e rid of this."

"You will keep silent?" cried Giovanni, plainly vexed.

"I am not a fool," said Pico gently.

Giovanni understood. "And these your men?"

"Ate very faithful friends who will aid you now to efface all traces."

And upon that he moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence was
intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to find her
in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer horror at what she
had seen.

Followed by the three servants bearing the body, Giovanni went down
across the garden very gently. Approaching the gate, he bade them wait,
saying that he went to see that the coast was clear. Then, going forward
alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the waiting groom:

"Hither to me!"

Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as promptly
Giovanni sank his dagger in the fellow's breast. He deplored the
necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your cinquecentist
never shrank from anything that necessity imposed upon him. To let the
lackey live would be to have the bargelli in the house by morning.

The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still.

Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the
others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow.

When the grooms emerged from Pico's garden, the Lord of Pesaro was
astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his death.

"Put him across the crupper," he bade them.

And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the legs on
the other. And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had reversed the order
in which Gandia and he had ridden that same horse an hour ago.

At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom
on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt off,
another going ahead to scout. At the alley's mouth Giovanni drew rein,
and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to right and left to
make sure that there was no one about.

He saw no one. Yet one there was who saw them Giorgio, the timber
merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who,
three days later, testified to what he saw. You know his testimony. It
has been repeated often--how he saw the man emerge from the alley and
look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied now by the
horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw them take the
body from the crupper of the horse, and, wit