r the Emperor, fired off both his loaded
pistols in the air.

At that Wogan's anxiety returned. He blazed up into anger. He thrust his
head from the window.

"Is this your respect for her Highness?" he cried. "Is this your
consideration?"

"Nay," interposed Clementina, "you shall not chide my six feet four."

"But he is mad, your Highness. I don't say but what a trifle of madness
is salt to a man; but O'Toole's clean daft to be firing his pistols off
to let the whole world know who we are. Here are we not six stages from
Innspruck, and already we have lost twelve hours."

"When?"

"Last night, before we left Innspruck, between the time when you escaped
from the villa and when I joined you in the avenue. I climbed out of the
window to descend as I had entered, but the sentinel had returned. I
waited on the window-ledge crouched against the wall until he should
show me his back. After five minutes or so he did. He stamped on the
snow and marched up the lane. I let myself down and hung by my hands,
but he turned on his beat before I could drop. He marched back; I clung
to the ledge, thinking that in the darkness he would pass on beneath me
and never notice. He did not notice; but my fingers were frozen and
numbed with the cold. I felt them slipping; I could cling no longer, and
I fell. Luckily I fell just as he passed beneath me; I dropped feet
foremost upon his shoulders, and he went down without a cry. I left him
lying stunned there on the snow; but he will be found, or he will
recover. Either way our escape will be discovered, and no later than
this morning. Nay, it must already have been discovered. Already
Innspruck's bells are ringing the alarm; already the pursuit is
begun--" and he leaned his head from the window and cried, "Faster!
faster!" O'Toole, for his part, shouted, "Trinkgeldt!" It was the only
word of German which he knew. "But," said he, "there was a Saracen lady
I learned about at school who travelled over Europe and found her lover
in an alehouse in London, with no word but his name to help her over the
road. Sure, it would be a strange thing if I couldn't travel all over
Germany with the help of 'Trinkgeldt.'"

The word certainly had its efficacy with the postillion. "Trinkgeldt!"
cried O'Toole, and the berlin rocked and lurched and leaped down the
pass. The snow was now less deep, the drifts fewer. The road wound along
a mountain-side: at one window rose the rock; from the other the
traveller