withdrew it moist. She saw the action.

"One of the horses must have struck you with its hoof after you fell,"
she explained. "But I was more concerned for your other wound. I
withdrew the sword with my own hands."

That other wound she spoke of was now making itself felt as well. It was
a gnawing, stinging pain in the region of my left shoulder, which
seemed to turn me numb to the waist on that side of my body, and render
powerless my arm. I questioned her touching my three adversaries, and
she silently pointed to three black masses that lay some little distance
from us in the snow.

"Not all dead?" I cried.

"I do not know," she answered, with a sob. "I have not dared go near
them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it
has been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!" she
exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach.

I laughed, seeking to soften her distress.

"To me it seems, that whether you would or not, you have been compelled
to take it, after all. Those fellows lie there harmless enough, and I am
still--as I urged that I should be--your only escort."

"A nobler protector never woman had," she assured me, and I felt a hot
pearl of moisture fail upon my brow.

"You were wise, at least, to journey with a Fool," I answered her. "For
fools are proverbially lucky folk, and to-night has proven me of all
fools the luckiest. But, Madonna," I suggested, in a different tone,
"should we not be better advised to attempt to resume, this interesting
journey of ours? We do not seem to lack horses?"

A couple of nags were standing by the road-side, together with our
mules, and I was afterwards to learn that she, herself, it was had
tethered them.

"It must be yet some three leagues to Pesaro," I added, "and if we
journey slowly, as I fear me that we must, we should arrive there soon
after daybreak."

"Do you think that you can stand?" she asked, a hopeful ring in her
voice.

"I might essay it," answered I, and I would have done so, there and
then, but that she detained me.

"First let me see to this hurt in your head," said she. "I have been
bathing it with snow while you were unconscious."

She gathered a fresh handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped
away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza
that she wore, and made a bandage--a bandage sweet with the faint
fragrance of marsh-mallow--and bound it about my battered skull. When
that was done