that the stranger could be
in nowise the associate or accomplice of the Viscount, for the latter
had communicated with no one, had not even gone a dozen steps from the
Solara cabin during his entire period of convalescence. The idea of
collusion was untenable. Esperance resolved to watch and wait. There was
no telling what a few hours might bring forth; but at the worst he would
fight; if he fell he would not regret it, and, if Giovanni perished at
his hands, his death would be due to his own headlong impulses and his
blood, under the circumstances, could not be a disgraceful, dishonorable
stain.

Towards nightfall old Pasquale Solara began to display unwonted
activity, showing, at the same time, signs of considerable agitation. He
was yet uncommunicative and morose, spoke only at rare intervals; often
he did not reply at all to the questions addressed to him, and when he
did answer it was only in gruff, snappish monosyllables. He went from
place to place uneasily, frequently leaving the cabin and gazing
peeringly and stealthily into the forest as if he expected some one or
was looking for some secret signal known only to himself. He glanced at
Lorenzo and Esperance suspiciously, seeking, as it were, to penetrate
their very thoughts. When he encountered Annunziata, he examined her
from head to foot with a strange mixture of satisfaction, anxiety and
tremulousness. At such times there was a greedy, wolfish expression in
his glittering eyes, and his hands worked nervously.

When twilight had given place to darkness, he suddenly left the hut and
did not return. His unusual conduct had occasioned somewhat of a
commotion in the little household, but quiet reigned after his departure
and his singular behavior was speedily forgotten by his children. Not
so, however, with Esperance. The young man, agitated as he was with the
turmoil of his own feelings, could not get old Pasquale and his behavior
out of his mind. It filled him with sinister forebodings and made him
look forward to the night with an indefinable dread, not unmingled with
absolute fear. It seemed to him that the old shepherd was meditating
some dark and desperate deed that would be put into execution with
disastrous results ere dawn.

The evening, nevertheless, passed without incident, and in due course
sleep brooded over the Solara cabin, wrapping all its inmates in silence
and repose. All its inmates? All save the son of Monte-Cristo, who
tossed restlessly u