Here it was that two days later they heard the news of the rebellion in Thracia--news which sent all the special correspondents who keep portmanteaus ready packed, in case of a sudden summons, to the Balkans at racing speed. Carlino was dethroned, Peter was restored, Bellaviste was in the hands of the Franzist party,--this was what the telegram, despatched by M. Sertchaieff and his brother the General, told the world, and after its contents had been made public there was silence for several days. What those days of waiting were to Nadia it is impossible to describe. As is always the case when no authoritative news can be obtained, the most sensational rumours were rife--all, of course, founded on “private messages of undoubted trustworthiness,” or on the utterances of “a person who was better acquainted with the east of Europe than any other man living.” The purveyors of news of this description were largely concerned with the fate of Caerleon, and his supposed adventures formed the universal subject of conversation in Valetta society. There was not an Englishman in the island that did not admire the way in which he had stuck to his kingdom, although there were some who objected to his having gone to Thracia at all, and many were the conjectures, each backed by the authority of some newspaper statement or other, as to what had become of him. He had yielded to the demands of the rebels without striking a blow; he had refused to abdicate until a pistol was held to his head; he had offered such a strenuous resistance that he had been vanquished only when severely wounded; he was now imprisoned in one of the underground galleries of the Bellaviste fortifications; he had entered the service of King Peter; he had disappeared mysteriously; he had blown out his brains; he had been murdered;--the variety and mutual inconsistency of the rumours bore reliable testimony to one point only, the impenetrable mystery that shrouded his fate. It seemed certain that he was not at large, or why was he making no effort to regain his throne? but it seemed certain also that the victory of the insurgents had not been so complete as was at first reported, or why did they not send for King Peter?