The wretched man had never been allowed a minute's exercise outside his cell, and Brunow's pretence of having seen him was, of course, an invention. That did not surprise me, but I hated Brunow for it. The man's shallow and worthless spirit could go hovering about a tragedy like this with his butterfly irresponsible lies. The thought made me angry.

"Hinge," I said, when the groom had told me all he had to say, "I am going to trust you with a secret. I think you are the man to keep it. I am going to ask you to help me in a difficult and dangerous bit of work. I think you are the man for the job. If we succeed, I am going to pension you handsomely for life."

"Thank you, sir," said Hinge.

"Walk quietly with me and listen. I am going to have a try to set that man free. You hear?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I am going to ask you to help me."

"Yes, sir."

"Will you do it?"

"If I can, sir."

"Very good. Now when can we talk this matter over and get it ship-shape, and see what is to be done?"

"My time's my own, sir," Hinge answered; "and being mine, sir, it's yours."

I turned into the deeper recesses of the wood, and Hinge followed me. I had resolved to trust him, and I have never been a believer in half-confidences. I told him the errand which had brought me there. I told him of the countess's early death, and I told him of my meeting with her daughter and of the promise I had made to her. I set before him the fact that, if the venture succeeded and he gave me his aid in it, he would find wealthy friends and protectors. I told him that I was not myself a rich man, but I showed him Miss Rossano's letter and the draft I had for a thousand pounds.

"Better send that money out of the country, sir," he said, quietly. "They're queer beggars, these Austrians, and they wouldn't be above collaring the lot if we got clear of the country with our man afore you'd got the coin out o' the bank."

"And now, how to set about the work, Hinge?"

"You give your orders, sir, and leave 'em to me."

"Tell me what you can. Now, how about the guards? Is the prisoner's cell watched on all sides?"

"There's a man on stable sentry at night-time. In the day-time nobody's on watch on my side."

I had provided myself with a flexible-jointed saw and a small bottle of oil, and they were packed in my knapsack now. I asked Hinge if he would pass these to the prisoner, and he declared that he could do it easily and without the slightest danger of discovery.

He caught eagerly at the idea, and assured me that two or three of the iron bars which guarded the window were quite rotten at the bottom, and could be sawn through in an hour. The day-time would be safest, and he would undertake to be near, to cover any sound which might be made, and give warning of any danger.

"Gettin' out o' the cell is as easy as pie, sir," said Hinge. "That's all right. But gettin him out o' fortress—that's another pair o' shoes altogether!"

I thought hard for perhaps ten minutes, and then I fancied I saw my way. Half a dozen questions cleared it. The general was away in Vienna. The time of his return was uncertain. There were half a dozen horses under Hinge's charge. It would surprise nobody if a message came from the general ordering Hinge to meet him at any hour with two led horses. If he knew when that hour would come he could have the prisoner ready in uniform, and they could ride out together. But to do this we should need a written order from the general, which would have to pass the officer on duty. That order once being passed and sent on to him, Hinge would be answerable for the rest.

This threw a dreadful difficulty in the way, but the groom was ready with a partial help. He had received a similar order which had been countermanded, and therefore never surrendered, as it would have been if he had passed the gates with it. He thought he knew its whereabouts, and he would look for it.

In effect, he found it, and found means to send it on to me. It was scrawled in pencil from a posting place on the road to Vienna, distant from Itzia four-and-twenty miles English, or thereabouts. I pored over this document in my own room, and made many heart-breaking attempts to imitate it. They were absolute failures, one and all. I had no faculty in that direction, and my own hand stared at me from the written page the more plainly and uncompromisingly for every effort I made to disguise it. Apart from the utter vileness of the imitation, I did not even clearly understand the words employed, and for aught I knew might be giving an order which, if put into execution, would be useless for my purpose.

I was compelled, unwillingly, to appeal to Brunow. He made light of the business, and in less than an hour he brought me an imitation which looked completely deceptive. He had been able, he told me, to trace the greater part of the order on the window-pane from the original I had given him to imitate; for the rest, to my surprise and gratitude, Brunow volunteered. He took advantage of our next meeting with Breschia to tell him that he was off on a three or four days' sketching expedition, leaving me behind. He commended me to the lieutenant's friendly hospitality with all his usual gayety of manner, and on the following morning he rode away. The arrangement made between us was that he should return at about ten o'clock on the following night with news of the general's approach. The general's horses should appear to have come to grief somehow, anyway (he guaranteed to find a plausible story), and Brunow was to pretend to have ridden on with a message ordering remounts. Then Hinge was to meet us at a given point, we being on foot, and we should all make for the frontier with speed.

So long as I live I shall never forget that day or the day that followed it. Hinge was advised of everything, and no doubt was doing all that needed to be done, but the suspense was scarcely bearable. To saunter about and look at those impenetrable walls, and to wonder what was going on behind them—to invent a thousand accidents, any one of which might wreck our plans for good and all, and to suffer in the contemplation of each of these inventions of my own as much as I could have suffered if it had been true, to read knowledge or suspicion in every innocent glance that fell upon me, to fear and suspect everybody and everything, and to keep a constant guard upon myself lest I should seem for an instant to be anxious and preoccupied with all this weight upon me—all this was an agony. I am not afraid to confess all this, for I have shown more than once that I am not deficient in courage of my own kind. But here I was a very coward, hateful and contemptible to myself.

The long day passed, and the long night, and then the real day of waiting came. The thing that weighed upon me most of all was that while I knew that every minute of rest and tranquillity I could snatch might be of moment to me, rest and tranquillity were absolutely impossible. For two whole nights I had not closed my eyes in sleep, and my brain seemed on fire. My nerves were going, too, under this intolerable strain, and I feared that if a crisis should arise I should lack coolness, and plunge into some avoidable disaster.

