blunder he was beginning to fear that he had made.
"But--What is the livery of these knaves?

"They wear none," someone answered him, and at that answer he seemed to
turn limp and lose his fierce assurance.

Then he bridled afresh.

"Yet the party, I'll swear, is this!" he insisted; and turning once more
to me: "Explain, animal!" he bade me in terrifying tones. "Explain, or,
by the Host! be you ignorant or not, I'll have you hanged."

I accounted it high time to take another tone with him. Hanging was a
discomfort I was never less minded to suffer.

"Draw nearer, fool," said I contemptuously, and at the epithet, so
greatly did my audacity amaze him, he mildly did my bidding.

"I know not what doubts are battling in your thick head, sir captain,"
I pursued. "But this I know--that if you persist in hindering me, or
commit the egregious folly of offering me violence, you will answer for
it, hereafter, to the Lord Cardinal of Valencia.

"I am going upon a secret mission"--and here I sank my voice to a
whisper for his ears alone--"in the service of the house that hires you,
as for yourself you might easily have inferred. Behold." And I revealed
my ring. "Detain me longer at your peril."

He must have had some notion of the fact that I was journeying in Cesare
Borgia's service, and this coupled with the sight of that talisman
effected in his manner a swift and wholesome change. Had I, arrayed in
the panoply of Mother Church, defied the devil, my victory could not
have been more complete.

He looked about him like a man whose wits have been scattered suddenly
to the four winds of Heaven.

"But this litter," he mumbled, riveting his dazed eyes upon me, "and
these four knaves--?"

"Tell me," I questioned, with sudden earnestness, "are you in quest of
just such a party?"

"Aye that I am," he answered sharply, intelligence returning to his
glance, inquiry burning in it.

"And would the men, peradventure, be wearing the livery of the House of
Santafior?"

His quick assent came almost choked in a company of oaths.

"Why then, if that be your quarry, you are but wasting time. Such a
party passed us at the gallop about an hour ago. It would be an hour,
would it not, Giacopo?"

"I should say an hour," answered the lacquey dully.

"In what direction?" came Ramiro's frenzied question. He doubted me no
longer.

"In the direction of Fabriano I should say," I answered. "Although it
may well be that they were making f