“Am I likely to tell you anything but the truth at such a moment, and on such a subject?” retorted Louis. “Your Carlino is dead, and I killed him. I have not yet heard any of my comrades,” he glanced round at his fellow-prisoners, “deliver the dying message with which he charged them. I am the only honest one among them, after all. He wished it to be known that he chose death rather than abdication. Well, he had it.” “You--a soldier,” said the Prince to General Sertchaieff, “and connived at the commission of this dastardly murder?” “We did not expect to make our revolution with rose-water,” returned the ex-Minister. “Our intention was to surprise Carlino, and to force him to abdicate by means of threats, if possible; but Captain O’Malachy had strict orders to kill him if any resistance or rescue were attempted, and he did so.” “I should wish to adjourn the court,” said Prince Otto George. “I do not feel that I can conduct business properly after receiving this terrible news.” “Then the mountain men will break in and tear the prisoners to pieces,” said M. Drakovics, in a low voice, glancing at the crowd of excited peasants who stood with weapons in their hands, muttering imprecations and glaring at the self-accused murderers. “I entreat your Highness to bring the trial to a close, so that it may be evident that the murderers will meet the punishment demanded by their crimes, and then to come with me to break the news to the people.” Prince Otto Georg turned impatiently to the papers on the table before him, and M. Drakovics succeeded in inducing his followers to leave the hall by assuring them that summary justice would be done by the court-martial. Indeed, the evidence was so clear that there could be no doubt of the result of the trial. Even leaving out of sight the added atrocity of the murder of the King, the prisoners had committed a sufficient number of crimes against both military and civil law to cause them to incur the death-penalty several times over. There was not a dissentient voice among the members of the court, and the President pronounced the sentence with a sensation not far removed from loathing. “I never saw a man so bloodthirsty as that O’Malachy,” he said to himself as he left the chair after the prisoners had been removed. “I believe that the murder was his doing altogether, for Sertchaieff seemed at first as much surprised as I was. I wonder whether there could have been any truth in that story about a sister of his that got into the Scythian papers? It would account for his peculiar ferocity.”