e was thinking profoundly; every one could see it.
Best of the company before him Angioletto, the little Tuscan, read his
thought. His own was, "Unless I fear Justice I need not fear Borso.
Dante saw the death of his lady to be just. Courage then!"

"Mistress Castaneve," said Duke Borso, "you declare yourself innocent?"

"Excellency, I do, I do! Ah, Mother of God!" The panic was creeping up
Olimpia's legs, to loosen the joints of her knees.

The Judge turned half. "Mistress Bellaroba, you also declare yourself
innocent?"

"Yes, my lord," she said.

"Diavolo!" muttered Angioletto, "he is not 'my lord'; he is
'Magnificence.' I must scold her for this afterwards."

"The position of affairs is this," said the Duke, aloud. "One of these
prisoners is guilty of the deed, and the guilty one is the liar. Now, I
will not put an innocent person to death if I can avoid it; and I will
not put these women to the question, because I should wring a confession
of guilt from each, and be no more certain than I was before. I may
have my own opinion, and may have proved it on various grounds. That
again, I do not care to obtrude. I do not see that I can better the
precedent set me by a very wise man and patriarch, King Solomon of Zion.
Let the women judge each other. My judgment is that the innocent of
these two shall hang the guilty."

The bystanders were silent, till one man shivered. The shiver swept
lightly through the company like a wind in the reeds, and ran wider and
wider till it stirred the farthest edge of the field. All eyes were upon
the prisoners. Borso's blinked from below his shaggy brows, young
Teofilo Calcagnini's were misty, Angioletto's hard and bright. Bellaroba
had been motionless throughout, except when her lips moved to speak; she
was motionless now. But Olimpia was panting. The unearthly quiet was
only broken by that short sound for ten minutes.

"Bellaroba," then said the Duke, "what say you? You declare that you are
innocent. Will you hang the guilty and go free?"

For the first time she looked up, but not at her judge. It was at
Angioletto she looked, Angioletto at her.

"No, my lord, I cannot," said Bellaroba in the hush. The wind shivered
the reeds again, then fainted down.

"Castaneve," said the dry voice, "what say you? You declare that you are
innocent. Will you hang the guilty and go free?"

The drowning Olimpia threw up her hands to clutch at this plank in the
sea-swirl. Free! O God! The word