“You must lie there till morning, my friend,” Wogan whispered in his ear, “but here’s a thing to console you.  I have found a name for your inn; I have painted the device upon your sign-board.  The ’Inn of the Five Red Fingers.’  There’s never a passer-by but will stop to inquire the reason of so conspicuous a sign;” and Wogan climbed out of the window, lowered himself till he hung at the full length of his arms from the stanchion, and dropped on the ground.  He picked up his saddle-bag and crept round the house to the stable.  The door needed only a push to open it.  In the hay-loft above he heard a man snoring.  Mr. Wogan did not think it worth while to disturb him.  He saddled his horse, walked it out into the yard, mounted, and rode quietly away.

He had escaped, but without much credit to himself.

“There was no key in the door,” he thought.  “I should have noticed it.  Misset, the man of resources, would have tilted a chair backwards against that door with its top bar wedged beneath the door handle.”  Certainly Wogan needed Misset if he was to succeed in his endeavour.  He was sunk in humiliation; his very promise to rescue the Princess shrank from its grandeur and became a mere piece of impertinence.  But he still had his letter in his pocket, and in time that served to enhearten him.  Only two more days, he thought.  On the third night he would sleep in Schlestadt.

CHAPTER VI

The next afternoon Wogan came to the town of Ulm.

“Gaydon,” he said to himself as he watched its towers and the smoke curling upwards from its chimneys, “would go no further to-day with this letter in his pocket.  Gaydon—­the cautious Gaydon—­would sleep in this town and in its most populous quarter.  Gaydon would put up at the busiest inn.  Charles Wogan will follow Gaydon’s example.”

Wogan rode slowly through the narrow streets of gabled houses until he came to the market square.  The square was frequented; its great fountain was playing; citizens were taking the air with their wives and children; the chief highway of the town ran through it; on one side stood the frescoed Rathhaus, and opposite to it there was a spacious inn.  Wogan drew up at the doorway and saw that the hall was encumbered with baggage.  “Gaydon would stop here,” said he, and he dismounted.  The porter came forward and took his horse.

“I need a room,” said Wogan, and he entered the house.  There were people going up and down the stairs.  While he was unstrapping his valise in his bedroom, a servant with an apron about his waist knocked at the door and inquired whether he could help him.

“No,” said Wogan; and he thought with more confidence than ever, “here, to be sure, is where Gaydon would sleep.”

He supped at the ordinary in the company of linen merchants and travellers, and quite recovered his spirits.  He smoked a pipe of tobacco on a bench under the trees of the square, and giving an order that he should be called at five went up to his bedroom.