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.