“That is help,” The Rat said.  “It would protect us, even in another country.  The Chancellor sent it—­but you made the strong call—­and it’s here!”

There was no street lamp to shine into their windows when they went at last to bed.  When the blind was drawn up, they were nearer the sky than they had been in the Marylebone Road.  The last thing each of them saw, as he went to sleep, was the stars—­and in their dreams, they saw them grow larger and larger, and hang like lamps of radiance against the violet—­velvet sky above a ledge of a Himalayan Mountain, where they listened to the sound of a low voice going on and on and on.

XXII

THE NIGHT VIGIL

On a hill in the midst of a great Austrian plain, around which high Alps wait watching through the ages stands a venerable fortress, almost more beautiful than anything one has ever seen.  Perhaps, if it were not for the great plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it might—­though it is to be doubted—­seem something less a marvel of medieval picturesqueness.  But out of the plain rises the low hill, and surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them, looking on—­always looking on—­sometimes themselves ethereal clouds of snow-whiteness, some times monster bare crags which pierce the blue, and whose unchanging silence seems to know the secret of the everlasting.  And on the hill which this august circle holds in its embrace, as though it enclosed a treasure, stands the old, old, towered fortress built as a citadel for the Prince Archbishops, who were kings in their domain in the long past centuries when the splendor and power of ecclesiastical princes was among the greatest upon earth.

And as you approach the town—­and as you leave it—­and as you walk through its streets, the broad calm empty-looking ones, or the narrow thoroughfares whose houses seem so near to each other, whether you climb or descend—­or cross bridges, or gaze at churches, or step out on your balcony at night to look at the mountains and the moon—­always it seems that from some point you can see it gazing down at you—­the citadel of Hohen-Salzburg.

It was to Salzburg they went next, because at Salzburg was to be found the man who looked like a hair-dresser and who worked in a barber’s shop.  Strange as it might seem, to him also must be carried the Sign.

“There may be people who come to him to be shaved—­soldiers, or men who know things,” The Rat worked it out, “and he can speak to them when he is standing close to them.  It will be easy to get near him.  You can go and have your hair cut.”