"Think of Paris or New York at eleven o'clock," said Lorry, a trifle awed by the solitude of the sleeping city.
"It's as dead as a piece of prairie-land," said his friend. "'Gad, it makes me sleepy to look down that street. It's a mile to the hotel, too, Lorry. We'd better move along."
"Let's lie down near the hedge, smoke another cigar and wait till midnight. It is too glorious a night to be lost in sleep," urged Lorry, whose heart was light over the joys of the day to come. "I can dream just as well here, looking at that dark old castle with its one little tower-light, as I could if I tried to sleep in a hard bed down at the hotel."
Anguish, who was more or less of a dreamer himself, consented, and, after lighting fresh cigars, they threw themselves on the soft, dry grass near the tall hedge that fenced the avenue as it neared the castle grounds. For half an hour they talked by fits and starts; long silences were common, broken only by brief phrases which seemed so to disturb the one to whom they were addressed that he answered gruffly and not at all politely. Their cigars, burnt to mere stubs, were thrown away, and still the waking dreamers stretched themselves in the almost impenetrable shade of the hedge, one thinking of the face he had seen, the other picturing in his artist eye the painting he had vowed to create from the moon-lit castle of an hour ago.
"Some one coming," murmured the painter, half rising to his elbow attentively.
"Soldiers," said the other briefly. "They'll not disturb us."
"They'll not even see us, I should say. It's as dark as Egypt under this hedge. They'll pass if we keep quiet."
The figures of two men could be seen approaching from the city, dim and ghostly in the semi-blackness of the night. Like two thieves the Americans waited for them to pass. To their exceeding discomfiture, however, the pedestrians halted directly in front of their resting place and seated themselves leisurely upon a broad, flat stone at the roadside. It was too dark to see if they were soldiers, notwithstanding the fact that they were less than fifteen feet away.
"He should be here at twelve," said one of the new comers in a low voice and in fairly good English. The other merely grunted. There was a silence of some duration, broken by the first speaker.
"If this job fails and you are caught it will mean years of servitude."
"But in that case we are to have ten thousand gavvos apiece for each year we lie in prison. It's fair pay--not only for our failure, but for our silence," said the other, whose English was more difficult to understand.