“But what if he were to go back to the others, Loo, and turn approver against us?”
“We are safe enough on that score. He has nothing to tell them that they do not know already. They have got to the bottom of all the mystery, and they don't want him.”
“Still it seems to me, Loo, that it might have been safer to keep him along with us,—under our eye, as it were.”
“Not at all, papa. It is as in a shipwreck, where the plank that will save two will sink with three. The stratagem that will rescue us would be probably marred by him, and, besides, he'll provide for his own safety better than we should.”
Thus talking, they entered the little village, where, although not yet daybreak, a small café was open,—one of those humble refreshment-houses frequented by peasants on their way to their daily toil.
“Let us breakfast here,” said she, “while they are getting ready some light carriage to carry us on to St. Grail. I have an old friend there, the prior of the monastery, who used to be very desirous to convert me long ago. I intend to give him a week or ten days' trial now, papa; and he may also, if he feel so disposed, experiment upon you.”
It was in this easy chit-chat they sat down to their coffee in the little inn at Rorschach. They were soon, however, on the road again, sealed in a little country carriage drawn by a stout mountain pony.
“Strange enough all this adventure seems,” said she, as they ascended the steep mountain on foot, to relieve the weary beast. “Sometimes it appears all like a dream to me, and now, when I look over the lake there, and see the distant spires of Bregenz yonder, I begin to believe that there is reality in it, and that we are acting in a true drama.”
Holmes paid but little attention to her words, wrapped up as he was in some details he was reading in a newspaper he had carried away from the Café.
“What have you found to interest you so much there, papa?” asked she, at last.