the morrow be voyaging homeward) was impatiently tugging at her
moorings. Fool that he was, he had made his bed and must lie on it. It
was a very uncomfortable bed at the present moment, for he could
neither stretch himself at full length nor stand erect, but sat with his
hands clasping his knees and his head bowed upon them. How long must he
retain this cramped position? Malespini's words came to him with
sinister emphasis. Would he be left here until starvation released him
from agony and his bones bleached in the sun? The Angelus chimed from
the belfries, the only structures which reached his plane, and gave him
a sense of human companionship, but the tones of the bells sounded thin
in the empty air, and his loneliness increased with their cessation. The
sun climbed the heavens and beat unmercifully upon his unprotected head,
but just as his thirst became intolerable and he groaned in agony, a
low, chuckling laugh replied from a window in the tower near his cage,
and turning his head he saw the malicious face of the dwarf Leonora
Dosi. Repugnant as she was to him he greeted her appearance now, for it
flashed through his mind that she might have brought him some message
from Marie de' Medici.

"It is good of you, Signorina," he said, "to think of me in my trouble;
or is it perchance your mistress who has sent you?"

He could not have asked a question which would have angered her more.
"My mistress may not have clean forgotten her singing-bird," she
replied, "but she has forgotten to order that his cage should be
supplied with water and seed cups, and I cajoled Radicofani till he let
me supply this neglect."

As she spoke she held aloft a flask of water whose crystal clearness
seemed to Brandilancia's blood-shot eyes the most desirable thing in all
the world.

"Ah! Signorina how can I ever thank you? and how can you get it to me?"

"Oh! I have thought of that. See I have brought a pole long enough to
reach your cage, and the bottle is so slender that it will pass between
the bars."

She attached the flask to one end of the pole with tantalising
deliberation, pausing after it was fastened to pour and drink a glass of
the water with expressive gusto. The gurgle of the liquid was more than
the tortured man could bear. "Dear Signorina for the love of Heaven be
quick. I die of thirst."

"Oh! no, Signor, one does not die so soon, or with so little suffering.
Men in your predicament have been known to live three days