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