Daily Cecil watched all this from his windows, till his soul sickened at it all and of inaction, after the fierce excitement of recent events; but after a week had elapsed, the clash of arms, as the two sentinels at the door accorded a salute to some visitors, followed by the clatter of spurs and steel scabbards on the wooden staircase of the house, preceded the entrance into Cecil's room of an officer in the uniform of the Servian staff, the provost-marshal and a gentleman in civilian costume, who announced himself as the deputy minister of police from Belgrade, and who was attended by a subordinate in a kind of uniform. 'Police?' replied Cecil, in an inquiring tone; 'it is, then, some civil--error that I am accused of?' 'No error at all, Herr Lieutenant; but of a crime against the State,' replied the civilian--a black-bearded man, with the ribbon of the Takova cross at his lapelle--in a somewhat gruff manner. 'Information has been lodged with the authorities that you have, or have borne about you, papers of a treasonable nature.' 'Lodged, by whom?' 'Captain Mattei Guebhard.' Cecil laughed, but angrily, nevertheless. 'Herr Lieutenant,' said the provost-marshal, a grim-looking old sabreur, 'you may find this a hanging, and not a laughing, matter!' 'Thus,' continued the deputy minister of police, 'we have orders to examine your person for secret papers, if, by the delay foolishly accorded to you, they have not been destroyed.' 'Papers--what papers?' 'That, as yet, can only be known to yourself.' On this his attendant made a pace towards Cecil, who haughtily motioned him by his hand to pause, ere he laid a hand upon him. 'You delivered the despatches of General Tchernaieff to the King at Belgrade?' resumed the police official. 'To the King--yes.' 'Don't repeat my words, please!' 'Mein Herr?' 'I say, don't repeat my words!' exclaimed the other, who manifested rather a disposition to bully. 'You tarried unnecessarily at the castle of Palenka?' 'I met with an accident, of which the general is, I presume, fully aware, though the count seems somewhat dissatisfied,' said Cecil, in whom this questioning excited surprise and indignation, rather than alarm. 'There you met Captain Guebhard?' 'To my sorrow, and no small disgust, I did.' 'And though unable, as you averred, to proceed, you refused to give him the documents; but conveyed them in a contrary direction from the camp, with what purpose is best known to yourself; and but for the circumstance of your meeting an escort of Servian troops, the general would never have received them at all?' 'This statement is false in its tenor,' replied Cecil, haughtily; 'and I am utterly in the dark as to your inferences.' 'Ah--indeed! Permit me to examine your sabretache.' 'It is empty.'