little powder had
been spilled. He looked at his own disquiet face and thought, 'I've been
cheated!'

The shoemaker's voice aroused him. "Tausend Teufel! Eilen Sie, nur! Zeit
is Geld! Kann nich' Langer warten!" Slowly he descended.

"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully. "A pound for every
English word you speak. A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.

The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled. "Geld! Mf! Eilen Sie, nur!"

But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn. "If you don't tell me,"
he said, "it'll be the worse for you."

"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker. "Hier ist meine
Frau!"

A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in
German, "Don't let him go!"

With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off.

The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and furtively
waited.

The letter was from Rozsi.

"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye. To-day
our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long awaited. In
two hours we are ready. I pray to the Virgin to keep you ever safe, and
that you do not quite forget me.--Your unforgetting good friend, ROZSI."

When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a
bog; then his obstinacy stiffened. 'I won't be done,' he thought. Taking
out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could
earn it, by telling him where they had gone. He got her finally to write
the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the sovereign, and hurried
to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter who spoke English. The
translation given him was this:

"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they
have bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."

Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the road
to Linz. Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of Kasteliz and
grinned at him. 'I've sold him anyway,' he thought; 'for all their talk,
they're no good, these foreigners!'

His spirits rose, but soon fell again. What chance had he of catching
them? They had three hours' start! Still, the roads were heavy from the
rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad horses; his own
were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them by ten o'clock!
But did he want to? What a fool he had been not to bring his luggage; he
would then have had a respectable position. What a brute h