Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbow-point of his coat when flinging it back to the chair.  There was distinctly abrasion.  Philosophers laugh at such things.  But they must be the very ancient pallium philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to merriment over the spectacle of nether garments gapped at the spot where man is most vulnerable.  He got loose from them and held them up to the candle, and the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping.  Serviceable old clothes, no doubt.  Time had not dealt them the final kick before they scored a good record.

They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some weakness, that he could not analyze for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way; and they had him to the ground.  An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere squat toad through one of these pretty material strokes.  Where then is Philosophy?  But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious lady?  Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to think of her or stand within fifty miles of her orbit?

A dreary two hours brought round daylight.  Woodseer quitted his restless bed and entered the abjured habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from denouncing them until he could cast the bad skin they now were to his uneasy sensations.  He remembered having stumbled and fallen on the slope of the hill into this vale, and probably then the mischief had occurred though a brush would have, been sufficient, the slightest collision.  Only, it was odd that the accident should have come to pass just previous to his introduction.  How long antecedent was it?  He belaboured his memory to reckon how long it was from the moment of the fall to the first sight of that lady.

His window looked down on the hotel stable-yard.  A coach-house door was open.  Odd or not—­and it certainly looked like fate—­that he should be bowing to his lady so shortly after the mishap expelling him, he had to leave the place.  A groom in the yard was hailed, and cheerily informed him he could be driven to Carlsruhe as soon as the coachman had finished his breakfast.  At Carlsruhe a decent refitting might be obtained, and he could return from exile that very day, thanks to the praiseworthy early hours of brave old Germany.

He had swallowed a cup of coffee with a roll of stale bread, in the best of moods, and entered his carriage; he was calling the order to start when a shout surprised his ear:  ‘The fiddler bolts!’

Captain Abrane’s was the voice.  About twenty paces behind, Abrane, Fleetwood, and one whom they called Chummy Potts, were wildly waving arms.  Woodseer could hear the captain’s lowered roar:  ’Race you, Chummy, couple of louis, catch him first!’ The two came pelting up to the carriage abreast.

They were belated revellers, and had been carelessly strolling under the pinky cloudlets bedward, after a prolonged carousal with the sons and daughters of hilarious nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on the wing shocked all prospect of a dead fight with the tables that day.