“Yes, sir; him and the brown mare. I couldn't do nothing else with 'em you see, sir, so I shipped him along with us; they don't care for the train a bit, bless their hearts! And I've got a sharp boy a-minding of 'em. You can easily send 'em on to England from Paris if you're determined to part with 'em; but you know the King always was fond of drums and trumpets and that like. You remember, sir, when he as a colt we broke him into it and taught him a bit of maneuvering; 'cause, till you find what pace he had in him, you'd thought of making a charger of him. He loves the noise of soldiering--he do; and if he thought you was going away without him, he'd break his heart, Mr. Cecil, sir. It was all I could do to keep him from follerin' of you this morning; he sawed my arms off almost.” With which, Rake, conscious that he had been guilty of unpardonable disobedience and outrageous interference, hung his head over the gun; a little anxious and a good deal ashamed. Cecil smiled a little, despite himself. “Rake, you will do for no service, I am afraid; you are terribly insubordinate!” He had not the heart to say more; the man's fidelity was too true to be returned with rebuke; and stronger than all surprise and annoyance was a strange mingling of pain and pleasure in him to think that the horse he loved so well was still so near him, the comrade of his adversity as he had been the companion of his happiest hours. “These things will keep him a few days,” he thought, as he looked at his hunting-watch, and the priceless pearl in each of his wristband-studs. He would have pawned every atom he had about him to have had the King with him a week longer. The night fell, the stars came out, the storm-rack of a coming tempest drifted over the sky, the train rushed onward through the thickening darkness, through the spectral country--it was like his life, rushing headlong down into impenetrable gloom. The best, the uttermost, that he could look for was a soldier's grave, far away under some foreign soil. A few evenings later the Countess Guenevere stood alone in her own boudoir in her Baden suite; she was going to dine with an Archduchess of Russia, and the splendid jewels of her House glittered through the black shower of her laces, and crowned her beautiful glossy hair, her delicate imperial head. In her hands was a letter--oddly written in pencil on a leaf torn out of a betting book, but without a tremor or a change in the writing itself. And as she stood a shiver shook her frame; in the solitude of her lighted and luxurious chamber her cheek grew pale, her eyes grew dim.