ve of war, and they will find
work for these hands of mine. I want not for friends among them."

Fanfulla sighed.

"And so we lose you. The stoutest arm in Babbiano leaves us in the hour
of need, driven out by that loutish Duke. By my soul, Ser Francesco, I
would I might go with you. Here is nothing to be done."

Francesco paused in the act of drawing on a boot, and raised his eyes to
stare a moment at his friend.

"But if you wish it, Fanfulla, I shall rejoice to have your company."

And now the idea of it entered Fanfulla's mind in earnest, for his
expression had been more or less an idle one. But since Francesco
invited him, why not indeed?

And thus it came to pass that at the third hour of that warm May night
a party of four men on horseback and two sumpter mules passed out of
Babbiano and took the road that leads to Vinamare, and thence into the
territory of Urbino. These riders were the Count of Aquila and Fanfulla
degli Arcipreti, followed by Lanciotto leading a mule that bore the arms
of those knights-errant, and Zaccaria leading another with their general
baggage.

All night they rode beneath the stars, and on until some three hours
after sunrise, when they made halt in a hollow of the hills not far from
Fabriano. They tethered their horses in a grove of peaceful laurel and
sheltering mulberry, at the foot of a slope that was set with olive
trees, grey, gnarled and bent as aged cripples, and beside the river
Esino at a spot where it was so narrow that an agile man might leap its
width. Here, then, they spread their cloaks, and Zaccaria unpacked
his victuals, and set before them a simple meal of bread and wine and
roasted fowl, which to their hunger made more appeal than a banquet at
another season. And when they had eaten they laid them down beside the
stream, and there beguiled in pleasant talk the time until they fell
asleep. They rested them through the heat of the day, and waking some
three hours after noon, the Count rose up and went some dozen paces down
the stream to a spot where it fell into a tiny lake--a pool deep and
blue as the cloudless heavens which it mirrored. Here he stripped off
his garments and plunged headlong in, to emerge again, some moments
later, refreshed and reinvigorated in body and in soul.

As Fanfulla awoke he beheld an apparition coming towards him, a figure
lithe and stalwart as a sylvian god, the water shining on the ivory
whiteness of his skin and glistening in his sa