Knives flashed, and revolvers flourished. A sullen roar rose from the pack.

Dimmie, the inextinguishable smile still upon his lips, thrust aside his protectors, and stepped out before the menacing foe, one hand upraised for silence and attention.

"Hold, my friends," he said "We have enjoyed a pleasant evening. None more so than I. Let us not spoil it now by the spilling of blood."

As he spoke a man stepped forward from the crowd advancing from the bar. A revolver glistened in his hand. Blood streamed down his brutal face from a wound above one eye. Behind him, unnoticed came Bakla.

"You have come here once too often, you dandies," cried the fellow. "You have come looking for trouble; and now you've got it, and damn you you're goin' to get it good arid plenty," and with that he raised his weapon and levelled it at Dimmie.

Ivan cast the table aside, and he and Alexander and Nicholas sprang forward to throw themselves in front of their friend, to shield his body with their own from the bullet of the assassin; but trig little Bakla was quicker than any of them. Without a cry she leaped at the man as his finger closed downward upon the trigger. Her lithe figure dodged beneath his upraised arm, which she clutched with both her little hands. There was the sharp report of a shot; but the bullet buried itself in the ceiling instead of finding lodgement in the body of Dimmie for whom it had been intended.

Bakla, still clinging to the man's arm, threw herself in front of him and facing the menacing roughs, raised her voice in protest and in censure.

"Are you crazy," she cried, "that you would fit halters to your necks by threatening the life of the king's son?"

"The what?" exclaimed the man whose arm she still held raised aloft.

"The Crown Prince, you fool," snapped Bakla.

The man gazed stupidly at the three guardsmen and their friend, only the last of which was not in uniform.

"Which is the Crown Prince?" he asked.

"He," and she pointed at Dimmie. "He is Prince Boris."

The roughs looked uneasily around at one another. One of them laughed scornfully. "That the crown prince?" he asked with a sneer.

"Yes," spoke up he of the low brow and surly expression who had kept carefully out of the fracas from the moment that he had recognized Dimmie; "he's Prince Boris. I ought to know him-I worked in the palace for five years."

An uneasy silence fell upon the company. Those who had menaced the prince shuffled their feet about on the sanded floor and cast furtive glances in the direction of their future king, who stood, unsmiling now and rather ill at ease since his identity had been revealed.

"I think we'd better go now," suggested Alexander. "The thing has gone too far already; and the longer we stay the worse it may become-you'll have a bad enough time explaining it to his majesty as it is, Dimmie."

"Without our dinner?" asked Boris, ruefully. "No, I came for one of Tillie's good dinners; and I'll never leave until I've had it. Here, Peter, you old rogue, see what the gentlemen will drink," and he waved his hand to include the whole company, "and Bakla, lay another plate at our table for my guest, if The Rider will honor us with his company?" and he turned with a bow toward the bandit.

"And then go back to Sovgrad and the halter?" demanded The Rider.

Boris drew the man's two revolvers from his shirt and extended them toward him, butts first.

"Here are your weapons," he said, pleasantly. "Take them as proof of my good faith. After we have dined each of us shall go his way unmolested, carrying only memories of a pleasant evening among friends. What do you say?"

"Done!" said The Rider.

The king's son linked arms with the bandit and crossed the room past the bar where Peter was already busy serving drinks to the relieved brawlers, toward the little alcove in which Bakla was laying the fifth plate at the round table.

"You must have had -many thrilling adventures," said Boris to his guest, after the dinner and the wine had warmed the latter's heart and loosed his naturally taciturn tongue. "Tell us of them."

For an hour The Rider told them tales of the road -of narrow escapes, of running fights with gendarmes, of rich hauls, and of lean days. When he paused to light another of Ivan's gold tipped and monogrammed cigarets, Boris leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh.

"Ah," he murmured, "such freedom! You have lived. For such as you romance still exists; but for us life is a tame and prosaic thing. I wish that I were a bandit."

"And I," said The Rider, "wish that I were a prince."

Boris sat suddenly erect with a half smothered exclamation.

"Why not!" he cried. It would be great sport.

"Why not what?" asked Nicholas.

"Be a bandit for a week," replied Boris.

The others leaned back in their chairs, shouting in laughter. Ivan, tying a napkin about the lower half of his face, rose and pointed a salt shaker at Alexander, menacingly.

"Stand and deliver!" he cried. "I am Dimmie, the terror of the highways."

Boris joined in the good natured raillery; but when the laughter had subsided he turned toward The Rider.

"You have said that you would like being a prince," he said. "Well, you shall be, for a week, and I shall borrow your horse and your mask and uphold the honor of your calling upon the roads."

"Dimmie, you're crazy," cried Alexander, realizing at last that Boris was in earnest.

The crown prince paid no attention to his friend's interruption.

"And you," he continued, still addressing the bandit, "shall live like a prince while I am gone."

"It can't be done, Dimmie," broke in Alexander.