regarded.

Before those about me could guess my purpose, or those others, too
engrossed in the scene at the far end of the hall, could intervene, I
had sprung from between the executioners and dashed across the space
that separated me from the Governor of Cesena. One well-aimed blow, and
there should be an end to Messer Ramiro. That was the only thought that
found room in my disordered mind.

One or two there were who cried out as I sped past them, swift as the
hound when it speeds after the fleeing hare. But I was upon Ramiro ere
any could have sufficiently mastered his surprise to interfere.

By the nape of his great neck I caught him from behind, and setting my
knee at his spine I wrenched him backward, and so flung him over on
the floor. Down I went with him, my hand reaching for the dagger at his
jewelled girdle, and I had found and drawn it in that swift action of
mine ere he had bethought him of his hands. Up it flashed and down. I
sank it through the crimson velvet of his rich doublets straight at the
spot where his heart should be--if he were so human as to have a heart.
The next instant I turned cold and sick. My desperate effort had been
all for nothing. In my hand I was left with the bronze hilt of his great
poniard; the blade had broken off against the mesh of steel the coward
wore beneath his finery.

There was a rush of feet about us, a piercing scream from Madonna Paola,
and it was to her that I owed my life in that grim moment. A dozen
blades were naked and would have transfixed me as I lay, but that she
covered my body with her own and bade them strike at me through her.

A moment later and the powerful hands of the Governor of Cesena were at
my throat. I was lifted and tossed aside, as though I had been a hound
and he the bull I had beset. And as he swung me over and crushed me
to the ground, he knelt above me and grinned horribly into my purpling
face.

A second we stayed so, and I thought indeed that my hour was come, when
suddenly I felt the blood in my head released once more. He had taken
his hands from my throat. He seized me now by the collar and dragged me
rudely to my feet.

"Take this knave and lock him in his chamber," he bade a couple of his
bravi. "I may have need of him ere he dies."

"Messer Ramiro," came the interceding voice of Madonna Paola, "what he
did, he did for me. You will not let him die for it?"

There was a pause during which he looked at her, whilst the men were