He now pressed on to the tower. At some rods from it, he dismounted and tied his horse. He then advanced cautiously, to make sure that the place was deserted. Suddenly he stopped, at sound of a furious gallop on the road from Cassel to Melsungen. While he listened, the horse's footfalls came to an abrupt stop. After a few minutes of silence, there arose the sound of some one treading crisp leaves, and forcing a way through underbrush. Dick grasped his sword and waited, knowing he would have to face but one person,--for the galloping had been of a solitary horse. The newcomer soon appeared on foot, among the trees. It was Captain von Romberg, in great excitement and alarm. "You are still here!" he gasped, seizing Dick's hand. "Thank God, I am in time!" "In time for what?" asked Dick. "In time to save you and our comrades. Come, the others are in the tower, are they not?" "The others are on their way, under a guard, to Spangenberg." "My God! Then I am too late! I thought I might give a half-hour's warning! We have been betrayed!" "So it is evident. What do you know of it? Come, my dear Count, sit here on this log, and tell me." The two sat down together at one side of the doorway, outside the tower. "I got word from--a certain lady," began Von Romberg, in a half breathless, heart-broken voice, "to come to her at once, as she was suddenly at the point of death. This was a short time before I was to have started for the meeting this afternoon. When I entered her room I found her perfectly well, but in great trepidation. She said I must not leave her house till night. When I insisted on going, now that I had found she was not ill, she broke down, and told me everything. You must know she is the--she is on close terms with the secretary of Rothenstein, minister of police. Through this secretary she had learned that we have all been terribly tricked. Our conspiracy was instigated with the Landgrave's own authority! It was an idea of old Rothenstein's, and the villain who carried it out was Mesmer!" "But,--I don't understand. Why should the Landgrave authorize a conspiracy against himself?" "In order to have a reason, in the eyes of his subjects and of other powers, for removing certain objectionable persons from his way. You are an Englishman, St. Valier a Frenchman. Without a good pretext he would not dare have you two imprisoned, lest your governments might call him to account. Moreover, if he took any arbitrary step against yourself, the people might think he was secretly angry at you for having saved the Landgravine's life. And then, this woman told me, there is a lady whose hatred the Landgrave does not wish to incur, and he would incur it by causing your destruction; but now it will appear that you have brought destruction on yourself by plotting high treason." "What a diabolical scheme!"