“Well, the Count has a good few scratches to show any way,” said Mr Hicks judicially, “and so has that good fellow William, blubbering out that he wished he was killed and her ladyship not hurt. But if I were you, Lord Usk, I guess I’d find something else to do beyond tearing my hair and scarifying my soul with remorse that way. You’ll be a fine washed-out article when they want you upstairs to give a hand with the nursing. Now, for your wife’s sake!” he took Usk by the shoulders, and pushed him down into a chair, “I’ll have you make some sort of a meal, or I’ll warn the doctor that it’ll only mean another patient on his hands if he lets you sit up.” “I can’t hear what they are doing from here,” objected Usk. “Nor can any of us. But we can hear if they open the door, or come out in the upper hall, and that’s just all you want. Now the Count is going to tell us something of what he’s been through. Yes, sir,” he added firmly, in response to a look of remonstrance from Cyril, “I guess I mean just that.” “You needn’t think you’re going to make any sensational discoveries, Hicks. We may suspect till all is blue, but the real movers in the plot have covered up their traces too well to be brought to book.” “Ah, I sort of suspicioned that they weren’t taking any risks. But I’d as lief know the way they fixed things up, Count, from that very evening when you swam out of our ken, like a new kind of planet.” For a moment Cyril hesitated still. “It’s not the kind of story to make a man altogether proud,” he said, “for whenever I was outwitting our friends the enemy most completely, I seem to have been making it easier for them to keep a tight hold on me. But you shall hear. Of course our driver must have been drugged when we got to Klotsch that evening, and it had probably been made worth the landlord’s while not to be in too great a hurry to supply his place. At any rate, poor Paschics and I walked on a good way, and at last, thinking that as we had paid for the carriage, it was not much good doing the journey on our own feet, sat down by the roadside to wait for it. I think it was the first time in our joint lives that we were ever caught napping, and we have paid dearly enough for it, both of us, Heaven knows! but who would ever have anticipated danger on that straight piece of high road? There were not even woods on each side--merely rocks, and those stunted shrubs the goats eat. We were just beyond the turning which leads to this road below you here, down into Dardania, sitting rather high up on the bank so as to be out of the dust. Suddenly we were seized from behind, and blindfolded with something thrown over our heads. We hadn’t a chance to struggle. How many men there were against us I don’t know, but they carried us off quite easily, and when they took the cloak off my head again I was in a carriage, which must have been waiting just out of sight in the side-road. There was a woman in