But the day wore itself out at last, and at ten o'clock at night I was wandering along the road by which Brunow must come, and listening with my soul in my ears for the first distant noise of hoof-beats. The sun had gone down in a bank of threatening cloud, and before the moon rose the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay in a hot stillness. The light of the moon was in the sky long before she rose above the mountains, and I could see that the wild work up there was growing wilder every minute. The wind was descending, too, from its lofty altitude, and I could hear it now roaring and now muttering in the gullies like a discontented giant.

In the course of that waiting I was often mistaken in the sound of distant hoofs. I was tricked at least a thousand times. Now it was the wind in the trees, now it was a gurgle in the river, now it was a murmur of life in the village, now it was the movement of a goat, a cow, or a horse upon the hill-side. But at last I caught the real sound, and knew it at once from all the noises which had till then deceived my fancy. The rider came along at a good round pace, and in a while I heard Brunow singing—a signal to me, no doubt. I called aloud "Hello! that you, Brunow?" and he answered with a whoop, expressive of high spirits. There was light enough to see me as he passed without drawing rein.

"I've a message from the governor to the officer in charge," he shouted. "Meet you at the inn by-and-by." There was no reason why we should have met at all, but the sense of precaution which touched me in his words allayed my anxiety a little. If by any very improbable chance anybody within hearing had understood him, the pretence justified itself. It could do no harm, and it was worth while to look natural. I betook myself at once to the point we had agreed upon for a meeting-place, and waited there in a renewed suspense, to which all the wretchedness of waiting I had hitherto known seemed as nothing. Suddenly the wind took me with a great gust, which almost carried me off my feet; a clap of thunder directly overhead seemed actually simultaneous with a piercing glare of lightning, and the rain came down in torrents. After the flash of lightning everything looked so impenetrably black and formless that I might as well have stared about me with my eyes shut, but a second flash showed me the gate of the fortress quivering in the light, and so distinct and near that I might have believed it no more than a stone's throw off, though I knew it to be a full mile away. In the sudden howling of the wind and the pelting of the rain I could hear nothing, but I kept my aching eyes fixed in the direction of the fortress, and over and over again I saw it leap out of darkness distinct and seeming near, but quivering as if it were built of air and shaken by a wind. The river, which flowed quite near me, began to take a roaring and ominous tone, and I grew anxious lest the ford we meant to attempt three or four miles below should have become impassable by the time we reached it. To have passed through the village would have betrayed the fact that we were going in an opposite direction to the one proposed, and might have excited suspicion and immediate inquiry and pursuit. While the river growled in a more and more menacing tone beside me, I began to wish that our arrangements could be recast. We might easily have dared the village, trusting to a half-hour's start and the chapter of accidents, while now the swollen ford might delay us for whole hours. The plans could not be changed, however, and there was nothing to be done but wait.

I was wet to the skin, and dazed by the noises of the storm, and weary with want of sleep, but every sense of fatigue vanished when I saw, by the glare of the lightning between me and the fortress, the recognizable figures of Brunow and Hinge on horseback. There was a third horseman with them, and a led horse, and for a fraction of a second I could see them all wildly prancing and leaping together, as if the beasts were maddened by the storm, as no doubt they were. It seemed an hour—I have known a day seem to go by more quickly many a time—when another flash showed them nearer, like a dark group of statuary, the horses quivering at the glare, and the heads of the riders bent against the wind and rain. I ran forward, not daring to call, and found them again in the lightning and lost them again in the dark half a dozen times. When at last we met I hailed them in a guarded tone, though it was a marvel to me that nobody was abroad at such an hour. Brunow replied boisterously, and I mounted in the dark, being half doubled as I did so by a kick from one of the plunging horses. I was fortunately too near for the full effect of the blow, but the hoof took me at the hipbone, and for the moment paralyzed me. I had much difficulty in getting astride my own beast, but I judged it best to say nothing of what had happened. All sense of power had gone from my right leg, and I could get no grip upon the saddle; but as the first sensation of numbness passed away I became persuaded that no great hurt was done, though I was in much pain and found a difficulty in keeping my seat.

The fear of the horses made this no easy task, for at every flash they reared and broke away, and the ground over which we rode was difficult, and would have been uncanny even in the daylight, so that we made slow progress. I had travelled the way repeatedly, for this was the route by which I had decided to travel if ever we were so lucky as to be allowed the experiment, and I never had more reason to be thankful for my own care and foresight.

These mountain storms are very often things of an hour, and so to-night it proved. By the time we had reached the ford the thunder and lightning were far away, the wind had sunk to an occasional sob and moan, the rain had cleared, and the moon rode high in a mass of skurrying cloud, which at times obscured her light and at times left her almost clear. But the river was terribly swollen, and it was evident that we should not be able to cross it for a considerable time.

So far not a word had been exchanged among us; but now that we were compelled to pause, I turned to our companion and looked at him, in such dim and changing light as there was, with a profound interest. He sat with a tired stoop in his saddle, and his head was bent upon his breast. He wore a peaked forage-cap and a large, rough, military cloak, which effectually disguised his figure.

"This is the Conte di Rossano?" I asked, leaning towards him.

"The same, sir," he answered, in a voice which I shall never forget. "I know from my faithful friend here, to whom I am indebted, but I cannot distinguish my friends as yet."

"This is the Honorable George Brunow, sir," I said, "and I am Captain Fyffe, at your service."

"Mr. Brunow," he responded, raising his forage-cap and bowing, "Captain Fyffe, my dear friend Corporal Hinge, I am without words to thank you. God knows I thank you in my heart!"

His voice failed him altogether then, and we all sat silent for a time.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Brunow. "Every minute is precious. Let us push along."

"You see the ford," I answered. "It may be passable in an hour, now that the storm has ceased; but at present—"

"Great God!" cried Brunow, with a savage impatience in his tone. "Why didn't we cross by the bridge? We could have made four times the distance by the road!"

"It was a mistake as things have turned out," I answered; "but we both thought it best when we talked things over the night before last."

