That night again Franz didn’t trouble to undress. He lay on the bed in his clothes, and let the candle burn out as it would in its socket. Early next morning, with the restlessness of a hunted man, he rose betimes, and went down to the wonted breakfast of the inn with Cousin Fridolin. Their talk over their coffee was of Linnet and Andreas. Fridolin retailed to him, bit by bit, all the sinister surmises of the village gossips; people thought at St Valentin Andreas was jealous at last of his beautiful Frau—Fridolin let his voice drop to a confidential key—and had brought her away hither from some lover in London. Franz smiled bitterly at that thought; why, the man hadn’t heart enough in him to be even jealous—for one may be beneath jealousy as one may be above it. Was he unkind to her? Franz asked, curiously, as Cousin Fridolin broke off in the midst of a sentence. Well, he didn’t exactly _strike_ her, Cousin Fridolin believed; though, to be sure, when she first came to the inn, she bore marks of violence. But she cried all day, and she cried all night; and folks fancied in the village it might perhaps be for Will Deverill. At any rate, she and Andreas lost no love between them; man said it was only as a good Catholic she stopped with him. After breakfast, Franz rose up and walked out on the road aimlessly. Restless still, with the ever-present fear of detection upon him, and with the fiery Tyrolese heart eating itself out within, he walked on and on, hardly knowing why he did so. At last he reached Zell, the little capital of the valley. It was early still, for he had started at daybreak; but already a strange group of whispering villagers crowded agog round the door of the post-office and telegraph, where the post-master was affixing an official notice. Franz joined them, and read. His blood ran cold within him. It was a Kaiserlich-Königlich police announcement of a public reward of ten thousand florins for information leading to the capture of one Karl von Forstemann of Vienna—age, height, and description as below annexed—accused of the murder of Joaquin Holmes, an American citizen, at Monte Carlo, and known to have returned to Austrian territory by Verona and Botzen, where he had altered his clothing, and gone on to Innsbruck.