each at the other
and quite silent.

It was the truth, a mere coincidence if you will, but to both these men
omens and auguries were the gravest matters.

"There indeed is God's finger pointing," cried Wogan. "Sir, give me
leave to follow it."

The Chevalier still stood looking at him in silence. Then he said
suddenly, "Go, then, and God speed you! You are a gallant gentleman."

He sat down thereupon and wrote a letter to the King of Poland, asking
him to entrust the rescue of his daughter into Wogan's hands. This
letter Wogan took and money for his journey.

"You will have preparations to make," said the Chevalier. "I will not
keep you. You have horses?"

Mr. Wogan had two in a stable at Bologna. "But," he added, "there is a
horse I left this morning six miles this side of Fiesole, a black horse,
and I would not lose it."

"Nor shall you," said the Chevalier.

Wogan crept back to his lodging as cautiously as he had left it. There
was no light in any window but in his own, where his servant, Marnier,
awaited him. Wogan opened the door softly and found the porter asleep in
his chair. He stole upstairs and made his preparations. These, however,
were of the simplest kind, and consisted of half-a-dozen orders to
Marnier and the getting into bed. In the morning he woke before daybreak
and found Marnier already up. They went silently out of the house as
the dawn was breaking. Marnier had the key to the stables, and they
saddled the two horses and rode through the blind and silent streets
with their faces muffled in their cloaks.

They met no one, however, until they were come to the outskirts of the
town. But then as they passed the mouth of an alley a man came suddenly
out and as suddenly drew back. The morning was chill, and the man was
closely wrapped.

Wogan could not distinguish his face or person, and looking down the
alley he saw at the end of it only a garden wall, and over the top of
the wall a thicket of trees and the chimney-tops of a low house
embosomed amongst them. He rode on, secure in the secrecy of his
desperate adventure. But that same morning Mr. Whittington paid a visit
to Wogan's lodging and asked to be admitted. He was told that Mr. Wogan
had not yet returned to Bologna.

"So, indeed, I thought," said he; and he sauntered carelessly along, not
to his own house, but to one smaller, situated at the bottom of a
_cul-de-sac_ and secluded amongst trees. At the door he asked whether
her Ladyshi