an wait until you have changed your garments? Your life, I
take it, is of more account than the loss of a few moments."

"But my orders from Messer degli Arcipreti were that I must not lose an
instant."

"Oh, si, si!" cried Gonzaga, with a show of good-tempered impatience.
"Give me the letters, then, and I will take them to the Count while you
are stripping those wet clothes."

Zaccaria eyed him a moment in doubt. But he looked so harmless in his
finery, and the expression of his comely face was so winning and honest,
that the man's hesitancy faded as soon as it sprang up. Removing his
cap, he drew from within the crown the letter, which he had placed there
to keep dry. This package he now handed to Gonzaga, who, with a final
word of instruction to the sentry touching the finding of raiment for
the messenger, stepped out to go his errand. But outside the door he
paused, and called the sentry to him again.

"Here is a ducat for you," he whispered. "Do my bidding and you shall
have more. Detain him in the tower till I return, and on no account let
him be seen or heard by anyone."

"Yes, Excellency," the man replied. "But what if the captain comes and
finds me absent from my post?"

"I will provide for that. I will tell Messer Fortemani that I have
employed you on a special matter, and ask him to replace you. You are
dispensed sentry duty for to-night."

The man bowed, and quietly withdrew to attend to his prisoner, for in
that light he now regarded Zaccaria.

Gonzaga sought Fortemani in the guard-room below, and did as he had
promised the sentry.

"But," snapped Ercole, reddening, "by whose authority have you done
this? By what right do you send sentinels on missions of your own?
Christo Santo! Is the castle to be invaded while you send my watchmen to
fetch your comfit-box or a book of verses?"

"You will remember----" began Romeo, with an air of overwhelming
dignity.

"Devil take you and him that sent you!" broke in the bully. "The Messer
Provost shall hear of this."

"On no account," cried Gonzaga, now passing from anger to alarm, and
snatching the skirts of Fortemani's cloak as the captain was in the act
of going out to execute his threat. "Ser Ercole be reasonable, I beg
of you. Are we to alarm the castle and disturb Monna Valentina over a
trumpery affair such as this? Man, they will laugh at you."

"Eh?" There was nothing Ercole relished less than to be laughed at. He
pondered a moment, and it occurr