w--if not at Schloss Szolnok--elsewhere.

As the darkness of the mountain road deepened, swift vision came to him.
The possible danger of attack ... Out of the gloom of shadowy rocks, he
had a vision of men who interposed, barring his way, a man in a cap
asking the time. Vienna--the night that he had left Marishka, when the
three men had attacked him! The face of the man in the cap, and the
stranger of Bartfeld--they were the same!

He could have shouted aloud in the joy of the revelation. The man who
had attacked him in the streets of Vienna--this cigarette-smoking
stranger in Bartfeld. A German? Who else? Perhaps the man who had shot
at him--in Vienna--at the Konopisht railroad station, a minion of
Goritz. Then Goritz could not be far away....

Renwick strode down the mountain side toward the distant lights of the
valley, like a man in seven-league boots, searching eagerly meanwhile
the gloomy peaks above him to his left for signs of Schloss Szolnok. He
could distinguish nothing amid the deep shadows of the mountain side.
But the lights below beckoned warmly, and finding a road to his right at
the foot of the declivity, he went toward them rapidly, knocking boldly
at the door of the first house to which he came.

An old man answered his summons, a tall old man with a long pipe in his
hand, who inspected the visitor narrowly.

"I have lost my way," said Renwick with a smile, "and thought you might
let me have a cup of milk and some bread, for which I will pay
generously."

The man in the doorway waved his hand in assent, and Renwick followed
him into the house, where his host made a motion for him to be seated. A
girl and a woman sat by the table knitting, and an old crone sat in a
large chair by the fireplace, in which some embers still glowed. Renwick
was hungry, but not nearly so hungry as impatient for the crumbs of
information that these worthy people might possess, and so he invented a
story while he ate which the girl, who spoke German more fluently than
the old man, translated to her elders. The woman at the table spoke a
little German and shyly added her share to the rather desultory
conversation. Bartfa was not far, only a few miles over the mountain--a
short distance by wagon or horseback, but something of a distance for
one who was weary and footsore. Herr Schoff had come all the way from
Mezo Laborez--and afoot? A newspaper writer? That was a dangerous
occupation in times like these.

Renwick, havi