There were two or three brisk-looking fellows in peasant clothes to rub down the horses and usher us into the cottage—not that I took them for peasants, for I heard two of them in talk with Rudi. They were gentlemen, by German standards, but tough, active customers for all that—the kind who’ll cut your throat and send back the wine at dinner afterwards.

We had a meal, Rudi and I, while de Gautet paced up and down and peered out at the darkening sky and consulted his watch and fidgeted generally until Rudi told him to leave off, and made him sit down and have a glass of wine with us. I was getting fairly twitchy myself as the hours passed, and Rudi gave me a stiff brandy to steady me.

“Three hours from now,” says he, “and you’ll be tucked up in a silk night-gown with C.G. embroidered on it. God! I wish I was in your shoes. How many commoners have the chance to be royalty!”

“I’ll show you one who’s ready to resign his crown any time,” says I. The shivers were beginning to run up my spine.

“Nonsense. Give you two days, and you’ll be behaving as though you’d been born to the purple. Issuing royal decrees against virginity, probably. What time is it, de Gautet?”

“We should be moving.” I heard the strain in his voice.

“Heigh-ho,” says Rudi, stretching; he was as cool as though he was off for an evening stroll. “Come along, then.”

There was a slight altercation just before setting out when de Gautet, officiously helping me into my cloak, discovered my pistols in the pockets. I’d had them concealed in a pair of boots in my baggage at Schönhausen, and was determined that they were going with me. Rudi shook his head.

“Royalty don’t carry side-arms, except for ceremony.”

“I do,” says I. “Either they go with me, or I don’t go at all.”

“What good d’you suppose they’ll be, man?”

“None, I hope. But if the worst happens they’ll perhap buy me a little elbow-room.”

De Gautet was in a sweat to be off, so in the end Rudi cursed and grinned and let me keep them. He knew I wouldn’t be fool enough to make a bolt for it now.

With de Gautet leading, Rudi and I behind, and two of the others in the rear, we struck out through the trees, plodding ankle-deep through the snow. It was still as death all round, and hellish dark, but de Gautet led on unerringly for perhaps quarter of an hour, when we came to a high stone wall running across our front. There was a wicket, and then we were skirting past a thicket of high bushes which, by their regular spacing, must be in the garden of some great estate. Even in the darkness I could make out the level sweep of lawn under the snow, and then ahead of us were the blazing lights of a huge mansion, surrounded by terraces, and hedged about by avenues of clipped bushes.