O'Toole simply crossed to a corner of the room, picked up his sword and

buckled it to his waist.

"I am ready," said he.

Wogan turned round in his chair and smiled.

"I know that," said he. "So are we all--all ready; is not that so, my

friends? We four are ready." And he looked to Misset and to Gaydon.

"Here's an exploit, if we but carry it through, which even antiquity

will be at pains to match! It's more than an exploit, for it has the

sanctity of a crusade. On the one side there's tyranny, oppression,

injustice, the one woman who most deserves a crown robbed of it. And on

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the other--"

"There's the King," said Gaydon; and the three brief words seemed

somehow to quench and sober Wogan.

"Yes," said he; "there's the King, and we four to serve him in his

need. We are few, but in that lies our one hope. They will never look

for four men, but for many. Four men travelling to the shrine of Loretto

with the Pope's passport may well stay at Innspruck and escape a close

attention."

"I am ready," O'Toole repeated.

"But we shall not start to-night. There's the passport to be got, a plan

to be arranged."

"Oh, there's a plan," said O'Toole. "To be sure, there's always a plan."

And he sat down again heavily, as though he put no faith in plans.

Misset and Gaydon drew their chairs closer to Wogan's and instinctively

lowered their voices to the tone of a whisper.

"Is her Highness warned of the attempt?" asked Gaydon.

"As soon as I obtained the King's permission," replied Wogan, "I hurried

to Innspruck. There I saw Chateaudoux, the chamberlain of the Princess's

mother. Here is a letter he dropped in the cathedral for me to pick up."

He drew the letter from his fob and handed it to Gaydon. Gaydon read it

and handed it to Misset. Misset nodded and handed it to O'Toole, who

read it four times and handed it back to Gaydon with a flourish of the

hand as though the matter was now quite plain to him.

"Chateaudoux has a sweetheart," said he, sententiously. "Very good; I do

not think the worse of him."

Gaydon glanced a second time through the letter.

"The Princess says that you must have the Prince Sobieski's written

consent."

"I went from Innspruck to Ohlau," said Wogan. "I had some trouble, and

the reason of my coming leaked out. The Countess de Berg suspected it

from the first. She had a friend, an Englishwoman, Lady Featherstone,

who was at Ohlau to outwit me."




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