As she got into bed a horse galloped up to the inn and stopped.  She remembered that she had not ridden on his black horse out of the sunrise across the plain.  He loved her, and since he loved her, surely—­She fell asleep puzzled and wondering why.  She was waked up some two hours afterwards by a rapping on the door, and she grew hot and she recognised Wogan’s voice cautiously whispering to her to rise with all speed.  For in her dreams from which she had wakened, she had ridden across the flat green plain into the round city of dreams.

CHAPTER XVI

When the horse galloped up to the door, the Princess turned on her side and went to sleep.  In the common-room below Gaydon and Wogan were smoking a pipe of tobacco over the fire.  Both men rose on the instant; Wogan stealthily opened the door an inch or so and looked down the passage.  Gaydon raised a corner of the blind and peered through the window.  The two remaining members of the party, Misset and O’Toole, who as lackeys had served the supper of the Princess, were now eating their own.  When the Princess turned over on her side, and Wogan stepped on tiptoe to the door and Gaydon peeped through the window, Misset laid down his knife and fork, and drawing a flask from his pocket emptied its contents into an earthenware water-jug which stood upon the table.  O’Toole, for his part, simply continued to eat.

“He is getting off his horse,” said Gaydon.

“Has he ridden hard, do you think?” asked Misset.

“He looks in a mighty ill-humour.”

O’Toole looked up from his plate, and became gradually aware that something was occurring.  Before he could speak, however, Gaydon dropped the blind.

“He is coming in.  It will never do for him to find the four of us together.  He may not be the courier from Innspruck; on the other hand, he may, and seeing the four of us he will ask questions of the landlord.  Seeing no more than two, he will very likely ask none.”

O’Toole began to understand.  He understood, at all events, that for him there was to be no more supper.  If two were to make themselves scarce, he knew that he would be one of the two.

“Very well,” said he, heaving a sigh which made the glasses on the table dance, and laying his napkin down he got up.  To his surprise, however, he was bidden to stay.

“Gaydon and I will go,” said Wogan.  “Jack will find out the fellow’s business.”

Misset nodded his head, took up his knife and fork again.  He leaned across the table to O’Toole as the others stepped out of the room.

“You speak only French, Lucius.  You come from Savoy.”  He had no time to say more, for the new-comer stamped blustering down the passage and flung into the room.  The man, as Gaydon had remarked, was in a mighty ill-humour; his clothes and his face were splashed with mud, and he seemed, moreover, in the last stage of exhaustion.  For though he bawled for the landlord it was in a weak, hoarse voice, which did not reach beyond the door.