han to take you with me. You would be hinting this to
this man, and that to the other, and I should have a noose about my neck
through that slack tongue of yours before I had been away a fortnight.
You shall go, but I warn you of the risk beforehand."

"There's no risk at all," he said, pettishly. "I've told you so
already."

"Pardon me," I answered. "I am going to show you the risk. If this
enterprise should fail by any folly of yours, if I am sacrificed by any
indiscretion or stupidity on your part, I will shoot you. I am going
out with my life in my hand, and I mean to take care of it. You can be
useful to me, and I will use you. But please understand the conditions,
for so truly as you and I stand here, I mean to keep them."

I knew enough of Brunow to be sure that he would treat this plain
statement as if it were a jest, and I knew that he read me well enough
to be sure that it was nothing of the sort. The threat made him safe. In
an hour he was talking as if he had forgotten all about it, but I knew
better.

CHAPTER III

We travelled at apparent random for nearly three weeks, and when at last
we reached Itzia, no man could possibly have guessed that we had set
out with that little place as our serious destination. It was Brunow who
suggested this lingering method of approach, and it was he also who gave
a semblance of nature to our proceedings by pausing here and there to
set up his camp-stool and easel in some picturesque defile, or in the
streets of some quaint village. Twice this innocent blind brought us
into collision with the military police, who were in a condition of
perpetual disquiet, and suspected everybody. Our papers, however, were
in perfect order, and Brunow in particular was so well provided with
credentials that we were easily set going again, and so by a circuitous
road we approached Itzia, and finally pounced down upon it from the
hills.

I found it a village of not more than four or five hundred inhabitants,
set in the midst of a green plateau surrounded by gaunt hills, and
watered by a fair, broad stream. The fortress in which the Conte di
Rossano was confined stood on the lowest slope of the nearest hill, and
frowned down upon the village with a threatening aspect, dwarfed as it
was almost into nothing by the surrounding majesties of nature. It was
a building of modern date--not more than fifty years of age I should
be inclined to say--and it boasted nothing in the way of archite