"The wounded will be looked after," said Mrs. Saunders calmly, "and by more capable hands than yours. Your departure now without a formal leave-taking of his Majesty would produce the worst impression. As my husband's friend, your conduct would reflect on him. I must ask you to be prudent." Trafford's eyes flamed furiously at the maddening check. His whole system was quivering with the excitement of the situation and the intense desire to find relief for tortured nerves in vigorous action. There was a strange pain, too, in his heart, a queer, stabbing sensation that he neither analysed nor understood. All he knew was that the Palace walls cramped him like a narrow cell, that he needed air,--the air of the Königstrasse. And yet nothing short of rude violence could have brushed aside the well-developed young lady who blocked his exit with such exasperating _vis inertiæ_. With a really fine effort of self-control he mastered himself. "I will be prudent," he said bitterly. "Thank you." "It would never do," went on Trafford ironically, "for your husband to fall out of favour with the humane King Karl. He might wake to find himself in the dungeons of the Strafeburg;" and with a polite bow he returned through the dining-room to the balcony. "Well," he asked of Saunders, "does peace reign at Weidenbruck?" "There seems to be trouble in the direction of the Grass-market," replied Saunders, pointing to a quarter from which distant sounds of shouting were faintly audible. Almost as he spoke, a red glare lit up the heavens with a rosy flickering glow. "Incendiarism!" muttered old General Bilderbaum, feeling instinctively for his sword. The King whispered something in General Meyer's ear. The Commander-in-Chief nodded. "I gave the order ten minutes ago, sire," he replied. "The policy of straightforward repression shall be given a full trial." CHAPTER THIRTEEN ON THE WARPATH While Trafford was devouring the enticing viands of the Neptunburg, and listening to the inspiriting conversation of the Frau Generalin von Bilderbaum, a certain captain in the third regiment of Guides was the prey to a whole host of mixed sentiments, divergent ideals, and other troubles of a conscientious egotist. Ulrich von Hügelweiler was sitting in his barrack quarters, smoking hard and thinking harder, and occasionally kicking the legs of the table in an excess of mental indecision. "I am a loyalist by instinct," he murmured to himself, lighting his fourteenth cigarette. "But to whom? Loyalty is a virtue,--a grand virtue as a rule,--but loyalty to the wrong person is as immoral as worship paid to a false god." And having delivered himself of this platitudinous monologue he kicked another flake of varnish from the leg of his long-suffering table.