Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/39

 mind. I began to review every circumstance of my journey, twisting the trivial into some ominous shape, magnifying the significance of everything which might justly seem suspicious, studying in the light of my new apprehensions every expression of Bauer's face and every word that had fallen from his lips. I could not persuade myself into security. I carried the Queen's letter, and—well, I would have given much to have old Sapt or Rudolf Rassendyll by my side.

Now when a man suspects danger, let him not spend his time in asking whether there be really danger, or in upbraiding himself for timidity, but let him face his cowardice and act as though the danger were real. If I had followed that rule, and kept my eyes about me, scanning the sides of the road and the ground in front of my feet, instead of losing myself in a maze of reflection, I might have had time to avoid the trap, or at least to get my hand to my revolver and make a fight for it, or indeed, in the last resort, to destroy what I carried before harm came to it. But my mind was pre-occupied, and the whole thing seemed to happen in a minute. At the very moment that I had declared to myself the vanity of my fears and determined to be resolute in banishing them, I heard voices—a low strained whispering; I saw two or three figures in the shadow of the poplars by the wayside. An