"
Then he turned again to James, who had now come up, and laid his
hand on his shoulder.
"Come along, my king-maker," said he.
James looked in his face for a moment. The constable's eyes met
his; and the constable nodded.
So they turned to the lodge where the dead king and his huntsman
lay. Verily the fate drove.
CHAPTER XVI. A CROWD IN THE KONIGSTRASSE
The project that had taken shape in the thoughts of Mr.
Rassendyll's servant, and had inflamed Sapt's daring mind as the
dropping of a spark kindles dry shavings, had suggested itself
vaguely to more than one of us in Strelsau. We did not indeed
coolly face and plan it, as the little servant had, nor seize on
it at once with an eagerness to be convinced of its necessity,
like the Constable of Zenda; but it was there in my mind,
sometimes figuring as a dread, sometimes as a hope, now seeming
the one thing to be avoided, again the only resource against a
more disastrous issue. I knew that it was in Bernenstein's
thoughts no less than in my own; for neither of us had been able
to form any reasonable scheme by which the living king, whom half
Strelsau now knew to be in the city, could be spirited away, and
the dead king set in his place.
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