"I never thought it best!" cried Brunow, fuming. "Hark! What the devil's that?"

There was no need to call our attention to the sound, for everybody heard it. There was no need to ask what it was, for it was impossible to mistake it. It was the sound of a cannon from the fortress. We stared at each other in the uncertain light.

"That's my fault, gentlemen," said Hinge, calmly. "They've found the stable sentry, and he's told 'em what has happened. He came up, sir," addressing himself to me, "just as the count was climbing out o' window. I knocked him on the 'ead of course, but they go the rounds at midnight, and they've come across him. Not a doubt about it."

Just as he finished speaking another gun sounded. We were between three and four miles away, but in the stillness of the night it seemed much nearer.

"And with a good road under us we might by this time have been within half a dozen miles of the frontier and safe."

"Safe?" said Hinge. "Quite so, sir. Safe to run into the ground at the toll-gate, sir. We're a lot better off where we are. I know Captain Fyffe's plan, sir, and it's the best whatever happens."

"Gentlemen," said the count, "let us dismount and rest our horses. We may have need of all that they can do for us."

A third gun banged from the distant battery. The river was raging before us. The clouds parted, and the full moon shone down with a light almost as clear as that of day.



CHAPTER VI

Pursuit was afoot, and what should be done to avoid it no man among us could guess. The foaming river ran in such volume that only madness would have attempted to ford it. Flight was cut off, and of course resistance was hopeless. The first place our pursuers would make for would be the bridge and the ford, since they were the only roads by which we could hope to reach the frontier. To take to the mountains would have been a purposeless folly. We could look for nothing but starvation and ultimate surrender there.

Happily for myself I was in my element again. We were forced into inaction once more, but it was a form of inaction which differed from that weary waiting which had so torn my nerves for the past eight-and-forty hours.

"I suppose, gentlemen," I said, "that, in any case, surrender is out of the question."

"I decline," cried Brunow, "to be the victim of your folly. If you had taken the road we should have been out of danger long ago. You choose to be caught like a rat in a trap, and I wash my hands of the whole business. I shall walk back to the inn."

He was already in the act of dismounting, when Hinge spoke.

"I wonder," he said, very dryly, "what them Austrians will think of the gentleman as brought the letter from the general?"

Brunow settled back in his saddle with a muffled exclamation, and spoke no more.

"Gentlemen," said the count, "if there is any possible way of escape without me I beseech you to take it."

Nobody answered. We sat for a long time in silence, and the river roared by. We strained our ears to listen, but not a sound reached us from the direction of the fortress. The night, late so stormy, was quite light and quiet. An intense silence reigned on the hills, and not a sound was heard but the noise of the tumbling, hurrying water near at hand.

When I had gone to look at the ford I had taken keen note of everything, for to have mistaken the spot might have been fatal to us, even if no pursuit had been started. I had noticed a rock which stood in mid-stream about a score of yards above the ford, rising some four feet above the level of the stream. When we had reached the water-side this rock had been invisible, and I could only guess how deeply it was covered. I noticed on a sudden that its forehead was bare once more, and I stared at it with my heart in my eyes until I was persuaded that it was growing above water every instant. The river ran in this spot in a perfect torrent, with an incline, I should say, of nearly three feet in a hundred. The stream bore off the rainfall of a whole net-work of hills, but at the pace at which it ran it could not take long before it would become passable at some risk. I said nothing as yet, but the conversation I had held with Lieutenant Breschia on the morning of our first meeting filled my mind with hope. The torrent seemed no less noisy, but measuring it by the projecting arms of the rock I could see that it was falling with a greater rapidity than I had dared to hope for. Within ten minutes it had dropped six iuches, but for the next ten minutes it hung stationary; and sometimes to my fancy seemed to gain. The thousand mountain rills and watercourses which helped to fill its bed, and which had themselves been latest to receive the rainfall, were charging down with new forces; and thinking of this I almost surrendered myself to despair. But I had not even yet given way, when the volume of water fell with an astonishing suddenness, and in little more than five minutes by my watch I could see a foot of the rock clear.

At ordinary times the ford was about a foot deep, and even then the rapid incline of the ground sent the shallow water swirling along at such a pace that it made a horse's foothold on the sliding pebbles precarious. Now it was four feet deep at least, and to cross at present was as impossible as it had been half an hour before. But as I watched it became more and more evident that the stream had received its last impetus, and the very element of speed which made the passage dangerous would diminish danger every moment.

The river seemed to grow noisier as it fell, chafing against obstacles which it had hitherto overflowed, and listen as one might we could make out nothing but its sullen roar. I told Hinge what I had noticed about the stream, and with a few words to my companions I rode until the noise of rushing water was no longer oppressive to the ear, and listened with all my might. I heard a thousand distant-seeming noises, which had in them no reality—shoutings and stealthy whispers, the thud and jingle of cantering troops of horse, lonely far-away footfalls, all manner of phantom sounds. Suddenly, in the midst of these illusions, my heart stood still for a mere half-beat at a noise which I knew in an instant to be real. A troop of cavalry at a gallop crossed the wooden bridge which spanned the river a couple of miles away. It sounded like a peal of thunder, but I knew what it meant well enough. The pursuers would be ahead of us, and every pass and pathway would be threaded, and guards would be everywhere.

Half an hour passed away without bringing anything further, and I rode back to the ford. All three of my companions were watching it with an absorbed and gloomy interest, and the rock by which I marked the fall of the stream stood a clear three feet above its surface.

"Let us try it now," I counselled, and was heading my horse at the water, when Hinge interposed.

"What's the depth, sir?" he called out to me.

"About two feet," I answered.

"Then I shall wade," said Hinge. "It 'll give the hoss more confidence, and I'll back leather against iron for a foothold."

