It was a note, in a handwriting which I recognized as Lucy’s. I had tried, during the time in which she was in my care, to persuade her to form her letters with some degree of elegance, but in vain; she suffers, as do so many others, from the delusion that neat handwriting is dull while scrawled handwriting is interesting and attractive. I cannot understand this idea. Fashion, again. I consoled myself with the reflection that at least I had taught her to punctuate. The note read:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Tormented by Fate, cheated of Hope, and exiled by the Cruelty of one from whom we should have expected Kindness and Friendship, we have resolved to offer ourselves up to the Powers of the eternal snows, in the sure knowledge that there can be no less Mercy among the crags and glaciers than among the tapestries and paneled walls of our late dwelling place, CASTLE KARLSTEIN.

Farewell forever.

I read this aloud to the others as we sat round the fire and then laid it down—with, I confess, great weariness.

“What are they playing at?” said Grindoff. “I don’t understand it, miss. What are they running away for?”

“I told you, Max!” said Hildi. “Zamiel!”

He shook his head. “I’m fair wore out,” he said. “It slipped me mind altogether. Fancy forgetting that….”

“Zamiel?” I inquired. “Enlighten me, pray.”

So Hildi did. She recounted all that she had heard; and then Grindoff repeated what he had heard Count Karlstein say to his secretary, that watery individual, in the alley beside the Mayor’s house.

“I see,” I said. And then I sat back and closed my eyes, the better to think.

Many parts of central Europe—some parts of Britain—have their legends about the Wild Hunt. Windsor Park, so it is said, is haunted by Herne the Hunter; it is an ancient and very interesting superstition. Superstition? Does that mean I did not believe in it? Oh, no. A closed mind is a dead mind. If I did not believe in it, Count Karlstein certainly did, and was going to base a particularly malevolent action on this belief. I saw no reason to assume that any of this was nonsense, and several reasons to assume that it was true. But for every malevolent force there were remedies—charms, protections, call them what you will. I tried to recall what I had read.