The man and woman staggered hand in hand and floundered in the deep snow. They were soaked to the skin, frozen by the cold, and whipped by the stinging hail. Though they bent their heads and bodies, though they clung hand in hand, though they struggled with all their strength, there were times when they could not advance a foot and must needs wait for a lull in the shelter of a porch. At such times the man would perhaps quote a line of Virgil about the cave of the winds, and the woman curse like a grenadier. They, however, were not the only people who were distressed by the storm.
Outside the villa in which the Princess was imprisoned stood the two sentinels, one beneath the window, the other before the door. There were icicles upon their beards; they were so shrouded in white they had the look of snow men built by schoolboys. Their coats of frieze could not keep out the searching sleet, nor their caps protect their ears from the intolerable cold. Their hands were so numbed they could not feel the muskets they held.
The sentinel before the door suffered the most, for whereas his companion beneath the window had nothing but the house wall before his eyes, he, on his part, could see on the other side of the alley of trees the red blinds of "The White Chamois," that inn which the Chevalier de St. George had mentioned to Charles Wogan. The red blinds shone very cheery and comfortable upon that stormy night. The sentinel envied the men gathered in the warmth and light behind them, and cursed his own miserable lot as heartily as the woman in the porch did hers. The red blinds made it unendurable. He left his post and joined his companion.
"Rudolf," he said, bawling into his ear, "come with me! Our birds will not fly away to-night."
The two sentries came to the front of the house and stared at the red-litten blinds.
"What a night!" cried Rudolf. "Not a citizen would thrust his nose out of doors."
"Not even the little Chateaudoux's sweetheart," replied the other, with a grin.
They stared again at the red blinds, and in a lull of the wind a clock struck nine.
"There is an hour before the magistrate comes," said Rudolf.
"You take that hour," said his companion; "I will have the hour after the magistrate has gone."