I saw the force of his advice, and, dismounting, I stepped cautiously down into the stream. At first the rush of water carried me off my legs, and if it had not been that I had firm hold of the reins, and that my horse still stood on dry land, my share in the enterprise would in all probability have been then and there over. As it was I succeeded in regaining a foothold; but though the stream reached only to mid-thigh, it swept along with such violence that I had all my work cut out to stand against it. My horse, encouraged by hand and voice, came tremblingly after me, and the others followed. The stiffest bit of all the crossing lay at the point where the rush of water diverted by the rock caught us, and here we were at the deepest. This spot once passed we were under partial shelter, and from the centre of the stream the bank rose so rapidly that in half a dozen yards we were scarcely knee deep. We gained the farther bank and remounted, and then I called a council of war.

"I have already gone over the ground we shall have to travel," I began, "and we ought to be within three hours of safety. But the alarm has been given, and we shall find every pass guarded. What is to be done?"

"Sir," said the count, "I have no claim upon you or your companions. I thank you from my heart for your brave attempt in my behalf. But the fates are against us. For my own part, I counsel that we resign the struggle, and that you do your best to cross the frontier singly. I shall not be taken alive."

"There is no going back," I answered. "It is no safer now to abandon the enterprise than to go on with it. We are not likely to be intercepted until we reach the pass. My advice is that we ride as far as we dare, and then take to the hills on foot, avoiding the passes. We shall have a scramble for it, but life and liberty are worth that."

"Neither life nor liberty should have been in danger," said Brunow, sullenly. "It is your fault if they are, and if I lose either through your folly, on your head be it."

I reminded him that we had laid our plans together, and that they had had his full approval; but he was not in a mood to listen to reason, and I got no answer from him but a grunt of anger and disdain. The council of war had not served any very great purpose so far, and I turned away with a touch of desperation in my mind. I rode on, and the others followed. We skirted a wood which stretched from the river towards the nearest range of hills, and our horses' footfall on the turf, sodden as it was by the recent raiu, made hardly a sound. We kept well in shadow, and had advanced perhaps a couple of miles, when I made out the highway at a little distance looking like a broad ribbon in the moonlight. Suddenly a bugle-call shrilled on the air, and while we shrank closer into the shadow of the trees a tumult of hoof-beats filled the quiet night, and a whole squadron of cavalry came in sight, riding full tilt in the direction of the fortress. We could feel the reverberation caused by the galloping mass beneath us, and in a minute they were out of sight and almost out of hearing.

"That's a curious thing, sir," said Hinge, speaking almost at my ear.

"What is a curious thing?" I asked.

"That is," he replied, stretching out a hand in the direction of the vanished body of horsemen. "They've left nobody to guard the roads."

"How do you know that?" I asked, eagerly.

"I counted 'em as they went by," he answered. "There's every mounted man they've got in the place. They're all there down to the farriers. I'm a born fool, I am," he added, in an accent of the greatest delight. "They've never been after us at all, sir. It's a bit of midnight drill. That's what it is. I'll bet the road's as clear in front of us as ever it was."

After the fright we had had the news seemed too good to be true, but a brief consultation decided us to act on Hinge's hope, and to push boldly forward. We made for the highway, and following it at a road trot found ourselves breasting the first upward slope of the pass within a quarter of an hour. By-and-by the hills began to enfold us round, but the moon rode high and the road was clear and firm. For the first mile or so we kept an anxious outlook, but as the minutes went on our fears of interruption grew fainter, and our hopes rose to fever heat. We were all well mounted, our horses were fresh and full of vigor, and to all but one of us the ride itself was the merest bagatelle. But I noticed, riding side by side with the count, that he was reeling in the saddle like a drunken man, and at one moment he gave such a lurch towards me that if I had not been at hand to support him he would have fallen to the ground.

"I am weak," he said, as I checked his horse and mine. "It is no wonder. I am surprised that I have come as far."

He spoke with a gasping voice as if in pain, and with one hand clasped to his side.

"No hurry," I answered. "Let us go at an easier pace."

He soon recovered, and professed himself ready to push on again; but half a mile at the old pace brought him once more to a standstill. I gave him a little brandy from a flask with which I had been careful to supply myself, and once more he managed to ride on. From this time forward, however, he had to be watched with the utmost carefulness, and his feebleness so delayed us that we were a good three hours later in Teaching the end of the pass than we had expected. I had ascertained that the downs, which showed the frontier line, might be skirted by taking a lonely and difficult road to the right within a mile or so of our exit from Austrian territory. I had ascertained also that a sentry was on duty on this pathway night and day, his main duty being to prevent the passage of contraband goods. That we should have to deal with this fellow was an absolute certainty, and had been from the first, but it was easier to reckon with one man than with the dozen posted at the barrier.

We had come at so easy a pace that our horses showed no signs of distress or travel, and by this time the daylight was shining broadly. The dawn was two hours old, and there was on the face of things suspicion in our being on the road at such a time. Already the land of promise lay in sight, when the last obstacle to be encountered on our journey presented itself. The sentry sat as if dozing, with his rifle between his knees, but at the noise of our approach he sprang to his feet and hailed us sharply. We had passed a quick bend in the road, and had come upon him rather suddenly. We had already decided to ride up to him without reply, but he cocked his piece and called on us to halt. I waved my hand to him and we all rode on quickly. He seemed puzzled and irresolute for a moment, but he ended by clapping the butt of his rifle to his shoulder, and sang out "Halt!" once more.

"Good! good! my friend," I answered. "We are Englishmen, and travellers. There is no need to fire."

My foreign accent was proof enough that we were strangers, and he hesitated again. I was almost abreast of him by this time, and wishing him a good-day I was in some hope of being able to push by without further parley, but he set himself in the way with his rifle across his breast.

"What brings you travelling this way?" I made him out to ask. "You have no right to pass by here. Take the lower road," he added, with a gesture which helped me to his meaning.

"We have passports," I told him, producing my own paper and holding it towards him. "This is my friend, and this is my servant. The guide they gave us at Itzia has fallen ill."

