does so."

Giacopo laughed derisively till his fat body shook with the scornful
mirth of him.

"By my faith, I'm done with the business," he cried, and the other three
expressed a very hearty agreement with that attitude.

"How done with it?" I asked.

"I shall make my way back across the hills and so retrace my steps to
Rome. I'll risk my head no more for any lady or any Fool."

"If you should ever chance to risk it for yourself," said I, with
unmeasured scorn, "you'll risk it for the greatest fool and the
cowardliest rogue that ever shamed the name of man. And your mistress?
Is she to wait at Cagli until doomsday? If anywhere within the bulk of
that elephant's body there lurks the heart of a rabbit, you'll get you
to horse and ride to the help of that poor lady."

They resented my tone, and showed their resentment plainly. Messer
Giacopo went the length of raising his hand to me. But I am a man of
amazing strength--amazing inasmuch as being slender of shape I do not
have the air of it. Leaping suddenly from the litter, I caught that
miserable vassal by the breast of his doublet, shook him once or twice,
then tossed him headlong into a drift of snow by the roadside.

At that they bared their knives and made shift to attack me. But I flung
myself on to one of the mules of the litter, and showing them the stout
Pistoja dagger that I carried, I presented with it a bold and truculent
front, no whit intimidated by their numbers. Four to one though they
were, they thought better of it. A moment they stood off, consulting
among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some mocking counsel as
to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules, they made off, no
doubt, to find their way back to Rome. Giacopo, as I was afterwards to
discover, was Madonna Paola's purse-bearer, so that they would not lack
for means.

Awhile I stayed there, cursing them for the white-livered cravens that
they were, and thinking of that poor child who had ridden on to Cagli,
and who would await them in vain. There, on the mule, I sat in the
noontide sunlight, and pondered this, so absorbed in her affairs as to
have grown forgetful of my own. At last I resolved to ride on to Cagli
alone, and inform her that her men were fled.

There was no time to lose, for as that rogue Giacopo had said, Ramiro
del' Orca might discover at any moment how he had been tricked, and
return hot-foot to find me and extort the truth from me by such means as
I