“Get out of here, you!” he growled.  “I’ve got private business with this king.  And see that you don’t come nosing round either, or I’ll slit that soft throat for you.”

Rudolph slipped past the burly ruffian, barely dodging a brutal blow aimed at him by the giant, and escaped into the darkness without.

“And now for you, my fine fellow,” said the brigand, turning toward Barney.  “Peter says you ain’t worth nothing to him—­alive, but that your dead body will fetch us a hundred thousand marks.”

“Rather cheap for a king, isn’t it?” was Barney’s only comment.

“That’s what Herman tells him,” replied Yellow Franz.  “But he’s a close one, Peter is, and so it was that or nothing.”

“When are you going to pull off this little—­er—­ah—­royal demise?” asked Barney.

“If you mean when am I going to kill you,” replied the bandit, “why, there ain’t no particular rush about it.  I’m a tender-hearted chap, I am.  I never should have been in this business at all, but here I be, and as there ain’t nobody that can do a better job of the kind than me, or do it so painlessly, why I just got to do it myself, and that’s all there is to it.  But, as I says, there ain’t no great rush.  If you want to pray, why, go ahead and pray.  I’ll wait for you.”

“I don’t remember,” said Barney, “when I have met so generous a party as you, my friend.  Your self-sacrificing magnanimity quite overpowers me.  It reminds me of another unloved Robin Hood whom I once met.  It was in front of Burket’s coal-yard on Ella Street, back in dear old Beatrice, at some unchristian hour of the night.

“After he had relieved me of a dollar and forty cents he remarked:  ‘I gotta good mind to kick yer slats in fer not havin’ more of de cush on yeh; but I’m feelin’ so good about de last guy I stuck up I’ll let youse off dis time.’”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” replied Yellow Franz; “but if you want to pray you’d better hurry up about it.”

He drew his pistol from its holster on the belt at his hips.

Now Barney Custer had no mind to give up the ghost without a struggle; but just how he was to overcome the great beast who confronted him with menacing pistol was, to say the least, not precisely plain.  He wished the man would come a little nearer where he might have some chance to close with him before the fellow could fire.  To gain time the American assumed a prayerful attitude, but kept one eye on the bandit.

Presently Yellow Franz showed indications of impatience.  He fingered the trigger of his weapon, and then slowly raised it on a line with Barney’s chest.

“Hadn’t you better come closer?” asked the young man.  “You might miss at that distance, or just wound me.”

Yellow Franz grinned.

“I don’t miss,” he said, and then:  “You’re certainly a game one.  If it wasn’t for the hundred thousand marks, I’d be hanged if I’d kill you.”