eard him above the thunder of our hoofs.
"What has come to Giovanni Sforza. Has he, perchance, become a man since
Madonna Lucrezia divorced him? I will bear her the news of it, my good
Giovanni--my living thunderbolt of Jove!"

His men echoed his boisterous mood, infected by it, and this, I argued,
boded ill for the courage of those that followed me. Another moment and
we had swept into them, and many there were who laughed no more, or went
to laugh with those in Hell.

For myself I singled out the blustering Ramiro, and I let him know it
by a swinging blow of my mace upon his morion. It was a most
finely-tempered piece of steel, for my stroke made no impression on
it, though Ramiro winced and raised his stout sword to return the
compliment.

"Body of God!" he croaked, "you become a very god of war, Giovanni. To
me, then, my lusty Mars! We'll make a fight of it that poets shall sing
of over winter fires. Look to yourself!"

His sword caught me a cunning, well-aimed blow on the side of my helm,
and thence, glanced to my shoulder. But for the quality of Giovanni's
head-piece of a truth there had been an end to the warring of a Fool.
I smote him back, a mighty blow upon his epauliere that shore the steel
plate from his shoulder, and left him a vulnerable spot. At that he
swore ferociously, and his bloodshot eyes grew wicked as the fiend's. A
second time he essayed that side-long blow upon my helm, and with such
force and ready address that he burst the fastening of my visor on the
left, so that it swung down and left my beaver open.

With a cry of triumph he closed with me, and shortened his sword to stab
me in the face. And then a second cry escaped him, for the countenance
he beheld was not the countenance he had looked to see. Instead of
the fair skin, the handsome features and the bearded mouth of the
Lord Giovanni, he beheld a shaven face, a hooked nose and a complexion
swarthy as the devil's.

"I know you, rogue," he roared. "By the Host! your valour seemed too
fierce for Giovanni Sforza. You are Bocca--"

Exerting all the strength that I had been gradually collecting, I hurled
him back with a force that almost drove him from the saddle, and rising
in my stirrups I rained blow after blow upon his morion ere he could
recover.

"Dog!" I muttered softly, "your knowledge shall be the death of you."

He drew away from me at last, and during the moments that I spent in
readjusting my visor he sallied, and charge