were other ways to stop him. Accidents may happen to any man.

However, he rode unhindered with the Prince's commission safe against
his breast. He felt the paper a hundred times a day to make sure that it
was not stolen nor lost, nor reduced to powder by a miracle. Day by day
his fears diminished, since day by day he drew a day's journey nearer to
Schlestadt. The paper became a talisman in his thoughts,--a thing
endowed with magic properties to make him invisible like the cloak or
cap of the fairy tales. Those few lines in writing not a week back had
seemed an unattainable prize, yet he had them; and so now they promised
him that other unattainable thing, the enlargement of the Princess. It
was in his nature, too, to grow buoyant in proportion to the
difficulties of his task. He rode forward, therefore, with a good heart,
and one sombre evening of rain came to a village some miles beyond
Augsburg.

The village was a straggling half-mile of low cottages, lost as it were
on the level of a wide plain. Across this plain, bare but for a few
lines of poplars and stunted willow-trees, Wogan had ridden all the
afternoon; and so little did the thatched cottages break the monotony of
the plain's appearance, that though he had had the village within his
vision all that while, he came upon it unawares. The dusk was gathering,
and already through the tiny windows the meagre lights gleamed upon the
road and gave to the falling raindrops the look of steel beads. Four
days would now bring Wogan to Schlestadt. The road was bad and full of
holes. He determined to go no farther that night if he could find a
lodging in the village, and coming upon a man who stood in his path he
stopped his horse.

"Is there an inn where a traveller may sleep?" he asked.