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From Itzia I calculated we could, if well mounted, cross the frontier in about nine hours. There were no telegraph wires in that region in those days, and I pointed out that with a start of a single hour escape was probable. I laid stress on the value of the sympathetic attendant, and she hung with clasped hands and suspended breath on every word I spoke.
"Read that," he said. "These lines," I read, "are written by the Conte di Rossano, for more than twenty years a prisoner in the fortress of Itzia. They are carried at grave danger to himself by an attendant whose pity has been moved by the contemplation of a life of great misery.
Hinge was hard to pacify, for in his loyalty to me and the affection that had grown up between us, he was almost as much interested as I was, and he kept breaking in with a "Look 'ere, sir, this is Captain Fyffe, my master. It was him as rescued Count Rossano from the fortress of Itzia you must have seen it in the papers." The man was got rid of at last, and the promise was given.
We travelled at apparent random for nearly three weeks, and when at last we reached Itzia, no man could possibly have guessed that we had set out with that little place as our serious destination.
After all these years I can hardly think of the fortress at Itzia without some return of the depression and half-dismay which fell upon me when I first looked at it, with the black clouds gathering thickly over it, the mountain on which it stood looking as if it would topple over and bury fortress and valley, and one spear-like gleam of bleak sunshine lighting up a few of its windows and a few square yards of its western wall.
In effect, he found it, and found means to send it on to me. It was scrawled in pencil from a posting place on the road to Vienna, distant from Itzia four-and-twenty miles English, or thereabouts. I pored over this document in my own room, and made many heart-breaking attempts to imitate it. They were absolute failures, one and all.
Catching sight of me she smiled and addressed me in the language of the country. I responded in French, and in that tongue she asked me how far it still was to Itzia. I told her as nearly as I could guess; she thanked me, and then leaned back in her carriage, waiting until the horses should have rested.
After much consideration, I hit upon "John of Itzia" as a signature, and having made three clear copies, I drove round to the offices of the three great daily newspapers of that date, and at each secured the insertion of this advertisement for a week. A little comforted by that achievement, I went to bed, and, being dog tired, got to sleep.
If you knew the fortress at Itzia you'd think twice before trying that. Besides hang it all, man! I was Reschia's guest; and he told me the story under the seal of confession." I spoke unguardedly, but I was not allowed to go far. "If your story is true, Brunow " "What do you mean by that?" he asked, with sudden anger.
I'll tell you all about it." He leaned forward in his chair, and I would have sworn that he was inventing as he went on. "I was at a little place called Itzia, in the Tyrol, when by pure chance I stumbled on a fellow I had known in Paris and Vienna a fellow named Reschia, Lieutenant Reschia.
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