ide his horror to make room for his fears,
and mechanically seizing another flagon he hurried forward to minister
to the wants of his fearful lord.

Ramiro eyed him with cynical amusement.

"Your hand shakes, Mariani," he derided him. "Are you cold? Go warm
yourself," he added, with a brutal laugh and a jerk of his thumb towards
the fire.

My eyes have looked upon some gruesome sights, and I have heard such
tales of ruthless cruelty as you would deem almost passing possibility.
I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan in
the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of Cesena
that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove. How it befell that
men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought him to put
poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that I shall
never wholly understand. Could it be that these robbers of whom he made
a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was it that
the man's terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled them
with an almost supernatural awe of him? To men better versed than am I
in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of these
questions.

The ogre turned his bloodshot eyes upon me, as with his hand he caressed
his tawny beard. He seemed to have cooled a little now, and to have
regained some mastery of his drunken self. Old Mariani tottered back to
his buffet, and stood leaning against it, his eyes wandering, with the
look of a man demented, to the fire that had devoured his child. There,
indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the poignancy of his grief
was threatening him, was a tool that might turn its edge against this
inhuman monster, this devil, this bloody carnifex of a Governor.

"Chance," said Ramiro, "has designed that you should see something of
how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro. To disobedient
ones I can assure you that we are not half so merciful. There is no such
short shrift for them. You have had more than the time I promised you
for reflection. The garments await you yonder. Let us know--"

The door opened suddenly, and a servant entered.

"A courier from the Lord Vitellozzo Vitelli, Tyrant of Citta di
Castello," he announced, unwittingly breaking in upon Ramiro's words,
"with urgent messages for the high and Mighty Governor of Cesena."

On the instant Ramiro rose, the expression of his face changing from
cynical amusement to