wretched tavern oaf. But I
stepped forward.

"Did you say that you were journeying to Cagli?" questioned I.

He eyed me sourly, suspicion writ athwart his round, ill-favoured face,
But my motley was hidden from his sight. My cloak, my hat and boots
allowed naught of my true condition to appear, and might as well have
covered a lordling as a jester. Yet his inveterate surliness the rascal
could not wholly conquer.

"What may be the purpose of your question?" he growled.

"To serve your master, whoever he may be," I answered him serenely,
"although it is a service I do not press upon him. I, too, am journeying
to Cagli, and like yourselves, I am in haste and go the shorter way
across the hills, with which I am well acquainted. If it so please you
to follow me your need of a guide may thus be satisfied."

It was the tone to take if I would be respected. Had I proposed that we
should journey in company I should not have earned me the half of the
deference which was accorded to my haughtily granted leave that they
might follow me if they so chose.

With marked submission did he give me thanks in his master's name.

I mounted and set out, and at my heels came now the litter and its
escort. Thus did we quit the plain and breast the slopes, where the snow
grew deeper and firmer underfoot as we advanced. And as I went, still
plaguing my mind to devise a means by which I might penetrate to the
Court of Pesaro, little did I dream that the matter was being solved for
me--the solution having begun with my offer to guide that company across
the hills.

CHAPTER III. MADONNA PAOLA

We gained the heights in the forenoon, and there we dismounted and
paused awhile to breathe our horses ere we took the path that was to
lead us down to Cagli. The air was sharp and cold, for all that overhead
was spread a cloudless, cobalt dome of sky, and the sun poured down
its light upon the wide expanse of snow-clad earth, of a whiteness so
dazzling as to be hurtful to the sight.

Hitherto I had ridden stolidly ahead, as unheeding of that following
company as if I had been unconscious of its existence. But now that
we paused, their fat, white-faced leader, whose name was Giacopo,
approached me and sought to draw me into conversation. I yielded readily
enough, for I scented a mystery about that closely-curtained litter,
and mysteries are ever provoking to such a mind as mine. For all that
it might profit me naught to learn who rode the