h? Is this
not a good bargain I offer you?"

"Be it good or bad, Princess," my father answered, "to make a bargain
takes two."

"That is true," said I, stepping forward with a laugh, and thrusting
myself between the Corsicans, who had begun to press around with
decided menace in their looks. "And therefore the Princess will
accept me as the other party to the bargain, and as her hostage."

Again at the sound of my laugh she shrunk a little; but presently
frowned.

"Have you considered, cavalier," she asked coldly, "that Giuseppe is
not certain of recovery?"

"Still less certain is my friend," answered I, and with a shrug of
the shoulders walked away to Nat's sick-couch. There, twenty minutes
later, my father took leave of me, after giving some last
instructions for the care of the invalid. In one hand he carried his
musket, in the other his camp-stool.

"Say the word even now, lad," he offered, "and we will abide till he
recovers."

But I shook my head.

Billy Priske carried an enormous wine-skin slung across his
shoulders; Mr. Fett a sack of provender. Mr. Badcock had begged or
borrowed or purchased an enormous gridiron.

"But what is that for? I asked him, as we shook hands.

"For cooking the wild goose," he answered solemnly, "which in these
parts, as I am given to understand, is an animal they call the
_mufflone_. He partakes in some degree of the nature of a sheep.
He will find me his match, sir."

One by one, a little before the sun sank, they bade me farewell and
passed--free men--down the path that dipped into the pine forest.
On the edge of the dip each man turned and waved a hand to me.
The princess, with Marc'antonio beside her, stood and watched them as
they passed out of sight.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FOREST HUT.

"Then hooly, hooly rase she up,
And hooly she came nigh him,
And when she drew the curtain by--
'Young man, I think you're dyin'.'"
_Barbara Allan's Cruelty_.

Evening fell, of a sudden filling the great hollow with purple
shadows. As the stars came out the Corsicans on the slope to my left
lit a fire of brushwood and busied themselves around it, cooking
their supper. They were no ordinary bandits, then; or at least had
no fear to betray their whereabouts, since on the landward side on so
clear a night the glow would be visible for many miles.

I watched them at their preparations. Their dark figures moved
bet