?" he asked.

"O, he will live," answered the friar with an almost fierce satisfaction
in his positive assurance. "He will live and in a week we can move him
hence. Meanwhile he must be nourished." He rose. "My good Leocadia, have
you the broth? Come, then, let us build up this strength of his. There
is haste, good soul; great haste!" She bustled at his bidding, and soon
outside the door there was a crackling of twigs to announce the lighting
of a fire. And then Gervasio made known to me the stranger.

"This is Galeotto," he said. "He was your father's friend, and would be
yours."

"Sir," said I, "I could not desire otherwise with any who was my
father's friend. You are not, perchance, the Gran Galeotto?" I inquired,
remembering the sable device on argent of which the priest had told me.

"I am that same," he answered, and I looked with interest upon one whose
name had been ringing through Italy these last few years. And then, I
suddenly realized why his face was familiar to me. This was the man who
in a monkish robe had stared so insistently at me that day at Mondolfo
five years ago.

He was a sort of outlaw, a remnant of the days of chivalry and
free-lances, whose sword was at the disposal of any purchaser. He rode
at the head of a last fragment of the famous company that Giovanni de'
Medici had raised and captained until his death. The sable band which
they adopted in mourning for that warrior, earned for their founder the
posthumous title of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.

He was called Il Gran Galeotto (as another was called Il Gran Diavolo)
in play upon the name he bore and the life he followed. He had been in
bad odour with the Pope for his sometime association with my father, and
he was not well-viewed in the Pontifical domains until, as I was soon
to learn, he had patched up a sort of peace with Pier Luigi Farnese,
who thought that the day might come when he should need the support of
Galeotto's free-lances.

"I was," he said, "your father's closest friend. I took this at Perugia,
where he fell," he added, and pointed to his terrific scar. Then he
laughed. "I wear it gladly in memory of him."

He turned to Gervasio, smiling. "I hope that Giovanni d'Anguissola's son
will hold me in some affection for his father's sake, when he shall come
to know me better."

"Sir," I said, "from my heart I thank you for that pious, kindly
wish; and I would that I might fully correspond to it. But Agostino
d'Anguissola, wh