"Have we far to travel to this exit of yours?"
"Some distance, and by narrow ways. If there should be prying eyes we must close them quickly. We want no shouts to raise a rabble. Is it not time, Anton?"
"Yes, the gates have been closed for half an hour."
"Come, then," said the lad. "Must we go through the court?"
"There is no other way," Anton answered.
"Then Captain, will you permit that Anton and I go first?" said Grigosie. "Follow close upon our heels; but should we stop, do not you; overtake us and push us roughly aside, and we will overtake you again in a moment. Your pardon that I seem to lead in this matter, but I know the road we must take."
Ellerey returned a gruff assent to the arrangement. He had looked into the boy's eyes and seen honesty there, but he was not going to walk carelessly, for all that.
The inn was empty, so was the court, and there were few people abroad in the Bergenstrasse. Grigosie and Anton, leading the way by scarce a dozen paces, turned almost directly from the main thoroughfare into a side street, and had soon turned to left and right so often that Ellerey would hardly have found his way back to the Toison d'Or. Not once did they stop, and if they looked back to see that their companion was following them, Ellerey was not aware of the fact. He kept close upon their heels, ready to stand on the defensive at the first sign of treachery, but he took little notice of where they led him.
Suddenly a street corner struck him as familiar, and the next moment the truth flashed upon him. It was the street he had traversed last night. At the bottom there they had met Baron Petrescu. Even now the light was dimly burning in the upper window as it had been then. Grigosie and Anton stopped, but when Ellerey reached them he did not push them aside; he stopped, too. "And now which way?" he asked.
"Toward the light yonder," Grigosie answered.