"I keep one in my bedroom," said the Count, setting the lamp down, "if
you can wait the few moments it will take me to fetch it."
Mr. Wogan was quite able to wait. He was indeed sufficiently generous to
tell Count Otto that he need not hurry. The Count fetched the pistol and
took up the lamp again.
"Will you now follow me?"
Wogan looked straight before him into the air and spoke to no one in
particular.
"A pistol is, to be sure, more useful than a sword; but there is just
one thing more useful on an occasion than a pistol, and that is a
hunting knife."
Count Otto shook his head.
"There, Chevalier, I doubt if I can serve you."
"But upon my word," said Wogan, picking up a carving-knife from the
tray, "here is the very thing."
"It has no sheath."
Wogan was almost indignant at the suggestion that he would go so far as
to ask even his dearest friend for a sheath. Besides, he had a sheath,
and he fitted the knife into it.
"Now," said he, pleasantly, "all that I need is a sound, swift,
thoroughbred horse about six or seven years old."
Count Otto for the fourth time took up his lamp.
"Will you follow me?" he said for the fourth time.
Wogan followed the old man across the lawn and round a corner of the
house until he came to a long, low building surmounted by a cupola. The
building was the stable, and the Count Otto roused one of his grooms.
"Saddle me Flavia," said he. "Flavia is a mare who, I fancy, fulfils
your requirements."
Wogan had no complaint to make of her. She had the manners of a
courtier. It seemed, too, that she had no complaint to make of Mr.
Wogan. Count Otto laid his hand upon the bridle and led the mare with
her rider along a lane through a thicket of trees and to a small gate.
"Here, then, we part, Chevalier," said he. "No doubt to-morrow I shall
sit down at my table, knowing that I talked a deal of folly ill
befitting an old man. No doubt I shall be aware that my books are the
true happiness after all. But to-night--well, to-night I would fain be
twenty years of age, that I might fling my books over the hedge and ride
out with you, my sword at my side, my courage in my hand, into the
world's highway. I will beg you to keep the mare as a token and a memory
of our meeting. There is no better beast, I believe, in Christendom."