thought to sleep the night.
There was but one guest-room, however, which was already bespoken by a
Flemish lady, the Countess of Cernes, who had travelled that morning to
Innspruck to fetch her niece.

The Prince grumbled for a little, since the evening was growing stormy
and wild, but there was no remedy. He could not dispute the matter, for
he was shown the Countess's berlin waiting ready for her return. A
servant of the Count's household also had been left behind at Nazareth
to retain the room, and this man, while using all proper civilities,
refused to give up possession. The Prince had no acquaintance with the
officers of Dillon's Irish regiment, so that he had no single suspicion
that Captain Misset was the servant. He drove on for another stage,
where he found a lodging.

Meanwhile the hired carriage rolled into Innspruck, and a storm of
extraordinary violence burst over the country.

CHAPTER XII

In fact, just about the time when the Prince's horses were being
unharnessed from his carriage on the heights of Mount Brenner, the hired
carriage stopped before a little inn under the town wall of Innspruck
hard by the bridge. And half an hour later, when the Prince was sitting
down to his supper before a blazing fire and thanking his stars that on
so gusty and wild a night he had a stout roof above his head, a man and
a woman came out from the little tavern under the town wall and
disappeared into the darkness. They had the streets to themselves, for
that night the city was a whirlpool of the winds. Each separate chasm in
the encircling hills was a mouth to discharge a separate blast. The
winds swept down into the hollow and charged in a riotous combat about
the squares and lanes; at each corner was an ambuscade, and everywhere
they clashed with artilleries of hail and sleet.

The man and woman staggered hand in hand and floundered in the deep
snow. They were soaked to the skin, frozen by the cold, and whipped by
the stinging hail. Though they bent their heads and bodies, though they
clung hand in hand, though they struggled with all their strength,
there were times when they could not advance a foot and must needs wait
for a lull in the shelter of a porch. At such times the man would
perhaps quote a line of Virgil about the cave of the winds, and the
woman curse like a grenadier. They, however, were not the only people
who were distressed by the storm.

Outside the villa in which the Princess was impri