tion was performed. His youth and
vigorous constitution bore him safely through the trying ordeal, but
could not save him from the terrible irritative fever that set in and
held him in its fiery grasp for many days there after.

He was well tended by the holy brotherhood, who sent to the
vine-dresser's cottage for information concerning him, that they might
find out who and where were his friends, and write and apprise them of
his condition.

But the vine-dresser could tell the monks no more than this--that the
young man and young woman had come as strangers to the village, were
married by the good Father Pietro in the church of San Vito, and had
come to lodge in his cottage. The young pair had lived as merrily as two
birds in a bush until the sudden arrival of an illustrious and furious
signore, who tore the bride from the arms of her husband, and carried her
off to the convent of Santa Madelena. That was all the vine-dresser knew.

The surgeon supplemented the vine-dresser's story with an account of the
duel between the enraged baron and the young captain.

The good Father Pietro was next interviewed, and gave the names of the
imprudent young pair whom he had tied together, as Waldemar Peter de
Volaski and Valerie Aimee de la Motte; but besides this, who they
were, or whence they came, he could not tell.

Inquiries were made in the village of San Vito, which only resulted in
the information that the "illustrious" strangers had departed with their
daughter no one knew whither.

Meanwhile the unfortunate victim of the duel tossed and tumbled, fumed
and raved in fever and delirium, that raged like fire for nine days, and
then left him utterly prostrated in mind and body. Many more days passed
before he was able to answer questions, and weeks crept by before he
could give any coherent account of himself.

His first sensible inquiry related to his bride.

"Where is she? What have they done with her?" he demanded to know.

"The illustrious signore has taken the signorita away with him, no one
knows whither," answered the monk who was minding him.

"I know--so he has taken her away?--I know where he has taken her,--to
Paris," faltered the victim, and immediately fainted dead away, exhausted
by the effort of speaking these words.

His next question, asked after the interval of a week, related to the
length of time he had been ill.

"How long have I lain stretched upon this bed?" he asked.

"The Signore Captain