e floor, and held the cloak in his hand, ready
at a moment's notice to conceal the light in its folds. Then pulling me
down beside him on the bed, where he had perched himself:

"My friend," said he, "it may be that I bring you assistance."

"Speak, then," I bade him. "You shall not find me slow to act if there
is the need or the way."

"So I had surmised," he said. "Are you not that same Boccadoro, Fool of
the Court of Pesaro, who donned the Lord Giovanni's armour and rode out
to do battle in his stead?"

I answered him that I was that man.

"I have heard the tale," said he. "Indeed, all Italy has heard it, and
knows you for a man of steel, as strong and audacious as you are cunning
and resourceful. I know against what desperate odds you fought that day,
and how you overcame this terrible Ramiro. This it is that leads me to
hope that in the service of your own ends you may become the instrument
of my vengeance."

"Unfold your project, man," I muttered, fiercely almost, in my burning
eagerness. "Let me hear what you would have me do."

He did not answer me until a sob had shaken his old frame.

"That boy," he muttered brokenly, "that golden-haired angel sent me for
the consolation of my decaying years, that lad whom Ramiro destroyed so
foully and wantonly, was my son. Futile though the attempt had proved, I
had certainly set my hands at the tyrants neck, but that I founded hopes
on you of a surer and more terrible revenge. That thought has manned me
and upheld me when anguish was near to slaying me outright. To see the
boy burn so under my very eyes! God of mercy and pity! That I should
have lived so long!"

"Your child burned but a moment, suffered but an instant; for the
deed, Ramiro will burn in Hell through countless generations, through
interminable ages."

It was a paltry consolation, perhaps, but it was the best that then
occurred to me.

"Meanwhile," I begged him, "do you tell me what you would have me do."

I urged him to it that he might, thereby, suffer his mind to rest a
moment from pondering that ghastly thing that he had witnessed, that
scene that would live before his eyes until they closed in their last
sleep.

"You heard Lampugnani quip Ramiro with the fact that three messengers
have ridden desperately within the week from Citta di Castello to
Cesena, and you heard, perhaps, his obscure reference to the hat?"

"I heard both, and both I weighed," said I. The old man looked at me as
if s