Besides, he was not really lonely, having a host of friends whom he had
merely to seek out; he took the charges from his pistol lest they should
be damp, and renewed them and placed the pistols by the candle. He had
even begun to pity himself for his loneliness, and pity of that sort, he
recognised, was a discreditable quality; the matter was altogether very
disquieting. He propped his sword against the chair and undressed. Wogan
cast back in his memories for the first sensations of loneliness. They
were recent, since he had left Ohlau, indeed. He opened the window; the
rain splashed in on the sill, pattered in the street puddles below, and
fell across the country with a continuous roar as though the level plain
was a stretched drum. No; he had only felt lonely since he had come near
to Schlestadt, since, in a word, he had deemed himself to have
outstripped pursuit. He got into his bed and blew out the candle.

For a moment the room was black as pitch, then on his left side the
darkness thinned at one point and a barred square of grey became
visible; the square of grey was the window. Wogan understood that his
loneliness came upon him with the respite from his difficulties, and
concluded that, after all, it was as well that he had not a comfortable
fireside whereby to sun himself. He turned over on his right side and
saw the white door and its white frame. The rain made a dreary sound
outside the window, but in three days he would be at Schlestadt. Besides
he fell asleep.

And in a little he dreamed. He dreamed that he was swinging on a gibbet
before the whole populace of Innspruck, that he died to his bewilderment
without any pain whatever, but that pain came to him after he was quite
dead,--not bodily pain at all, but an anguish of mind because the chains
by which he was hanged would groan and creak, and the populace,
mistaking that groaning for his cries, scoffed at him and ridiculed his