"You cannot pass this way," he answered, gruffly, disregarding the passport. "You must go round by the lower road."

"My good fellow," Brunow broke in, airily, "you mustn't talk nonsense. We are going by, and there is an end of it. This gentlemen and I are personal friends of General Rodetzsky's. We have been on a visit to my friend Lieutenant Breschia at the fortress at Itzia, and we are now on our way to Pollia. That is the town below there I believe."

I more than half made him out at the time, and he confirmed my guesses later on. Suave and easy as he was, he made no impression on the sentry, who stood there immovable, bent on duty.

"We don't want to be troublesome," said Brunow, "and it's too absurd to talk of one man stopping four. Look at our papers if you like, and there's a little something for yourself." He threw the man a gold coin. The fellow stooped to pick it up, and we rode on like men whose business was accomplished. He ran after us, shouting and gesticulating for a minute or two, but we paid no heed to him, and in a while he left us to ourselves.

In five minutes we were breathing free air in a free land.

Half an hour later we rode into the main street of the town and hammered at the gate of a hotel. When we had awakened everybody else in the neighborhood our summons was answered by a sleepy hostler, who admitted us to the yard and took in our horses. A sleepy waiter appeared and led us to a room, the shutters of which were still closed against the daylight. We asked for coffee; and the man having thrown open the window to admit the light and air, and having gone away, I turned to our rescued prisoner, who had fallen all in a heap on a couch in one corner of the room.

Until now I had but little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and such a countenance revealed itself as I never saw before, and pray Heaven I may never see again. A huge sweeping beard descended to the waist, and its whiteness was obscured by filth incredible. The long locks that mingled with it and overlay it on either side were roped together and tangled beyond hope of severance. The face was horribly pinched and meagre, and was of the color or want of color which you see in plants which have grown wholly in the dark. I will not describe further what I saw—what loathsome evidences of foul neglect. I have no heart for it, and I feel as if it insulted the memory of a gentleman to recall the evidences of the long and miserable martyrdom he had endured. They had kept him stabled like a wild beast—those accursed Austrians—for twenty years, and during all that time the martyred wretch had never known the use of the simplest appliance of cleanliness. In all the years I have lived I have never met a man who was more completely a gentleman by nature—more fastidious in his nicety of dress and person. I had to learn that afterwards; but for the moment, whether rage or pity or repulsion most filled my heart at this first clear sight of him, I could not have told. I think he saw nothing but the horror in my face, for he blushed crimson, and started to his feet with his coarse cloak clutched about his neck, and stared at me half appealing and all ashamed.

If I had had one of his jailers to account with at that moment it would have gone ill with him, I fancy. I have lived to see the death of that horrible tyranny, and I know now, that outside the borders of the one blackguard power which still darkens in the East, no such a life as this man had led is possible for any political prisoner in Europe; but even now, when I am an old man, and ought to be able to take things quietly, my blood surges in my veins when I think of that one minute of my life. I was no milksop, and I had led a soldier's life, and had seen plenty of things that were not pretty to look at. But I was horrified, and I can't even write about it now without the old wrath and disgust and shame.

I got the poor gentleman a room to himself, and when, in the course of a few hours, the town was alive, I wandered out into the streets and bought a pair of scissors. Any old campaigner may be a tolerable barber, and I was a pretty good one. I trimmed the late prisoner into decency, and with my own hands carried up a pail of water, a piece of soap, and towels. I had taken good stock of him, and carried his bodily measurements in my mind when I went out again to an outfitter's, taking Hinge with me to translate. I bought underclothing, and a suit of clothes; and I took back a shoemaker with me, and when the-count had dressed sent the man to him to try on a number of pairs of boots he had brought with him in a basket.

When the Conte di Rossano, clothed like himself for the first time in twenty years, came into the room in which breakfast was set for us, I hardly recognized him, though I myself had taken part in bringing about the transformation which had been worked in him. He came in alert and erect, and for a mere second looked every inch a gentleman. But the broad light to which he had been so long a stranger made him blink, and sent his hand to his eyes. He came across to the table with a faltering and uncertain tread, and with a curious crouch in his walk. It struck me for the first time then, but I saw it so often afterwards that I almost ceased to notice it at all. For an instant pride and liberty had buoyed him so that he could present a passing semblance of what he had been, but the change fell upon him as quick as lightning, and no flash of lightning could have blighted him more dreadfully. He approached the table shuffling, with bent head, and purblind eyes peering this way and that. I placed a chair for him, but he seemed uncertain what to do with it until I helped him to seat himself. The filthy floor of that unspeakable dungeon had been his only seat and couch for a score of years.

He sat crouching at the table as if hugging himself together for warmth, though the day was balmy, and the sun was bright and hot outside. When he drank he took his cup in both hands as an ape would have done, and as he tasted the fragrant coffee he made an animal noise of satisfaction. He caught himself at this, and a swift tide of crimson passed over his face; but a minute later the old felon habit was upon him again, and I saw him tearing his bread with his teeth in quite the jail-bird way. Looking at his thin hands, I saw that he had clipped his nails; but the skin had overgrown them, and had split into ragged fragments. I caught him peering at them in a distasteful way, and when he detected me in the act of watching him he hid them beneath the table.

We were still at table, when there came a sudden bang at the door, and without waiting for any reply in walked a gentleman with every sign of the public functionary about him, cocked hat, official stick, and all. He bowed, closed the door, stepped forward, and bowed again.

"The gentlemen speak French?" he asked.

I answered in the affirmative, and our visitor announced himself as the huissier of the magistrates court. It was his duty to demand our presence before the bench. On what ground, I asked. The functionary responded fluently and with an evident sense of his own importance that we had passed the frontier without showing our papers, and by an unrecognized route; that one of us was an escaped political prisoner; that the others were charged with assisting in his flight; that a lieutenant of lancers had been sent to demand our return, and that we were at once to appear at court. To all of which I answered flatly that we would not go; whereupon the functionary retired, leaving, as we discovered afterwards, a guard outside the house. A little later came a gentleman in official robes, who turned out to be the chief-magistrate. He explained his errand with some pomp.

