at Eylau, for he had a crushed look.

"But war is not declared," said the first speaker.

"Does that matter?"

And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that
invites opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He
was better clad than they. He must know more than they did. But
Sebastian looked over their heads and did not seem to have heard
their conversation.

He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little
narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still
to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche. At last he came to
the Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though
he could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the
rumble of the guns.

There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on
wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street. These were not yet
alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could
scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the
road and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.

Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some
one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within
the porch.

The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light