“Your Highness, that was bravely done,” said he, and kneeling he kissed her hand.  He went back into the embrasure, slipped the bundle over his arm, and opened the window very silently.  He saw the snow was still falling, the wind still moaning about the crannies and roaring along the streets.  He set his knee upon the window-ledge, climbed out, and drew the window to behind him.

The Princess-mother waited in the room with her hand upon her heart.  She waited, it seemed to her, for an eternity.  Then she heard the sound of a heavy fall, and the clang of a musket against the wall of the villa.  But she heard no cry.  She ran to the window and looked out.  But strain her eyes as she might, she could distinguish nothing in that blinding storm.  She could not see the sentinel; nor was this strange, for the sentinel lay senseless on the snow against the house-wall, and Mr. Wogan was already running down the avenue.

Under the fourth tree he found Clementina; she took his arm, and they set off together, wrestling with the wind, wading through the snow.  It seemed to Clementina that her companion was possessed by some new fear.  He said no single word to her; he dragged her with a fierce grip upon her wrist; if she stumbled, he jerked her roughly to her feet.  She set her teeth and kept pace with him.  Only once did she speak.  They had come to a depression in the road where the melted snow had made a wide pool.  Wogan leaped across it and said,—­

“Give me your hand!  There’s a white stone midway where you can set your foot.”

The Princess stepped as he bade her.  The stone yielded beneath her tread and she stood ankle-deep in the water.  Wogan sprang to her side and lifted her out.  She had uttered no cry, and now she only laughed as she stood shivering on the further edge.  It was that low musical, good-humoured laugh to which Wogan had never listened without a thrill of gladness, but it waked no response in him now.

“You told me of a white stone on which I might safely set my foot,” she said.  “Well, sir, your white stone was straw.”

They were both to remember these words afterwards and to make of them a parable, but it seemed that Wogan barely heard them now.  “Come!” he said, and taking her arm he set off running again.

Clementina understood that something inopportune, something terrible, had happened since she had left the villa.  She asked no questions; she trusted herself without reserve to these true friends who had striven at such risks for her, she desired to prove to them that she was what they would have her be,—­a girl who did not pester them with inconvenient chatter, but who could keep silence when silence was helpful, and face hardships with a buoyant heart.

They crossed the bridge and stopped before a pair of high folding doors.  They were the doors of the tavern.  Wogan drew a breath of relief, pulled the bobbin, and pushed the doors open.  Clementina slipped through, and in darkness she took a step forward and bruised herself against the wheels of a carriage.  Wogan closed the door and ran to her side.