"Sir," I said, when he had come to a peremptory end, "I am an Englishman and a soldier. Here are my credentials. This gentleman, the Honorable George Brunow, is a son of Lord Balmeyle, and is also an Englishman. This gentleman is the Conte di Rossano."

And here, to my surprise, the Conte di Rossano arose from his seat at the table, and, turning towards the official, with one hand on the back of his chair, said, in a clear, loud voice:

"Also an English subject! I was naturalized before my marriage," he added in a changed tone, and so sank into his seat again.

"You hear, sir," I said, respectfully. "I am about to order a carriage, and in half an hour shall leave the town with these gentlemen and my servant on my way to England. Any official person molesting us will be held officially responsible for his conduct."

The mayor wavered.

"I have the honor, sir, to wish you a good-day."

I opened the door, and in walked Lieutenant Breschia.

"These are my birds," he said, laughingly. "I haven't the pleasure of being acquainted with this gentleman," signalizing the count, "but I dare say we shall learn to know each other."

"My dear Breschia," cried Brunow, "we are sorry to have defrauded you; but you know us, and you know it will not pay to meddle with us. We are on neutral soil. We are all three British subjects. You have no authority here, and you know it."

"Eh, bien!" said the lieutenant, laughing still. "Civis Romanus sum. His excellency, the mayor, will bear out my statement that I came and saw and strove to conquer. You do not find it in your competence, sir, to arrest these gentlemen, who are all subjects of the British crown?"

"It is not my affair," said the mayor.

"And I am not authorized to employ force," said the lieutenant. "We are nonplussed, Monsieur le Maire."

"It would so appear," said the puzzled functionary; and being bowed from the room by the lieutenant, he retired.

"Civis Romanus sum," repeated Breschia, when we were left alone. "It is a great saying. And so you positively won't come back?"

"Positively we will not," said Brunow.

"Then, positively," returned the lieutenant, "I will go back and report my failure."

"Permit that I condole," said Brunow.

"Permit that I felicitate," answered Breschia; and so with a burlesque friendly bow on either side they parted.



CHAPTER VII

It was a strange and memorable journey home with the escaped prisoner, and men have been rarely more embarrassed than Brunow and myself. We had to deal with the strangest creature, a thing alternately beast and gentleman, sensitive in every fibre of his nature, and so animalized by that awful life of imprisonment that he was a constant dread and terror to himself. To see him slinking in his corner of the railway carriage or any room at our one or two halting-places, dull, blear-eyed, with his fingers tapping at his teeth, was pitiable and dreadful, but not so pitiable and dreadful as to see him grow suddenly conscious of his state and aspect and awake to some shamefaced effort to arouse himself and reassert the manhood that had once been in him.

The most astonishing thing in him was the way in which, through all these silent and horrible years, he had possessed his faculty of speech. He had been an exceptional linguist in his youth, and he was an exceptional linguist still. He was most companionable and least embarrassed with us when he was in the dark, and it was in the dark on the deck of the steam-packet which carried us to Dover that he gave me the secret of his retention of this faculty.

He sat with one arm thrown over the vessel's rail and with his face half averted.

"Do you know, sir," I said, after trying in a dozen ways to draw him out, and after having failed in all of them—"do you know, sir, that I am quite sure of one thing about you?"

"What is that?" he asked.

"During all those years of cruel solitude you never abandoned the hope of freedom."

"How should you know that?" he demanded, with a strange and vivid manner. I had never known him so roused and interested, even when I bad told him of the existence of his daughter.

"You have carefully preserved your power over language," I answered. "You would never have cared to do that if you had not had some hope of future freedom."

"I had no hope of freedom," he returned. "But everything else had gone that held me from the beasts, and that I determined should not go. I am no poet, but I have occupied myself in making verses. I have done into verse every incident of my life, and the character and aspect of every person I have known. I have translated every line into every language of which I am master. I have hundreds of thousands of lines in my head—how can I tell how many? They are poor enough, I dare say, but I could talk every working day for weeks and not exhaust them. They are in French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, in Greek and Latin, in the patois of a half-dozen districts of my native country. How many hundreds of thousands of hours have had no other occupation. But for that I had gone mad, my friend."

He rose and began to pace the deck, and I watched him. The night was calm, and the sea was like a mill-pond. Sometimes he forgot himself, and prowled with bent shoulders and clasped hands in a limited space, walking to and fro, with a sharp check at the end of such brief promenade, as if an invisible world had put a limit to the space he moved in; that was the jail-bird's gait, and the prison limits were about him again to his unconscious memory. Then, at other times he would assert himself with an effort only too visible. He would lift his head, throw out his chest, and march the full length of the deck with an assurance of freedom and manhood. But the slouching gait was always back in a minute, and his unconscious fancy began to confine his footsteps once more. On a sudden he paused in his walk and stretched out his right hand.

"That light?" he said.

"Dover," I answered. "We shall land in half an hour."

We were fortunately alone, for I would not have had it happen in the presence of a stranger for a thousand pounds. I had scarcely spoken when he dropped his face into both his hands and broke into an hysteric fit of crying. His limbs failed him; and in the passion of his emotion he would certainly have fallen to the deck if I had not put an arm about him. His poor body was all crate and basket, ribs and spine; and the wretched man's skeleton figure shook in my arms as if each sob were an explosion. He laid his head on my shoulder at last, and I put my other arm round him and held him to my breast. I love my country, and I thank God for her daily that she is free, and has taught the world the lessons of freedom, for that is the great and just pride of all Englishmen; but I never blessed her in my heart as I did then.

"God bless the dear old land," I said. "There is freedom there at least."

I did not know that I had spoken until he answered me.

