“Will you now follow me?”

Wogan looked straight before him into the air and spoke to no one in particular.

“A pistol is, to be sure, more useful than a sword; but there is just one thing more useful on an occasion than a pistol, and that is a hunting knife.”

Count Otto shook his head.

“There, Chevalier, I doubt if I can serve you.”

“But upon my word,” said Wogan, picking up a carving-knife from the tray, “here is the very thing.”

“It has no sheath.”

Wogan was almost indignant at the suggestion that he would go so far as to ask even his dearest friend for a sheath.  Besides, he had a sheath, and he fitted the knife into it.

“Now,” said he, pleasantly, “all that I need is a sound, swift, thoroughbred horse about six or seven years old.”

Count Otto for the fourth time took up his lamp.

“Will you follow me?” he said for the fourth time.

Wogan followed the old man across the lawn and round a corner of the house until he came to a long, low building surmounted by a cupola.  The building was the stable, and the Count Otto roused one of his grooms.

“Saddle me Flavia,” said he.  “Flavia is a mare who, I fancy, fulfils your requirements.”

Wogan had no complaint to make of her.  She had the manners of a courtier.  It seemed, too, that she had no complaint to make of Mr. Wogan.  Count Otto laid his hand upon the bridle and led the mare with her rider along a lane through a thicket of trees and to a small gate.

“Here, then, we part, Chevalier,” said he.  “No doubt to-morrow I shall sit down at my table, knowing that I talked a deal of folly ill befitting an old man.  No doubt I shall be aware that my books are the true happiness after all.  But to-night—­well, to-night I would fain be twenty years of age, that I might fling my books over the hedge and ride out with you, my sword at my side, my courage in my hand, into the world’s highway.  I will beg you to keep the mare as a token and a memory of our meeting.  There is no better beast, I believe, in Christendom.”

Wogan was touched by the old gentleman’s warmth.

“Count,” said Wogan, “I will gladly keep your mare in remembrance of your great goodwill to a stranger.  But there is one better beast in Christendom.”

“Indeed?  And which is that?”

“Why, sir, the black horse which the lady I shall marry will ride into my city of dreams.”  And so he rode off upon his way.  The morning was just beginning to gleam pale in the east.  Here was a night passed which he had not thought to live through, and he was still alive to help the chosen woman imprisoned in the hollow of the hills at Innspruck.  Wogan had reason to be grateful to that old man who stood straining his eyes after him.  There was something pathetical in his discontent with his secluded life which touched Wogan to the heart.  Wogan was not sure that in the morning the old man would know