“It is scarcely necessary to give it now,” said the messenger with a smile, looking down at Nadia as she stood with the letter in her hand, and her face upturned to his, “but if the gracious lady wishes to assure herself of my good faith, it was this: _Friday, in the Wolf’s Glen_.” Nadia breathed freely. The words told her what she wanted to know, the date, now three days hence, on which Caerleon was to inspect the garrison of Tatarjé, and the route by which he would travel. In the Wolf’s Glen the O’Malachy would lie in wait, on murder bent, unless she could succeed in thwarting his purpose. “Thank you,” she said to the messenger. “I will give the letter to the Herr Oberst,” and she watched him make his way along the branches of the tree until he was safely beyond the wall, and could drop to the ground. Then she went quietly indoors, intent on possessing herself, before the O’Malachy’s return, of something she had noticed among her mother’s belongings. It was a dagger about ten inches long, very bright and sharp, concealed ingeniously in a case shaped like a furled fan, and she had a vague idea that it might serve her as a means of defence on her way to Bellaviste, and perhaps stand her in good stead when there, if she found it necessary to frighten any one. It was alarming enough to her, at any rate, and she hoped earnestly that she might not be obliged to produce it at all, while the thought of using it against a living creature made her shudder; but she hid it carefully in her dress, and returned to the garden. Meeting her father when he entered, she gave him the letter. “How did you get this?” he asked, looking at her suspiciously. “A stranger gave it to me in the garden. He looked like a Thracian,” she answered. “You don’t know um? Did he say anything?” “He asked me to give it to you, and said that he was charged to deliver it only to you or me.” “Poor Louie!” said the O’Malachy, with apparent irrelevance. “Boys will get into scrapes now and then, and if he tries to find some way of writing to his old father without his colonel’s finding ut out, why in the wide world wouldn’t he?” Understanding that she was intended to accept this transparent fiction as an explanation of the way in which the letter had been delivered, Nadia was silent, and her father retired to read it. When he returned, his manner was hurried and eager. “This letter brings me marching orders,” he said, and she noticed that he avoided meeting her eye. “Poor Louie’s greatly troubled. He has got umself into a very bad scrape, and to settle his businuss I must start for Tatarjé by the morning train to-morrow.” “Oh, what has he been doing?” cried Nadia, in genuine terror. For the moment she really thought that, besides the expected intimation as to Caerleon’s movements, the letter must have contained bad news of the kind indicated by her father.