during his father’s lifetime, and he did not intend that any stranger, except his own friends, should enjoy the splendid shooting now.

“My dear Petrovitch,” he was saying between whiffs of his cigarette, “It is indeed reassuring what you tell me regarding the settled state of the country. You have surely had sufficient internal troubles of late.”

“Ah, yes!” sighed the elder man, a deep, thoughtful expression upon his pleasant, if somewhat sallow, countenance. “Servia has passed through her great crisis—the crisis through which every young nation must pass sooner or later; and now, heaven be thanked, a brighter day has dawned for us. Under our new régime prosperity is assured. But”—and pausing, he looked Max straight in the face, and in a changed voice, a voice of increased earnestness and confidence, he added with only a slight accent, for he spoke English very well—“I did not ask you here to discuss politics. We Servians are, I fear, sad gossips upon our own affairs. I wanted to speak to you upon a subject of greatest importance to myself personally, and of someone very dear to me. Now we have been friends, my dear Max, you and I, through some years, and I feel—nay, I know, that you will regard what I say in entire confidence.”

“Most certainly,” was the young Englishman’s reply, though somewhat surprised at his friend’s sudden change of manner.

It was true that he had known Dr Michael Petrovitch for quite a number of years.

Long ago, when he had first visited Belgrade, the Servian capital, the man before him, well-known throughout the Balkans as a patriot, was occupying the position of Minister of Finance under King Milan. Both his Excellency and his wife had been extremely kind to him, had introduced him to the smart social set, had obtained for him the entrée to the Palace festivities, and had presented him to Queen Nathalie. Thus a firm friendship had been established between the two men.

But affairs in Servia had considerably changed since then. Madame Petrovitch, a charming English lady, had died, and his Excellency, after becoming Minister of Commerce and subsequently Foreign Minister in several succeeding Cabinets, had gone abroad to represent his country at foreign Courts, first St. Petersburg, then Berlin, and then Constantinople, finally returning and coming to live in England.

Even now he was not more than fifty, and it had long ago been whispered that his Majesty was constantly urging him to return 

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