ceiling; his last words bade me pinch and save until I could
paint. Well, here is the house painted, and I am anxious for a new
device and name which shall obliterate the memory of the other. 'The
Black Eagle' is its old name. Ask any traveller familiar with the road
between Augsburg and Schlestadt, and he will counsel you to avoid 'The
Black Eagle.' You are travelling to Schlestadt, perhaps."

Wogan had started ever so slightly.

"To Strasbourg," he said, and thereafter ate his supper in silence,
taking count with himself. "My friend," so his thoughts ran, "the sooner
you reach Schlestadt the better. Here are you bleating like a sheep at a
mere chance mention of your destination. You have lived too close with
this fine scheme of yours. You need your friends."

Wogan began to be conscious of an unfamiliar sense of loneliness. It
grew upon him that evening while he sat at the table; it accompanied him
up the stairs to bed. Other men of his age were now seated comfortably
by their own hearths, while he was hurrying about Europe, a vagabond
adventurer, risking his life for--and at once the reason why he was
risking his life rose up to convict him a grumbler.

The landlord led him into a room in the front of the house which held a
great canopied bed and little other furniture. There was not even a
curtain to the window. Wogan raised his candle and surveyed the dingy
walls.

"You have not spent much of your new paint on your guest-room, my
friend."

"Sir, you have not marked the door," said his host, reproachfully.

"True," said Wogan, with a yawn; "the door is admirably white."

"The frame of the door does not suffer in a comparison." The landlord
raised and lowered his candle that Wogan might see.

"I do not wish to be unjust to the frame of the door," said Wogan, and
he drew off his boots. The landlord bade his guest good-night and
descended the stairs.

Wogan, being a campaigner, was methodical even though lost in
reflection. He was reflecting now why in the world he should lately have
become sensible of loneliness; but at the same time he put the Prince's
letter beneath his pillow and a sheathed hunting-knife beside the
letter. He had always been lonely, and the fact had never troubled him;
he placed a chair on the left of the bed and his candle on the chair.
Besides, he was not really lonely, having a host of friends whom he had
merely to seek out; he took the charges from his pistol lest they should
be da