Wogan, being a campaigner, was methodical even though lost in reflection.  He was reflecting now why in the world he should lately have become sensible of loneliness; but at the same time he put the Prince’s letter beneath his pillow and a sheathed hunting-knife beside the letter.  He had always been lonely, and the fact had never troubled him; he placed a chair on the left of the bed and his candle on the chair.  Besides, he was not really lonely, having a host of friends whom he had merely to seek out; he took the charges from his pistol lest they should be damp, and renewed them and placed the pistols by the candle.  He had even begun to pity himself for his loneliness, and pity of that sort, he recognised, was a discreditable quality; the matter was altogether very disquieting.  He propped his sword against the chair and undressed.  Wogan cast back in his memories for the first sensations of loneliness.  They were recent, since he had left Ohlau, indeed.  He opened the window; the rain splashed in on the sill, pattered in the street puddles below, and fell across the country with a continuous roar as though the level plain was a stretched drum.  No; he had only felt lonely since he had come near to Schlestadt, since, in a word, he had deemed himself to have outstripped pursuit.  He got into his bed and blew out the candle.

For a moment the room was black as pitch, then on his left side the darkness thinned at one point and a barred square of grey became visible; the square of grey was the window.  Wogan understood that his loneliness came upon him with the respite from his difficulties, and concluded that, after all, it was as well that he had not a comfortable fireside whereby to sun himself.  He turned over on his right side and saw the white door and its white frame.  The rain made a dreary sound outside the window, but in three days he would be at Schlestadt.  Besides he fell asleep.

And in a little he dreamed.  He dreamed that he was swinging on a gibbet before the whole populace of Innspruck, that he died to his bewilderment without any pain whatever, but that pain came to him after he was quite dead,—­not bodily pain at all, but an anguish of mind because the chains by which he was hanged would groan and creak, and the populace, mistaking that groaning for his cries, scoffed at him and ridiculed his King for sending to rescue the Princess Clementina a marrowless thing that could not die like a man.  Wogan stirred in his sleep and waked up.  The rain had ceased, and a light wind blew across the country.  Outside the sign-board creaked and groaned upon its stanchion.  Once he became aware of that sound he could no longer sleep for listening to it; and at last he sprang out of bed, and leaning out of the window lifted the sign-board off the stanchion and into his bedroom.

It was a plain white board without any device on it.  “True,” thought Wogan, “the man wants a new name for his inn.”  He propped the board against the left side of his bed, since that was nearest to the window, got between the sheets, and began to think over names.  He turned on his right side and fell asleep again.