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 energy; but now you are so concerned for my safety, so eager to repair your mistaken estimate of me, and heedful for my welfare, that you are going to see me safe to the Servian frontier. That is the part you are cast for; and, listen to me, if you refuse, if you give so much as a sign or suggestion of treachery, if you don't play that part to the letter, I swear by all I hold sacred I'll scatter your brains with this pistol;" and I clapped it to his head till the cold steel pressed a ring on his temple. "Now what do you say?"

He cowered and shrank at my desperate words, and all the horror and fright of death with which the Countess Bokara had filled his soul came back upon him again as he stared helplessly up at me. His dry bloodless lips moved, but no sound passed them; he lifted his hands as if in entreaty, only to drop them again in feeble nervelessness; and he shook and trembled like one stricken with sudden ague.

"You value your life, I see, and you can earn it in the way I've said. So long as I am safe you will be safe, and not one second longer. That I swear. If there is danger on the road for me it is your making, and you shall taste of the risks you order so glibly for others. Every hazard that waits there for me will be one for you as well. You are dealing with a man you have rendered utterly reckless and desperate. Remember that. Now, do you agree?"

"Anything," he whispered, in so low a tone that I could only catch it with difficulty.

"Then we'll make a start. Come first with me." I led him upstairs to my dressing-room, and made him wait while I exchanged the uniform I was wearing for a civilian's dress, and shaved off my beard and moustache. He sat watching me in dead silence, his eyes