Clementina

The little town of Schlestadt went to bed betimes. By ten o'clock its

burghers were in their night-caps. A belated visitor going home at that

hour found his footsteps ring upon the pavement with surprising echoes,

and traversed dark street after dark street, seeing in each window,

perhaps, a mimic moon, but no other light unless his path chanced to lie

through Herzogstrasse. In that street a couple of windows on the first

floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could

detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and

dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the

lamp in the room.

There were three men in that room booted as for a journey. Their dress

might have misled one into the belief that they were merchants, but

their manner of wearing it proclaimed them soldiers. Of the three, one,

a short, spare man, sat at the table with his head bent over a slip of

paper. His peruke was pushed back from his forehead and showed that the

hair about his temples was grey. He had a square face of some strength,

and thoughtful eyes.

The second of the three stood by the window. He was, perhaps, a few

years younger, thirty-six an observer might have guessed to the other's

forty, and his face revealed a character quite different. His features

were sharp, his eyes quick; if prudence was the predominating quality of

the first, resource took its place in the second. While the first man

sat patiently at the table, this one stood impatiently at the window.

Now he lifted the blind, now he dropped it again.

The third sat in front of the fire with his face upturned to the

ceiling. He was a tall, big man with mighty legs which sprawled one on

each side of the hearth. He was the youngest of the three by five years,

but his forehead at this moment was so creased, his mouth so pursed up,

his cheeks so wrinkled, he had the look of sixty years. He puffed and

breathed very heavily; once or twice he sighed, and at each sigh his

chair creaked under him. Major O'Toole of Dillon's regiment was

thinking.

"Gaydon," said he, suddenly.

The man at the table looked up quickly.

"Misset."

The man at the window turned impatiently.

"I have an idea."

Misset shrugged his shoulders.

Gaydon said, "Let us hear it."

O'Toole drew himself up; his chair no longer creaked, it groaned and

cracked.

"It is a lottery," said he, "and we have made our fortunes. We three are

the winners, and so our names are not crossed out."