Page:Roy Norton--The unknown Mr Kent.djvu/281

 Kent. He was not to be seen. As if mortified by his own moralising, he had gone.

The door of the room adjoining stood ajar and the king walked to it, looked in, and halted in astonishment. Kent was standing alone by the side of his bed, in which lay Provarsk. The king hesitated for an instant and then turned and tip-toed away. The broken screen caught his glance and he paused above it, observing that Von Glutz and Paulo were both inspecting the same object.

The baron looked around with his slow eyes, and pointed at the tiny dent in the tiles, bordered with splotches of lead, and called attention to it with a significant smile.

"That," he said, "I take to be the last shot of the last revolt in Marken."

The king saw the American once more that day. It was after twilight, dusk and a full moon had followed one another across the trail of the skies. In the distance, where Marken huddled and shouldered on its hills, could be heard, mellowed, but expressive, the faint sounds of revelry. Great rockets marked fiery courses in the night and then showered upon the red roofs their softly floating and multi-hued rain of stars. Sometimes above the murmur of the notes of a military band might be heard, bearing through the distance, airs of triumphant peace. Very soothing they sounded to the king, who, exhausted by his day of [277]