eper in my room.
He was promised, moreover, the job of hanging me as soon as my
comrades returned.

In this pleasant posture they left me, whether under surveillance or
not I could not tell, being unable to turn my head, and scarce able
even to move it an inch either way.

So I lay and stared up at the sky, until the blazing sun outstared
me. I will dwell on none of my torments but this, which toward
midday became intolerable. Certainly I had either died or gone mad
under it, but that my hands were free to shield me; and these I
turned in the blistering glare as a cook turns a steak on the
gridiron. Now and again I dabbled them in the pannikin beside me,
very carefully, ekeing out the short supply of water.

I had neither resisted nor protested. I hugged this thought and
meant, if die I must, to die hugging it. I had challenged the girl,
promising her to be patient. To be sure protest or resistance would
have been idle. But I had kept my word. I don't doubt that from
time to time a moan escaped me. . . . I could not believe that
Marc'antonio was near me, watching. I heard no sound at all, no
distant voice or bugle-call from the camp on the mountain. The woods
were silent . . . silent as Nat, yonder, in his grave. Surely none
but a fiend could sit and watch me without a word. . . .

Toward evening I broke off a crust of bread and ate it. The water I
husbanded. I might need it worse by-and-by, if Marc'antonio delayed
to come.

But what if no one should come?

I had been dozing--or maybe was wandering in slight delirium--when
this question wrote itself across my dreams in letters of fire, so
bright that it cleared and lit up my brain in a flash, chasing away
all other terrors. . . .

Mercifully, it was soon answered. Far up the glade a horn sounded--
my swine-horn, blown no doubt by Marc'antonio. The hogs were coming.
. . . Well, I must use my hands to keep them at their distance.

I listened with all my ears. Yes, I caught the sound of their
grunting; it came nearer and nearer, and--was that a footstep, close
at hand, behind the palisade?

Something dropped at my side--dropped in the mire with a soft thud.
I stretched out my hand, felt for it, clutched it.

It was a file.

My heart gave a leap. I had found a friend, then!--but in whom?
Was it Marc'antonio? No: for I heard his voice now, fifty yards
away, marshalling and cursing the hogs. His footstep was near the
gate. As he opened it