"There is freedom there," he said, in his foreign voice, broken with sobs. "Thank God for freedom."

The town lights were almost blotted out for me; but I hugged him and patted him with less shame than I should have felt if he had been an Englishman. He disengaged himself at last and shook me by the hand, and began his promenade again. Before we had exchanged another word we were slowing alongside the pier, and men were bustling along the deck and racing beside us on the land. Brunow came on deck, and Hinge got together our simple baggage.

We had but just landed when I saw two ladies, whom I recognized at once. Miss Rossano and Lady Rollinson were waiting to meet us. Miss Rossano came to me and took my hand in both hers.

"Thank you, Captain Fyffe," she said. "My father is here?"

"You are my daughter?" said the count.

She bent and kissed him on the forehead gravely, and with perfect self-possession. An onlooker, who had known nothing of the story, would have guessed little from their meeting. They had a carriage in waiting, and Miss Rossano led the count towards it.

"You will join us at the Lord Warden?" she said. And at that minute Brunow approached her. She took his hand in both of her own, precisely as she had taken mine; but entered the carriage without a word to him. Now, I have said nothing lately of my feeling for Miss Rossano; but anybody who reads this record may be sure that what had happened since I had last seen her had not tended to put her out of my mind. I knew that I was going to be very happy, or very unhappy, about her. I knew that the power lay in her hands to make my life mainly cloud or mainly sunshine. That was quite settled in my own mind by this time, and my wife and I have laughed a thousand times and more about it. Yes; I knew scarcely anything about her, and yet I was prepared to fight in the assurance that she possessed every virtue and every grace of character which I have since proved in her. This is the folly of love; but it is at the same time that which makes it so beautiful. Most young men, and most young women, live to be disillusioned. But I fell in love with better fortune, if with no more discretion, than the average man displays, and after many years of trial and happiness I know my wife to be a better woman than I had power to guess all those years ago. And I know, as every husband of a good wife knows, that I was a much better man than I could ever have been without her influence.

All this leads me away from what I meant to say, which was simply that Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me—ergo, she could speak. She had not spoken to him—ergo, the emotion of encountering him was too great for her. We had been six years married when I told her of this.

I saw her with both hands reached out to help her father into the carriage. I saw her beautiful face, so soft and serious and lofty in its look that I have no words to say how it touched me. The carriage drove away. Hinge shouldered our bit of luggage easily, and Brunow and I walked up to the hotel side by side. We were met in the hall by a waiter who asked us if we would go to Lady Rollinson's sitting-room in half an hour, and then Brunow and I went to a private room of our own, and drank each a pint of English ale, as every Englishman did on reaching the Lord Warden in those days. It was a libation to liberty, the health of welcome home which the loneliest traveller poured when he felt himself upon his native land again after an absence however temporary.

When we had got through this ceremony we sat glum and silent enough, and I have since thought it likely that Brunow was as much hurt at the difference in our greetings as I had been. For Miss Rossano had thanked me in words and had not spoken to him, and he was probably reading the thing the other way about. But he was much more at home within himself than I was, and at any time I don't think he was capable of any very deep feeling. Perhaps I do him less than justice, and we are all apt to think our sensations more striking and real than those of other people.

At the appointed time we went out into the corridor and walked to the room which bore the number the waiter had already given us. I tapped at the door, and Lady Rollinson admitted us. The count sat in a plush-covered arm-chair and his daughter leaned above him with a hand on either shoulder. The scene looked purely domestic, and if a stranger had seen it he would have discovered nothing unusual in it. At the moment at which I entered the count's hand strayed to his shoulder, and for a mere instant touched the hand which rested there. His daughter's hand closed upon it and held it, and she looked up with her beautiful face bright with feeling.

"Be seated, gentlemen," said the count, and we obeyed him. "I have tried to thank you often, but I have never succeeded. I shall succeed less than ever now, but I thank you."

Lady Rollinson sat in one corner of the room with some trifle of woman's work in her hand, pretending to be busy over it. She looked up at Miss Rossano once or twice, and it was plain to see that she had been crying. As for the girl herself, her eyes shone, her beautiful lips were apart, her color came and went, and it would have been evident to the dullest sight that she was deeply moved; but she showed no sign of having shed tears, and looked altogether brave and exultant. It was a beautiful thing to notice the caressing and protecting air with which she leaned above the count; and it was strange to read the likeness which existed between her bright young face and his worn lineaments.

We had paused more than once upon our journey, and he was in all respects trimmed and dressed as became a gentleman. As he sat there with his face alight and his whole manner animated, there was no trace of the jail-bird period about him. I remembered the man I had first seen at Pollia—the man with the colorless face, the sunken eyes, the matted hair and beard—and was puzzled to identify him with the polished gentleman who sat before me. And yet, in spite of the disguise, the jail-bird was back again in as little time as it would take to snap your thumb and finger. The cloud lowered upon him in a second, and he sat biting his nails with an air altogether lost and furtive. I think his daughter first read the change in him from my own look, for after one swift glance at me she bent over him and gazed into his face. He seemed unconscious of her presence or of ours.

"You were saying, dear—" she said, and there halted.

He looked up with an undecided half-return to his former brightness.

"I was saying—" he began, and then stopped, as if searching in his own mind for the clew to what had passed a moment earlier.

"You were thanking Captain Fyffe and Mr. Brunow."

"Gentlemen," said the count, with a complete momentary repossession of himself, "I know not how to thank you. You have seen enough already to know that the life I have led this many year's has left its mark upon me. I fail in words—sometimes, to tell you the whole truth, I fail in feelings. There are moments when I have not even the heart to be glad that I am free again. But you will understand, and you will forgive because you understand. If words of gratitude do not come easily to my tongue, it is not because you have not deserved them."

"The man who really deserves the thanks of all of us," I answered, "is Corporal Hinge. Without him we should have been nonplussed; with him everything fell out in the simplest way. We have encountered no difficulty, and run no dangers."

