Kings in Adversity

September in the Berkshire hills makes Litchfield, Connecticut, an attractive place to people of leisure who like to watch nature as she doffs her summer garb of green and yello...

The dwarf, smiling mischievously, disappeared through the entrance and Bennett closed the heavy oaken door and carefully bolted it. His madcap visitor had refused to satisfy his...

King Rudolph XII., of Hesse-Heilfels, solemnly acquiesced in this suggestion by a nod of his gray head. His small, greenish-gray eyes gleamed with excitement, and the flush on h...

The sun had peeped above the island to the eastward and was throwing its caressing rays across the Sound. The storm that had chastised the waters and grumbled its way inland had...

Cousin Fritz led the way through the impenetrable darkness, holding the princess by the arm. Behind them came Bennett, guiding the king by the sound of the dwarf’s harsh, insist...

“Bennett ’82 cannot be explained by any known law,” a Yale professor had once remarked. “He may astonish the world by his genius, or end a short career as a tramp. The splendor...

The inn at which Jonathan Edwards Bennett, some weeks before the present crisis, had learned that King Rudolph XII. was afflicted with rheumatism, had become the centre of high...

The speaker looked up at the Princess Hilda deferentially, but his intercession in her behalf met with no reward. Far from seeming pleased at his support, she turned her back up...

Jonathan Edwards Bennett found himself in an uncomfortable predicament. He had solemnly promised to leave the kingdom at once, and he felt that the pledge he had given to the Pr...

The Princess Hilda opened her eyes wearily. She had slept for several hours, but her first sensation as she woke was one of utter misery. Sleep had brought with it no refreshmen...

Bennett’s face was pale but smiling as he witnessed the dismay of his baffled foes. That his possession of a pistol at this crisis had saved his life he had not the slightest do...

At the moment at which Norman Benedict had come to the decision recorded at the close of the preceding chapter, a ceremony unprecedented in the history of the New World had reac...

Posadowski passed through Prince Carlo’s sleeping-room and stepped out upon the balcony. The heir to a throne was still dreaming of love and peace in a land where Cupid should r...

Almost within a stone’s throw of the antique structure that for a full century has been known to New Yorkers as St. Mark’s Church stands a mansion that has had, like Eden, its g...

Wilhelm IX., King of Hesse-Heilfels by the divine right of grand larceny, gazed from a window in the castle at the rising sun; emblematic, as he reflected, of himself and his fo...

Just below the lodge gate, and at the very top of the hill, Kate Strong had fallen from her bicycle and sprained her ankle. The sudden and excruciating pain had begotten a momen...

Prince Carlo’s face was pale and drawn and his eyes gleamed feverishly as he turned from the ghastly sight in front of him and gazed at the Rexanians who had thronged upstairs a...

Surrounded by trees and haughtily succumbing to decay, an ancient mansion, colonial in style, stands half-way between the shore of Long Island Sound and the old post-road to Bos...

There was nothing in the topic upon which Bennett was discoursing to the Princess Hilda to arouse the jealousy of Baron Wollenstein. The American was speaking eloquently, but im...

On the second morning after the crown prince’s abduction, Gerald Strong and his family formed themselves at breakfast into what Ned called “a committee of the whole on the Szala...

Mrs. Brevoort and Ned Strong sped along in silence for a time. The roads were dry and hard, and there was enough life in the breeze that had kissed the sea to make even violent...

Carl Eingen had searched, as he believed, the most remote corner of the wine-cellar. He had taken with him no companion upon his subterranean bill-posting expedition, and, coura...

Count Szalaki turned smilingly to his _vis-à-vis_ as they seated themselves at the dining-table in a room that appeared luxurious even to the eye of the guest. There was a pecul...

“I was telling my son about them before you arrived,” answered Mr. Strong, whose curiosity was greatly excited by the episode that had just occurred. “There are a few hundred Re...

“You are to drive me half a mile down the road and back again,” said Rudolph sullenly to the aged Jehu who had carried Nemesis in a tumble-down vehicle to the gateway of the lod...

“These men are your friends and know your secret,” whispered Posadowski to the prince, as they approached Rukacs and Posnovitch, who were standing boldly in the glare of an elec...

Norman Benedict had reached the office of the _Trumpet_ in time to add a startling feature to the ten o’clock “extra” of that enterprising journal. A long cable despatch from Re...

“Go back to the city at once, and report here to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock,” said Posadowski to Svolak, the gate having been opened by Rudolph and the carriage drawn up i...

Rudolph Smolenski had relieved the intense gloom that had settled over his inhospitable drawing-room by lighting two oil lamps and several candles, much to the satisfaction of h...

At seven o’clock that evening Posadowski and Posnovitch had entered an elevated car at Houston Street, bound up-town. They were dressed with more regard for appearances than usu...

Norman Benedict had removed Kate Strong’s legging and the long buttoned shoe that had covered her sprained ankle, and had deftly bound up the injured member with a handkerchief,...

“Woman in bicycle costume is an acquired taste,” Ned Strong had once remarked to a friend. That was before Mrs. Brevoort had taken to wheeling. She had converted him to a belief...

Will the reader permit us to place him somewhere between earth and sky two days after the events recorded in the last chapter had occurred? From this exalted position, and provi...

Bennett peered down at the pale face at his side. He held a candle in his hand as they groped slowly forward in a tunnel that Cousin Fritz ascribed to the Romans. Beyond them gl...

Half an hour later a carriage drew up at the lodge gate. A cold supper, of which Mrs. Brevoort and Ned Strong had partaken with forced gayety, had vindicated Prince Carlo’s asse...

Prince Carlo was seated at a small, round, mahogany table in the centre of his shadow-haunted room. Before him lay a not uninviting repast. Cold meat, cut-up peaches, bread, but...

To the men who heard Kate Strong utter that name there was nothing but amazement in her voice, but to the sympathetic ear of Mrs. Brevoort there was that in her friend’s outcry...

“I consider him,” said Mrs. Strong, wife of Gerald Strong the banker, “I consider him, Kate, the handsomest and most attractive man I have ever met. Everybody on the steamer was...

Mrs. Brevoort and Ned Strong had found, upon inquiry at the club-house, that Kate had not been seen since she had wheeled away with them. They stood at a corner of the piazza an...

“Frankly, your royal highness,” said Herr Bennett to the princess fifteen minutes later, “there are symptoms in the case that worry me. At first, I thought his majesty was attac...