The balance of the day the pseudo-king rode back and forth along his lines.  Three of his staff were killed and two horses were shot from beneath him, but from the moment that he appeared the Luthanian line ceased to waver or fall back.  The advanced trenches that they had abandoned to the Austrians they took again at the point of the bayonet.  Charge after charge they repulsed, and all the time there hovered above the enemy Lutha’s sole aeroplane, watching, watching, ever watching for the coming of the allies.  Somewhere to the northeast the Serbians were advancing toward Lustadt.  Would they come in time?

It was five o’clock in the morning of the second day, and though the Luthanian line still held, Barney Custer knew that it could not hold for long.  The Austrian artillery fire, which had been rather wild the preceding day, had now become of deadly accuracy.  Each bursting shell filled some part of the trenches with dead and wounded, and though their places were taken by fresh men from the reserve, there would soon be no reserve left to call upon.

At his left, in the rear, the American had massed the bulk of his reserves, and at the foot of the heights north of the city and just below the forts the major portion of the cavalry was drawn up in the shelter of a little ravine.  Barney’s eyes were fixed upon the soaring aeroplane.

In his hand was his watch.  He would wait another fifteen minutes, and if by then the signal had not come that the Serbians were approaching, he would strike the blow that he had decided upon.  From time to time he glanced at his watch.

The fifteen minutes had almost elapsed when there fluttered from the tiny monoplane a paper parachute.  It dropped for several hundred feet before it spread to the air pressure and floated more gently toward the earth and a moment later there burst from its basket a puff of white smoke.  Two more parachutes followed the first and two more puffs of smoke.  Then the machine darted rapidly off toward the northeast.

Barney turned to Prince von der Tann with a smile.  “They are none too soon,” he said.

The old prince bowed in acquiescence.  He had been very happy for two days.  Lutha might be defeated now, but she could never be subdued.  She had a king at last—­a real king.  Gott!  How he had changed.  It reminded Prince von der Tann of the day he had ridden beside the imposter two years before in the battle with the forces of Peter of Blentz.  Many times he had caught himself scrutinizing the face of the monarch, searching for some proof that after all he was not Leopold.

“Direct the commanders of forts three and four to concentrate their fire on the enemy’s guns directly north of Fort No. 3,” Barney directed an aide.  “Simultaneously let the cavalry and Colonel Kazov’s infantry make a determined assault on the Austrian trenches.”

Then he turned his horse toward the left of his line, where, a little to the rear, lay the fresh troops that he had been holding in readiness against this very moment.  As he galloped across the plain, his staff at his heels, shrapnel burst about them.  Von der Tann spurred to his side.