e would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had
provided for that," he answered simply.

"Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition.
"I was thinking only that you must feel it a punishment to be left
alone with me. I had forgot--"

"It is hard," he interrupted, "to bear everything in mind when one is
young." His tone was quiet, decisive, as of one stating a fact of
common knowledge; but the reproof cut me like a knife.

"The Princess has gone too?" I asked.

"She has gone. They are all gone. That is why it would have been
better for her too that you had escaped."

I pondered this for a minute. "You mean," said I, "that--always
supposing the Prince had not killed you in his rage--you would now be
at her side?"

He nodded. "Still, she has Stephanu. Stephanu will do his best," I
suggested.

"Against what, eh?" He put his poser to me, turning with angry eyes,
but ended on a short laugh of contempt. "Do not try make-believe
with me, O Englishman."

"There is one thing I know," said I, doggedly, "that the Princess is
in trouble or danger. And a second thing I know, that you and
Stephanu are her champions. But a third thing, which I do not know,
is why you and Stephanu hate one another."

"And yet that should have been the easiest guess of the three," said
he, rising abruptly and taking first a dozen paces toward the hut,
then a dozen back to the shadow of the chestnut tree against the bole
of which my head rested as he had laid me, having borne me thither
from the sty.

"_Campioni?_ That is a good word, and I thank you for it,
Englishman. Yet you wonder why I hate Stephanu? Listen. Were you
ever in Florence, in the Boboli gardens?"

"Never. But why?"

"Mbe! I have travelled, for my part." Marc'antonio now and always
mentioned his travels with an innocent boastfulness. "Well, in the
gardens there you will find a fountain, and on either side of it a
statue--the statues of two old kings. They sit there, those two,
carved in stone, face to face across the fountain; and with faces so
full of hate that I declare it gives you a shiver down the spine--all
the worse, if you will understand, because their eyes have no sight
in them. Now the story goes that these two kings in life were
friends of a princess of Tuscany far younger than themselves, and
championed her, and established her house while she was weak and her
enemies were strong; and that afterwards in gratitude she ca