my enemies', brace my muscle to fight a good fight and strike stout blows. Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will be fulfilled I cannot tell—still less whether the scene that, led by memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one—for I love to see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the frowning keep of the castle of Zenda.
Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past. Shapes rise before me in long array—the wild first revel with the king, the rush with my brave tea table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learned to love and honor me, the desperate men who tried to kill me. And, from amid these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth, though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt) wickedness, yet turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate. Where is young Rupert of Hentzau—the boy who came so nigh to beating me? When his
