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, and apparently indifferent to anything she might say.

"I suppose it was you, then, who appointed our enemy Provarsk to the position of chancellor?" she said.

"The king appoints. I merely advise," he replied, with a smile in the corners of his eyes that stretched slowly downward until it created circumflex wrinkles around his firm lips.

"What is to become of Baron Von Glutz?" she demanded, directly to the point.

The American slowly moved his head in the baron's direction and assumed a deep study of that person that caused the latter to squirm, puff his cheeks, and adopt the habitual recourse of tugging at his moustache.

"Do you know," replied Kent slowly, "that is the question which has bothered me a whole lot. I've given considerable thought to him and—er—I hardly know what to do with him. At first I thought of appointing him the king's dog-catcher. Then, observing something faintly suggesting a military character, a regular fighting general behind the lines—a long way behind—I concluded that he might make a good minister of war. That is one of the most important places in every kingdom of this kind. The smaller the army, the more important the position. There [147]