The Rider Read online

  Boris advanced to the table behind which the two rulers sat, and bowed low before them. King Constans rose and walked around the end of the table to his son’s side.

  “You are a damn fool,” he said, and his voice was husky with emotions; “but I watched you just now from a window of the prison overlooking the courtyard. I saw you before the firing squad, and my only regret is that I haven’t a dozen more damn fools for sons.

  For the first time in many years Constans of Karlova put his arms about his only child and embraced his with real affection.

  “I don’t understand,” stammered Prince Boris “What does all this mean? How did you find out?”

  “You may thank this young person,” replied his father, pointing to Bakla. “She rode to Sovgrad and found Ivan-told him the fix you were in-made him come to me, by Jove, and confess the whole fool thing.

  “And you may thank his gracious majesty, King Alexis, and our good friend and servant Baron Kantchi for the lesson which they prepared for you and which terminated just now before the stone wall in the prison courtyard.”

  “You mean that the whole thing was a hoax,” exclaimed Boris, flushing-“that it was never intended that I be shot?”

  “We knew who you were before that indictment and sentence were read to you,” said Alexis.

  “And the Princess Mary-did she know?” he asked. “She does not know yet,” replied the king of Margoth, “and I rather doubt that she would care much what became of Prince Boris of Karlova after her experience with him in Demia day before yesterday-do you?” and Alexis III scowled his fiercest scowl.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, I do,” blurted Prince Boris, “because she loves me and I love her.”

  “Then you’d better go and tell her about it, my son,” said Alexis; “you’ll find her in the adjoining room.”

  As Prince Boris crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him he found himself in a dimly lighted room on the opposite side of which a little figure crouched in a huge easy chair before a log fire.

  At the sound of the opening and closing door the figure leaped to its feet and turning toward Boris cried: “What word? Have they murdered him, or have they set him free?” and then as the man crossed toward her and she saw who he was, she gave a little cry and ran toward him. “You?” she gasped.

  “I, Your Highness,” he replied, and going upon one knee he raised her fingers to his lips. “It is I with a confession and a plea for mercy,” and then he told her.

  “I can’t be angry,” she said, “For I didn’t want to marry you any more than you wanted to marry me. How could we know, who had never seen one another, that we were born into the world, just you for me and I for you?”

  It was fully half an hour before Alexis III sent Ivan Kantchi into the adjoining room to discover what had become of Prince Boris of Karlova. Though he rapped upon the door a dozen times he received no response, and so he turned the knob and entered. What he saw beyond the arm of the easy chair before the log fire sent him back into the room from which he had come.

  “War is hell,” he said, bowing low before the two kings, “and from what I have just seen in the adjoining room I am positive that there will never be war between Margoth and Karlova.”

  Hemmington Main and Gwendolyn Bass were married in Demia before they left for America.

  Prince Boris of Karlova was best man and Princess Mary of Margoth maid of honor.

  And what became of The Rider? I wish that I could tell you that he reformed and was pardoned by both King Alexis III and King Constans, and that he married Bakla and settled down to run a nice, respectable, little tavern on the Roman road just out of Sovgrad. Would you like to have me tell you that? All right, I will; but it isn’t so.

  End