“Have you any suggestion to offer as to how we are to escape?”

“No,” she replied, reluctantly, “except to call out.”

“And bring somebody else to make an amusing spectacle of himself—if he doesn’t happen to get killed. I can’t congratulate[64] you on your scheme.” And he continued his descent.

[64]

“Stop; for God’s sake, stop!” she called out. “I am ashamed of myself. I am sufficiently punished.”

“My dear young lady, I’m not punishing you; I’m trying to get myself, and incidentally you, out of this mess.”

“Please—please—come back where I can see you; I wish to say something to you.” It was certainly Erica and not Her Serene Highness who was speaking now.

He obeyed her. When he could see her again he said, “Well?”

“I—I want you to say that you forgive me,” she said, earnestly. “I want to see that you forgive me.”

He looked at her in a friendly way. “I understand how it is with you. I don’t in the least blame you. Only,[65] in my country, we never permit any one to take that tone towards us. And now, please, Your Majesty of the Oak Tree, may I go for the rifle?”

[65]

“May I say that you mustn’t?” she asked, a smile in her eyes.

“I’d like to have a reason.”

“Well, in the first place”—she hesitated—“it isn’t loaded.”

He looked at her searchingly. She blushed.

“Is it your rifle?” he asked.

“Yes; I always carry it when I walk in the woods; there’s a chance that something disagreeable might escape from the forest into the park, though the fences are strong and high. And to-day when the boar came at me”—she looked as though she felt very foolish—“my foot caught and—I dropped the rifle.”

[66]“And you don’t load it?”

[66]

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