The Count, who had previously had reasons for [pg 141]thinking well of the peddler’s intelligence, bade him proceed.
“In the first place,” continued the man, “I think this letter is a blind. It is made to look like the work of some very rude and ignorant person. But the pretence is not well kept up. You will see, if you look at the handwriting a little more closely, that it is feigned. The writer was perfectly able to make it a great deal better than it is, if he had so chosen, and he has sometimes forgotten his part. Some of the letters, some even of the words, particularly of the small words, about which he would naturally be less careful, are quite well-formed. Now a really bad writer, I mean one who writes badly because he does not know how to write well, is always bad; every letter he forms is misshapen.”
The Count examined the document and acknowledged that this comment upon it was just. And he began to see too what was naturally more apparent to him, as an educated man, than it was to the peddler, that the style was hardly what would have been expected from an ignorant scribe.
“What, then, is your conclusion?” he asked.
“About that,” returned the other, “I am not so certain. That this is a blind, as I said, I am sure; and this talk about the ransom consequently is a deception. ‘Three days,’ you see it says. That [pg 142]would be three days lost. No, my lord, it is not by robbers that this has been planned.”
“What then?” cried the Count, flushing a fiery red as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Carna is very beautiful. Do you think——”
“No,” said the peddler, “I think not. A lover would not lay so elaborate a plot as I fancy I can see here. I think the Lady Carna is a hostage, or——”
He paused, and continued after a few minutes of silence. “I have much to piece together, and it would take long, and lose much precious time. That is the last thing that we should do. They have got too much start already. We must not let them improve it more than we can help. You will let me go with you, and I shall have leisure to put all I have got to say together without hindering you. But the sooner we are on their track the better.”
To this the Count readily agreed, and preparations for immediate departure were made. It was with difficulty that Ælia could be persuaded that she must be left behind. But when it was pointed out to her that her presence must inevitably make the progress of the party more slow, and increase their anxieties, she reluctantly gave way. At the last moment an unexpected addition was made to the party in the person of the Saxon prisoner.
“My lord,” said the peddler, to whom the young [pg 143]man had communicated his earnest desire to be allowed to go; “it may seem a strange thing for me to say, but you cannot have a better helper in this matter than this young fellow. He is as strong as any horse, and as keen and intelligent a youth as I ever saw. And in this case too his wits will be doubly sharp, and his arm doubly strong, for he worships the very ground that the Lady Carna treads upon.”