The old man, with a word to his hound, opened the window.
"Who is it?" he asked, and with a thrill not of fear but of expectation
in his voice.
"A man wounded and in sore straits for his life, who would gladly sit
for a few minutes by your fire before he goes upon his way."
The old man stood aside, and Wogan entered the room. He was spattered
from head to foot with mud, his clothes were torn, his eyes sunken, his
face was of a ghastly pallor and marked with blood.
"I am the Chevalier Warner," said Wogan, "a gentleman of Ireland. You
will pardon me. But I have gone through so much these last three nights
that I can barely stand;" and dropping into a chair he dragged it up to
the door of the stove, and crouched there shivering.
The old man closed the window.
"I am Count Otto von Ahlen, and in my house you are safe as you are
welcome."
He went to a sideboard, and filling a glass carried it to Wogan. The
liquor was brandy. Wogan drank it as though it had been so much water.
He was in that condition of fatigue when the most extraordinary events
seem altogether commonplace and natural. But as he felt the spirit
warming his blood, he became aware of the great difference between his
battered appearance and that of the old gentleman with the rich dress
and the white linen who stooped so hospitably above him, and he began to
wonder at the readiness of the hospitality. Wogan might have been a
thief, a murderer, for all Count Otto knew. Yet the Count, with no other
protection than his dog, had opened his window, and at that late hour of
the night had welcomed him without a word of a question.
"Sir," said Wogan, "my visit is the most unceremonious thing in the
world. I plump in upon you in the dark of the morning, as I take it to
be, and disturb you at your books without so much as knocking at the
door."
"It is as well you did not knock at the door," returned the Count, "for
my servants are long since in bed, and your knock would very likely have
reached neither their ears nor mine." And he drew up a chair and sat
down opposite to Wogan, bending forward with his hands upon his knees.
The firelight played upon his pale, indoor face, and it seemed to Wogan
that he regarded his guest with a certain wistfulness. Wogan spoke his
thought aloud,-"Yet I might be any hedgerow rascal with a taste for your plate, and no
particular scruples as to a life or two lying in the way of its
gratification."