g less feet--he strapped on his revolvers, and
took the window ledge at a bound.

He jumped astride his horse without stopping for a saddle, and beat and
kicked the poor beast along the road as though the very fiends were
after him. The horse rocked on his legs and breathed hard, but Porter
had no consideration for that. The pale dawn revealed an empty road,
along which he sped at breakneck pace, while beads of perspiration
gathered on his forehead in his impatience at the seeming slowness of
his progress. At last the road cut through a tangled bit of forest with
a sharp bend at the end. Just as he reached the turn two shots rang out
in quick succession. With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the
corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush. Like a wild
man Porter shouted, "I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming!"--impelling his
already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the
thicket.

Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal's
instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had
caught a moving in the bushes. To get his revolver in hand and drop
forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and
the bullet whistled over his head. But the immediate effect of the
attack had been to enrage him out of all prudence. Firing point-blank at
the smudge of smoke, he jumped from his horse and rushed in pursuit of
his assailant.

A second shot Derby thought had grazed his coat; he emptied two barrels
of his revolver in the direction from which it came. Another bullet
whistled close to his ear, then two shots went entirely wide of him, and
the next moment he reached a man lying prone--with blood gushing from
his head. Derby knocked the rifle out of his hands, but there was no
further danger of its being fired, for the man had fainted.

In a second Porter dashed up, in a frenzy of terror. When he found Derby
safe, his fright turned to rage, and he was impatient to put the
prisoner into the hands of the _carabinieri_. "Our friend Basso will
make short work of him, I'm thinking!" he said grimly.

But Derby had no intention of making such a disposition of his prisoner.
"Not at all," he said deliberately; "we will hand him over to Padre
Filippo. Priests are better for such creatures than police. Come, help
me tie up his head--my shirt will do!" Suiting the action to his words,
he pulled off his coat. His shirt was scarlet!

"Great Heav