this by drawing them up. I tried once, and closed my eyes,
swooning with pain.

Upon the swoon broke a shattering blow, across my legs and below the
knees; a blow that lifted my body to clutch with both hands upon
night and fall back again upon black unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURSED ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.

"Yet sometimes famous Princes like thyself,
Drawn by report, adventurous by desire,
Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale,
That without covering, save yon field of stars,
They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars;
And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist
For going on Death's net, whom none resist."
_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

His honour forbidding him to kill me, the Prince Camillo had given
orders to break my legs: and since to abandon me in this plight went
against the conscience of his followers (and even, it is possible,
against his own), he had left Marc'antonio behind to nurse me--thus
gratifying a second spite. The Prince was an ingenious young man.

So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while
Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture.
Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a
taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow
that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched
off, leaving us two alone.

"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this
was my first intelligible question.

Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be
hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the
file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"

"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce
satisfaction in the words. "And she--and you--tried to use it upon
my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends!
As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday,
before her brother came."

"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than
foolishly. I do not understand you at all--no, by the Mother of God,
I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it
would have been better for you, and in the end for her."

"And for you also, Marc'antonio."

He was silent.

"And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question.

"Your escap