for the doctor, then we will take the carriage."

"No, indeed! Ludwig would hear the sound of wheels, and know what we
were doing. Then he would jump out of bed, run into the court, and take
a cold that would certainly be his death. No; we must go on foot, as
noiselessly as possible. It is not so very far to the village. Go now,
and fetch the lantern."

Several minutes afterward, the gates of the Nameless Castle opened, and
there came forth a veiled lady, who clung with one hand to the arm of a
tall man, and carried a lantern in the other. Her companion held over
her, to protect her from the pouring rain, a large red umbrella, and
steadied his steps in the slippery mud with a stout walking-stick. The
lady walked so rapidly that her companion with difficulty kept pace with
her.

CHAPTER IV

Dr. Tromfszky had just returned from a _visum repertum_ in a criminal
case, and had concluded that he would go to bed so soon as he had
finished his supper. The rain fell in torrents on the roof, and rushed
through the gutters with a roaring noise.

"Now just let any one send again for me this night!" he exclaimed, when
his housekeeper came to remove the remnants of cheese from the
supper-table. "I would n't go--not if the primate himself got a
fish-bone fast in his throat; no, not for a hundred ducats. I swear it!"

At that moment there came a knock at the street door, and a very
peremptory one, too.

"There! did n't I know some one would take it into his head to let the
devil fetch him to-night? Go to the door, Zsuzsa, and tell them that I
have a pain in my foot--that I have just applied a poultice, and can't
walk."

Frau Zsuzsa, with the kitchen lamp in her hand, waddled into the
corridor. After inquiring the second time through the door, "Who is it?"
and the one outside had answered: "It is I," she became convinced, from
the musical feminine tone, that it was not the notorious robber, Satan
Laczi, who was seeking admittance.

Then she opened the door a few inches, and said:

"The Herr Doctor can't go out any more to-night; he has gone to bed, and
is poulticing his foot."

The door was open wide enough to admit a delicate feminine hand, which
pressed into the housekeeper's palm a little heap of money. By the light
of the lamp Frau Zsuzsa recognized the shining silver coins, and the
door was opened its full width.

When she saw before her the veiled lady she became quite complaisant.
Curiosity is a powerful