“You know the archduke?” he questioned.

“Well, rather,” said Stubbs.  “He and I are pretty good friends.”

“Then,” said the general, “it would do no harm for you to appeal to him in person.”

“You’re right, there, general,” declared Stubbs.  “My friend, the archduke, would fix this thing up in a minute.  The only trouble on that score is the matter of time.  Time is precious, you know, general, and time presses.”

“Fortunately for you,” said the officer, “the archduke happens to be in the next room at this moment.  If you will be seated, I shall call him.”

Stubbs sat down abruptly.  A slight whistle escaped him, though it did not carry to the general’s ears.

“Good night!” muttered the little man to himself.  “I’ve sure enough gone and done it this time.”

But Stubbs didn’t betray himself.  To the general he said: 

“The archduke here?  By Jove!  This is what I call luck.  Have him come out and talk to me.”

With a bow, the Austrian commander turned and passed from the room.  The moment he crossed the threshold, Stubbs sprang to his feet and dashed to the door through which he had entered a few moments before.

“This,” he said, as he came again into the open, “is no place for Anthony Stubbs.”

He disappeared from within view of the general’s quarters with amazing rapidity.

“Wasn’t much use of me patting the archduke on the back,” he told himself.  “Never having seen me before, I guess he wouldn’t have remembered me.  I don’t want to be shot.”

Half a mile from the scene of his trouble, he entered a little restaurant and sat down to have something to eat and to figure out what he should do.

“This place is going to be too small to hold me,” he said to himself over a second cup of coffee.  “They’ll have all the natives on my trail.  I’ve got to get over the frontier some way.  The question before me is how?”

He meditated for some moments, then rose, paid his check and left the restaurant.  In front of the door he stopped and looked toward the south, where, in the distance, he knew heavy Austrian patrols faced the Italian pickets only a few miles beyond.

“That’s the way I want to go,” he told himself.  “So I may as well be starting in that direction.”

He moved off.

Possibly half a mile from the utmost Austrian line he stopped and sat down.  So far he had been unchallenged and now, as he sat there, a plan came to him.  He took his revolver from his pocket and examined it.

“I’ll try it,” he said briefly to himself.  “If Chester knew what I was about to do, he would be greatly surprised.  But the thing is I am more afraid to stay here than I am to take this chance.”

He arose and moved on.  As he expected, probably five minutes later, a mounted officer came toward him.  There was no one else near.  He halted the correspondent.