over the Big Hornets' Nest obscured even the glare of
the summer sun. No winsome illusion of nature's could brighten this
little world that had at last turned quite sinister. In the air that
Madonna Gemma breathed was always a chill of horror. At night the
thick walls seemed to sweat with it, and the silence was like a great
hand pressed across a mouth struggling to give vent to a scream.

At dinner in the hall she ate nothing, but drank her wine as though
burning with a fever. Sometimes, when the stillness had become
portentous, Lapo rolled up his sleeves, inspected his scarred,
swarthy arms, and mumbled, with the grin of a man stretched on the
rack:

"Ah, Father and Son! if only one had a skin as soft, white, and
delicate as a girl's!"

At this Madonna Gemma left the table.

Once more her brow became bleaker than a winter mountain; her eyes
were haggard from nightmares; she trembled at every sound. Pacing
her bower, interminably she asked herself one question. And at last,
when Lapo would have passed her on the stairs, she hurled into his
face:

"What did you do to Raffaele Muti?"

He started, so little did he expect to hear her voice. His battered
countenance turned redder, as he noted that for the sake of the
other she was like an overstretched bow, almost breaking. Then a
pang stabbed him treacherously. Fearing that she might discern his
misery, he turned back, leaving her limp against the wall.

He took to walking the runway of the ramparts, gnawing his fingers
and muttering to himself, shaking his tousled hair. With a sigh, as
if some thoughts were too heavy a burden for that iron frame, he sat
down on an archer's ledge, to stare toward the hut of the renegade
Arabian. Often at night he sat thus, hour after hour, a coarse
creature made romantic by a flood of moonlight. And as he bowed his
head the sentinel heard him fetch a groan such as one utters whose
life escapes through a sword-wound.

One-eyed Baldo also groaned at these goings-on, and swallowed many
angry speeches. But Foresto the horse-boy began to hum at his work.

This Foresto had attached himself to Lapo's force in the Ferrarese
campaign. His habits were solitary. Often when his work was done he
wandered into the woods to return with a capful of berries or a
squirrel that he had snared. Because he was silent, deft, and
daintier than a horse-boy ought to be, Lapo finally bade him serve
Madonna Gemma.

Watching his dark, blank face as he s