling heap, on to the middle of the floor. Her Highness hearing the commotion hurried forward. 'You have found him, then? Oh, thank God!' she cried. 'Pardon, pardon, by your mother's heart, I implore!' moaned the miserable wretch, dragging himself like a crawling, wriggling animal towards the Duchess. He was immediately hauled back by the soldiers. 'Stand up, you worm, and give account of yourself,' said the captain sternly, bestowing a kick on the man's ribs. 'I meant no harm! By Christ! I meant no harm!' the prisoner wailed. 'How came you in her Highness's apartments? Speak!'