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The shoemaker’s voice aroused him. “Tausend Teufel! Eilen Sie, nur! Zeit is Geld! Kann nich’ Langer warten!” Slowly he descended.

“Where have they gone?” asked Swithin painfully. “A pound for every English word you speak. A pound!” and he made an O with his fingers.

The corners of the shoemaker’s lips curled. “Geld! Mf! Eilen Sie, nur!”

But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn. “If you don’t tell me,” he said, “it’ll be the worse for you.”

“Sind ein komischer Kerl!” remarked the shoemaker. “Hier ist meine Frau!”

A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in German, “Don’t let him go!”

With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off.

The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin’s hand, and furtively waited.

The letter was from Rozsi.

“Forgive me”–it ran–“that I leave you and do not say goodbye. To-day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long awaited. In two hours we are ready. I pray to the Virgin to keep you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.–Your unforgetting good friend, ROZSI.”

When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened. ‘I won’t be done,’ he thought. Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could earn it, by telling him where they had gone. He got her finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter who spoke English. The translation given him was this:

“At three o’clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz–they have bad horses–the Herr also rides a white horse.”

Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the road to Linz. Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of Kasteliz and grinned at him. ‘I’ve sold him anyway,’ he thought; ‘for all their talk, they’re no good, these foreigners!’

His spirits rose, but soon fell again. What chance had he of catching them? They had three hours’ start! Still, the roads were heavy from the rain of the last two nights–they had luggage and bad horses; his own were good, his driver bribed–he might overtake them by ten o’clock! But did he want to? What a fool he had been not to bring his luggage; he would then have had a respectable position. What a brute he would look without a change of shirt, or anything to shave with! He saw himself with horror, all bristly, and in soiled linen. People would think him mad. ‘I’ve given myself away,’ flashed across him, ‘what the devil can I say to them?’ and he stared sullenly at the driver’s back. He read Rozsi’s letter again; it had a scent of her. And in the growing darkness, jolted by the swinging of the carriage, he suffered tortures from his prudence, tortures from his passion.

It grew colder and dark. He turned the collar of his coat up to his ears. He had visions of Piccadilly. This wild-goose chase appeared suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business. Lights, fellowship, security! ‘Never again!’ he brooded; ‘why won’t they let me alone?’ But it was not clear whether by ‘they’ he meant the conventions, the Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi. If he had only had a bag with him! What was he going to say? What was he going to get by this? He received no answer to these questions. The darkness itself was less obscure than his sensations. From time to time he took out his watch. At each village the driver made inquiries. It was past ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk. The stars were bright as steel, and by the side of the road a reedy lake showed in the moonlight. Swithin shivered. A man on a horse had halted in the centre of the road. “Drive on!” called Swithin, with a stolid face. It turned out to be Boleskey, who, on a gaunt white horse, looked like some winged creature. He stood where he could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a pistol.