himself up and sat on the wall.

The lantern was nearer to him; he lay flat upon his face on the coping,
and then lowering himself upon the garden side to the full length of his
arms, he let go. He fell into a litter of dead leaves, very soft and
comfortable. He would not have exchanged them at that moment for the
Emperor's own bed. He lay upon his back and saw the dark branches above
his head grow bright and green. His pursuers were flashing their lantern
on the other side; there was only the thickness of the wall between him
and them. He could even hear them whispering and the brushing of their
feet. He lay still as a mouse; and then the earth heaved up and fell
away altogether beneath him. Wogan had fainted.

CHAPTER VII

It was still night when Wogan opened his eyes, but the night was now
clear of mist. There was no moon, however, to give him a guess at the
hour. He lay upon his back among the dead leaves, and looking upwards at
the stars, caught as it seemed in a lattice-work of branches, floated
back into consciousness. He moved, and the movement turned him sick with
pain. The knowledge of his wounds came to him and brought with it a
clear recollection of the last three nights. The ever-widening black
strip in the door on the first night, the clutch at his throat and the
leap from the cupboard on the second, the silent watching of those five
pairs of eyes on the third, and the lackey with the knife in his breast
hopping with both feet horribly across the floor,--the horror of these
recollections swept in upon him and changed him from a man into a
timorous child. He lay and shuddered until in every creak of the
branches he heard the whisper of an enemy, in every flutter of leaves
across the lawn a stealthy footstep, and behind every tree-stem he
caught the flap of a cloak.

Stiff and sore, he raised himself from the ground, he groped for his
boots and coat, and putting them on moved cautiously through the trees,
supporting himself from stem to stem. He came to the borders of a wide,
smooth lawn, and on the farther side stood the house,--a long,
two-storeyed house with level tiers of windows stretching to the right
and the left, and a bowed tower in the middle. Through one of the
windows in the ground-floor Wogan saw the spark of a lamp, and about
that window a fan of yellow light was spread upon the lawn.

Wogan at this moment felt in great need of companionship. He stole
across the lawn and looked in