“Ah,” said the old steward, looking critically at the fragment, “it is as I suspected. Certainly one of the play-actor fellows who were here on Tuesday. I noticed one or two knavish faces among the new members of the troupe. He has been tempted to earn a year’s pay in a single night. A daring, beggarly villain. His after-thought is likely to mean death to Jan Martin, if not to poor Fritz as well. Well, if Fritz dies there will be a reckoning to pay with the Count.”
“You think, then, it was one of those wretched fellows, the players?”
“I am sure of it, gnädiger Herr. Look at this scrap of cloth. It is of the coarsest description. Such as would be worn only by a peasant or a strolling mountebank. And no peasant, in his mind or out of it, would dare to plan a midnight robbery, with murder if need be, at the Schloss Rohnburg. It is out of the question. No; this evidence points to one of those ranting tatterdemalions, who have the wits of a drunkard and the reverence of a pig.”
Gollmar’s manifest conviction of the man’s identity somewhat reassured Herriard, and he was able to relate the affair to Alexia without communicating to her the fears he had at first entertained. The doctor who had been sent for reported Jan Martin’s wound as not dangerous; with a week’s quiet he would recover from its effects. Fritz, too, had had a wonderful escape; the evidently hasty stab he had received having just missed being mortal.
Still, although, providentially, not much harm had been done, the affair gave Herriard considerable uneasiness. He made light of it, since there seemed no object to be gained by taking it, outwardly at least, more seriously. Yet, somehow, it contrived to give him an ever-present conviction of impending danger. When he reasoned the matter out with himself he was bound to admit that the common-sense arguments pointed to the confirmation of Gollmar’s simple theory. What more likely, he asked himself, than that a member of a lawless, homeless, strolling party of mountebanks, recruited probably from the dregs of society, if not, indeed, from the jails, should use the opportunity of admittance to a house of wealth to plan an attempt which promised a tempting haul? Had Herriard’s mind, as he admitted, not been full of Gastineau and his methods, he would not have thought to question the obvious explanation. As it was, the affair, unpleasant enough in itself, gave a disagreeable shock, the effects of which did not leave him when he found that the harm done by the midnight marauder was far less than it might have been.
But the days went by, resuming their uneventful course. A week passed, and at its end both man and dog had quite recovered from their wounds. Herriard began to think that it had, after all, been a case of attempted robbery by one of the strolling prayers. Enquiries in the district had quite failed to identify the scrap of cloth, and the idea that the culprit belonged to the neighbourhood was scouted by every one in the place. A watch was now kept every night in the castle, but no sign was detected of a renewal of the attempt. Naturally, they said, the players were now far away. On the night in question they had been performing at a village but a few miles from Rohnburg.
So Herriard’s uneasiness, having nothing new to feed upon, gradually subsided, and he gave himself up once more to all the charm of existence which that romantic domain afforded him.
One day it was announced to him that Fritz, the wolf-hound, had mysteriously disappeared. He had been always a domesticated animal, content for the most part to lie basking in the sun on the terrace or in the courtyard, and had never been known to stray far from the castle. But now he had not been seen for twenty-four hours, and every one was at a loss to account for his absence. His wound was quite healed, and he had seemed in perfect health, although one of the men had noticed that he was unusually restless. Herriard was at first inclined to be somewhat perturbed by the occurrence, till one of the foresters, having a peculiar knowledge of animals, adduced a theory which tended to set his mind at rest. The dog’s behaviour, he declared, was perfectly explicable. In his natural state he would be a fierce, marauding, dangerous animal. His real character had been tamed and held in suspension by the luxury and kindness of a domestic life. Now the hurt he had received had roused the animal’s fiercer nature which had but slumbered. That this was the case had been indicated by the dog’s noticeable restlessness; he had now assuredly gone off on a wild hunting prowl; the taste of live blood (he had doubtless bitten the robber) had quickened his instinct, and induced a craving for living prey.
With this explanation Herriard had to be satisfied. He ordered, however, a thorough search to be made for the dog, and it was with a certain sense of relief that he heard this was unsuccessful; he had feared the finding of the animal dead by that mysterious hand which his fancy would picture as stretched forth against him and his.
But Alexia laughed him out of his fear of the unknown. Was not the world smiling on them with all the delights of an ideal existence? What sign was there, save in imagination, of the danger they had dreaded? It was a sin to let the memory of a trouble, now past and gone, destroy the delight of the present hour. Paul Gastineau was not a fool to waste, in pursuing them with his hatred, time which might be spent to more advantage in opening out his new career. Probably he had for once spoken the frank truth, and was by that time across the ocean, eager to put into practice the fresh schemes and projects of his busy, ambitious brain. In the weeks they had spent at the Schloss Rohnburg what tangible sign had there been of the presence or machinations of their arch enemy? None. If he had meant to strike, why this delay? He was, above all things, a man of swift action. No. Geoffrey should not worry himself any more with those fancies. The danger was now a myth, opposed by common sense; if it were real, the worry would not keep it away. So Herriard resolved to be guided by Alexia’s counsel, and to give himself up thenceforward to the full enjoyment of the new life he had entered upon. After the stuffy turmoil of the Courts it was indeed a change full of delight, a life never even dreamt of a month before.