ned it without noise, and crept secretly as a thief up the stairs to
his rooms, where he had the good fortune to find his servant. Wogan had
no need to sign to him to be silent. The man was a veteran corporal of
French Guards who after many seasons of campaigning in Spain and the Low
Countries had now for five years served Mr. Wogan. He looked at his
master and without a word went off to make his bed.

Wogan sat down and went carefully over in his mind every minute of the
time since he had entered Bologna. No one had noticed him when he rode
in as the lady's postillion,--no one. He was sure of that. The lady
herself did not know him from Adam, and fancied him an Italian into the
bargain--of that, too, he had no doubt. The handful of lackeys at the
door of the King's house need not be taken into account. They might
gossip among themselves, but Wogan's appearances and disappearances were
so ordinary a matter, even that was unlikely. The usher's silence he had
already secured. There was only one acquaintance who had met and spoken
with him, and that by the best of good fortune was Harry
Whittington,--the idler who took his banishment and his King's
misfortunes with an equally light heart, and gave never a thought at all
to anything weightier than a gamecock.

Wogan's spirits revived. He had not yet come to the end of his luck. He
sat down and wrote a short letter and sealed it up.

"Marnier," he called out in a low voice, and his servant came from the
adjoining room, "take this to Mr. Edgar, the King's secretary, as soon
as it grows dusk. Have a care that no one sees you deliver it. Lock the
parlour door when you go, and take the key. I am not yet back from
Rome." With that Wogan remembered that he had not slept for forty-eight
hours. Within two minutes he was between the sheets; within five he was
asleep.

CHAPTER III

Wogan waked up in the dark and was seized with a fear that he had slept
too long. He jumped out of bed and pushed open the door of his parlour.
There was a lighted lamp in the room, and Marnier was quietly laying his
master's supper.

"At what hour?" asked Wogan.

"Ten o'clock, monsieur, at the little postern in the garden wall."

"And the time now?"

"Nine."

Wogan dressed with some ceremony, supped, and at eight minutes to ten
slipped down the stairs and out of doors. He had crushed his hat down
upon his forehead and he carried his handkerchief at his face. But the
streets were dark a