“Don’t you think we had better start for Cracow? That fellow won’t be away longer than he can help, and I have to get a little scheme ready for him before he returns. The sooner we start the safer.”

“But what can we do about——” and she glanced to where the Count’s body lay.

“If we are to think of the living, we can do nothing. He has been recognized and when the police return they will care for the body and something can be done from Warsaw.”

“It seems heartless to leave him,” she murmured in distressed perplexity.

“There is no other way; so if you please we will start. I’ll tell you my plan as we walk. Your mother’s safety is in the balance, remember.” She yielded then and we set out.

“I think we shall get through without any great trouble. There is a train from Bratinsk somewhere about eight o’clock, which will put us in Cracow in a few hours.”

[30]“But I have no passport now, to pass the frontier.”

[30]

“Fortunately, I can arrange that. My first plan is to send the police off on a false scent. There is a peasant family, not a mile from the top of the hill—where my horse is, by the way—and they will do anything for me. I helped them out of some trouble when I was here last year, and they think a lot of it. With this police agent away from Bratinsk for a few hours, we can get off secretly and safely.”

At the top of the hill I found my horse, put “Miss Smith” on his back and handed her the coat which had been the first cause of trouble.

“I shall need the coat for my plan; so find the papers which are sewn into it and be ready to rip them out the moment we reach the cottage.”

“But you?” she protested.

“No protest, please. I am good for more than a mile at fair speed.”

“You do all this for a stranger,” she said, her eyes lighting as she looked down at me.

“Oh, we shan’t always be strangers. Keep him going. I can’t talk and run at the same time. Be merciful;” and with that we set off at a good round trot. I held to the stirrup and so had no difficulty in keeping up.

In about five minutes we turned off the road and the cottage was soon in sight. By good fortune the man I 

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