re appeared among the defenders. It was
Manto.

"Fools and cowards!" she exclaimed, "must ye learn your duty from a woman?"

And, seizing a catapult, she discharged a stone which laid the masked
warrior stunned and senseless on the ground. The next instant Eustachio and
Leonardo fell dead, pierced by showers of arrows. The Mantuans sallied
forth. The dismayed Imperialists fled to their camp. The bodies of the
fallen magistrates and of the unconscious chieftain in the mask were
brought into the city. Manto herself undid the fallen man's visor, and
uttered a fearful shriek as she recognised Benedetto.

"What shall be done with him, mistress?" they asked.

Manto long stood silent, torn by conflicting emotions. At length she said,
in a strange, unnatural voice:

"Put him into the Square Tower."

"And now, mistress, what further? How to choose the new consuls?"

"Ask me no more," she said. "I shall never prophesy again. Virtue has gone
away from me."

The leaders departed, to intrigue for the vacant posts, and devise
tortures for Benedetto. Manto sat on the rampart, still and silent as its
stones. Anon she rose, and roved about as if distraught, reciting verses
from Virgil.

Night had fallen. Benedetto lay wakeful in his cell. A female figure stood
before him bearing a lamp. It was Manto.

"Benedetto," she said, "I am a wretch, faithless to my country and to my
master. I did but even now open his sacred volume at hazard, and on what
did my eye first fall?

Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.

But I can no other. I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to
the like of me again! Come with me, I will release thee."

She unlocked his chains; she guided him through the secret passage under
the moat; they stood at the exit, in the open air.

"Fly," she said, "and never again draw sword against thy mother. I will
return to my house, and do that to myself which it behoved me to have done
ere I released thee."

"Manto," exclaimed Benedetto "a truce to this folly! Forsake thy dead Duke,
and that cheat of Liberty more crazy and fantastic still. Wed a living Duke
in me!"

"Never!" exclaimed Manto. "I love thee more than any man living on earth,
and I would not espouse thee if the earth held no other."

"Thou canst not help thyself," he rejoined; "thou hast revealed to me the
secret of this passage. I hasten to the camp. I return in an hour with an
army, and wilt thou, wilt thou not, to-m