dirtying your
hands, and perhaps getting an ugly blow, in a scuffle with such a
fellow."

"Stop, postilion, stop!" shouted Solling. But the postilion either did
not or would not hear, and some time elapsed before the painter could
persuade his well-meaning companion of his peaceable intentions. At
length he did so, and the carriage, which had meanwhile been going at
full speed, was stopped.

"You will leave my luggage at the first post-house," said Solling,
jumping out and beginning to retrace his steps to the village, which
they had now left some distance behind them.

The night was pitch-dark, so dark that the painter was compelled to
feel his way, and guide himself by the line of trees that bordered the
road. He reached the village without meeting a living creature, and
strode down the narrow street amid the baying of the dogs, disturbed
by his footfall at that silent hour of the night. The inn door was
shut, but there was a light glimmering in one of the casements. He
knocked several times without any body answering. At length a woman's
head was put out of an upper window.

"Go your ways," cried a shrill voice, "and don't come disturbing
honest folk at this time o' night. Do you think we have nought to do
but to open the door for such raff as you? Be off with you, you
vagabond, and blow your clarinet elsewhere."

"You are mistaken, madam," said Solling; "I am no vagabond, but a
passenger by the Halle mail, and"--

"What brings you here, then?" interrupted the virago; "the Halle mail
is far enough off by this."

"My good madam," replied the painter in his softest tone, "for God's
sake tell me who and where is the person who was waiting for the mail
at your hotel."

"Ha! ha!" laughed the hostess, considerably mollified by the _madam_
and the _hotel_. "The mad Italian musician, the clarinet fellow? Why,
I took you for him at first, and wondered what brought him back, for
he started as soon as the mail left the door. He'd have done better to
have got into it, with a dark night and a long road before him. Ha!
ha! He's mad, to be sure."

"His name! His name!" cried Solling, impatiently.

"His name? How can I recollect his outlandish name? Fol--Vol----"

"Voltojo!" cried the painter.

"Voltojo! yes, that's it. Ha! ha! What a name!"

"It is he!" cried Solling, and without another word dashed off full
speed along the road he had just come. He kept in the middle of the
causeway, straining his eyes to see int