tain them
lest harm should come to her; and all Innspruck would be upon the
fugitives' heels. They waited for half an hour,--thirty minutes of gloom
and despair. Clementina wept over this new danger which her comrades
ran; Mrs. Misset wept for that her negligence was to blame; Gaydon sat
on the box in the falling snow with his arms crossed upon his breast,
and felt his head already loose upon his shoulders. The only one of the
party who had any comfort of that half-hour was Wogan. For he had been
wrong,--the chosen woman had no wish to glitter at all costs, though, to
be sure, she could not help glittering with the refulgence of her great
merits. His idol had no blemish. Wogan paced up and down the road, while
he listened for O'Toole's return, and that thought cheated the time for
him. At last he heard very faintly the sound of galloping hoofs below
him on the road. He ran back to Gaydon.

"It might be a courier to arrest us. If I shout, drive fast as you can
to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Italy."

He hurried down the road and was hailed by O'Toole.

"I have it," said he. Wogan turned and ran by O'Toole's stirrup to the
carriage.

"The landlady has a good conscience and sleeps well," said O'Toole. "I
found the house dark and the doors shut. They were only secured,
however, by a wooden beam dropped into a couple of sockets on the
inside."

"But how did you open them?" asked Clementina.

"Your Highness, I have, after all, a pair of arms," said O'Toole. "I
just pressed on the doors till--"

"Till the sockets gave?"

"No, till the beam broke," said he, and Clementina laughed.

"That's my six foot four!" said she. O'Toole did not understand. But he
smiled with great condescension and dignity, and continued his story.

"I groped my way up the stairs into the room and found the bundle
untouched in the corner."

He handed it to the Princess; Wogan sprang again onto the box, and
Gaydon whipped up the horses. They reached the first posting stage at
two, the second at four, the third at six, and at each they wasted no
time. All that night their horses strained up the mountain road amid the
whirling sleet. At times the wind roaring down a gorge would set the
carriage rocking; at times they stuck fast in drifts; and Wogan and
Gaydon must leap from the box and plunging waist-deep in the snow, must
drag at the horses and push at the wheels. The pace was too slow; Wogan
seemed to hear on every gust of wind the sound of