“Two days, then.  You say yourself that your horses need rest.”

“They do....  I will stay two days.”

But when morning came the secretary and the physician alone appeared at table.  The nobleman lay abed with a touch of fever.  The physician reported that the trouble was slight—­fatigue and a chill taken.  A couple of days’ repose and his lordship would be himself again.

Glenfernie walked through the town.  Returning to the inn, he found that the Englishman had asked for him.  For an hour or two he talked or listened, sitting by the nobleman’s bed.  Leaving him at last, he went below to the inn’s great room, half open to the courtyard and all the come and go of the place.  It was late afternoon.  He sat by a table placed before the window, and the river seemed to flow by him, and now he looked at it from a rocky island, and now he looked elsewhere.  The room grew ruddy from the setting sun.  An inn servant entered and busied himself about the place.  After him came an aged woman, half gipsy, it seemed.  She approached the seat by the window.  Her worn mantle, her wide sleeve, seemed to touch the deep stone sill.  She was gone like a moth.  Glenfernie’s eye discovered a folded paper lying in the window.  It had not been there five minutes earlier.  Now it lay before him like a sudden outgrowth from the stone.  He put out a hand and took it up.  The woman was gone, the serving-man was gone.  Outside flowed the river.  Alexander unfolded the paper.  It was addressed to Senor Nobody.  It lay upon his knee, and it was Ian’s hand.  His lips moved, his vision blurred.  Then came steadiness and he read.

What he read was a statement, at once tense and whimsical, of the predicament of the writer.  The latter, recognizing the confusion of thought among his captors, wrote because he must, but did not truly expect any aid from Senor Nobody.  The writing would, however, prolong life for two days, perhaps for three.  If at the end of that time ransom were not forthcoming death would forthcome.  Release would follow ransom.  But Senor Nobody truly could not be expected to take interest!  Most conceivably the stranger’s lot must remain the stranger’s lot.  In that case pardon for the annoyance!  If, miraculously, the bearer did find Senor Nobody—­if Senor Nobody read this letter—­if strangers were not strangers to Senor Nobody—­if gold and mercy lay alike in Senor Nobody’s keeping—­then so and so must be done.  Followed three or four lines of explicit directions.  Did all the above come about, then truly would the undersigned, living, and pursuing his journey into France, and making return to Senor Nobody when he might, rest the latter’s slave!  Followed the signature, Ian Rullock.