"But," said Brunow, in his lightest and airiest fashion, as if he disclaimed credit in the very act of claiming it, "I need hardly tell Miss Rossano that in fulfilling the commission we accepted at her hands we should have been delighted to encounter either. As it was we had the most extraordinary good-fortune in the world. The whole thing has been a chapter of happy accidents."

"It pleases you to say so," said the count; "but my daughter and I enjoy no less the privilege of gratitude."

The position was embarrassing; for the more I thought about it the more I saw how little we had done, and how plain and simple a piece of duty it had been to do that little.

"Your father is tired, Miss Rossano," I said, taking the shortest way out of the difficulty. "You and he, besides, will have a thousand things to say to each other with which nobody else will have a right to interfere." I rose and held out my hand, and she came from behind her father's chair to meet me with an exquisite frankness.

"You shall have my thanks, Captain Fyffe," she said, "all my life long, whether you disclaim them or not. And you too, Mr. Brunow. I suppose we all go to town together?"

The count had risen from his seat while she spoke, and stood before us with one hand stretched out to Brunow and the other to myself. "I am poor in words," he said, with a shaking voice; "I am poor in everything. But believe me, gentlemen, I thank you, and shall thank you always. For whatever of life is left to me I am yours."

Two or three tears rolled over from his bright, sunken eyes, ran down the deep-channelled line in his cheeks, which misery and solitude had bitten there, and rested in his white mustache. He gripped our hands hard, and, turning away from us, sat down again.

We said good-night in hushed voices, as if we were speaking in a church or a sick-chamber, and came away.

Even at this, distance of time I am ashamed of my own sensations; but when I got away to my own room my whole feeling was one of disappointment and dissatisfaction. I had meant to do everything by myself—to have had no rival, to have brought back Miss Rossano's father unaided, and to have taken whatever gratitude was due for that service entirely to myself. As it turned out, I had done nothing. The original discovery of the count's whereabouts was entirely due to Brunow. Without him the expedition would have been fruitless, and but for the pure accident of Hinge's presence we should both have been helpless.

My bedroom window overlooked the sea, and I sat at it for three or four hours, smoking and staring across the motionless waste of water before the truth about myself occurred to me. When it came it brought as little comfort as the truth is apt to bring. I saw that my whole purpose had been to do something that should make me look noble and exceptional in Miss Rossano's eyes, and that the recovery of a living man from that infernal dungeon meant almost nothing in contrast with my own selfish wishes.

It took a long time to swallow that pill, and it took a longer time yet to digest it; but it had a wholesome effect upon me, and I was all the better for it in the end.

When I got down into the public breakfast-room I found Brunow there in the act of making inquiry of a waiter as to the hour of the arrival of the London papers. I attached no particular importance to the fact at the moment, but a few minutes later I passed him in the corridor and found him repeating the same inquiry to another waiter; and a little later, when we were seated at table together, he propounded the same question to a third.

"You're in a hurry for news," I said.

"I want to see what they've made of it," he answered, smilingly. "The local man down here seems to be a smartish sort of fellow, and I was careful to see that he had the facts all right before he went away."

"What local man? What facts?" I asked.

"My dear fellow," said Brunow, smiling and waving his table-napkin in the air, "we are people of distinction, and under the circumstances our comings and goings are naturally chronicled. We shall have a reception in town, I promise you."

I understood by then what he had been doing, and I was almost as much ashamed as if I had done it myself. He had taken the trouble to blaze the whole affair in the newspapers; and when, an hour later, the train which brought the London journals down to Dover arrived at the station, I was there with him to meet it. He was so obviously satisfied with his own action that it would have been useless to say a word to him. And yet I fairly boiled over when I saw the travesty of the whole adventure with which he had duped the Times. One would have supposed from the story with which he had primed the representative of that journal that we had run every conceivable kind of risk, and had, by our own courage and cunning, surmounted every obstacle the wit of man could compass. All this was absurd enough and annoying enough, but the introduction of Miss Rossano's name into the narrative looked altogether wanton and unwarranted, and, I dare say, now that I can recall the whole thing in cool blood, that I was more disturbed and angry than I need have been. Brunow took what I had to say with imperturbable good-humor, and was altogether satisfied with himself.

"We shall have a crowd to meet us," he prophesied. "There are thousands of Italian refugees in London at this minute, and they will all be there to cheer the illustrious Fyffe, and the no less illustrious Brunow. All the exiled noblemen who live in Hatton Garden, and make London stand and deliver at the barrel-organ's mouth, all the dukes and counts who shave and teach dancing, and sell penny ices, and keep cheap restaurants, will be there to welcome their delivered compatriot. The railway terminus will be odorous with garlic and the humanity of Italy. Fyffe, my dear fellow, we shall have a glorious day."

When I told him, as I did, that he was a thick-skinned idiot and braggart, he looked amazed. But I left him to his surprise, and took what precautions I could against the newspaper falling into the hands of Miss Rossano. We all travelled to London together at her request, and I had some difficulty in persuading Brunow that I was in earnest in insisting that she should see nothing of the nonsense he had caused to be written and printed about our expedition.

"My dear fellow," he declared, "the man was eager to get the news, and would have printed three times as much if I had felt inclined to give it him. You can't expect," he went on, "to do a thing of this kind at this time of day and not have it talked about. And of course it's best to let these press fellows come to the fountain-head and get the plain, simple, unadulterated truth."

This, in face of the story he had told, was so monstrous, and, when I came to think about it, so astonishingly like him, that I forbore to say another word, except to warn him that the newspapers should not reach Miss Rossano with my good-will.

He gave in at last, though he grumbled a great deal, and was evidently as far from understanding me as I was from comprehending him.

We made a dull party on the whole, for nobody could help feeling that the count and his daughter were absolute strangers to each other, or that our presence was a little awkward at the time. It was ridiculous to try to talk commonplace. It felt brutal and unsympathetic to sit in silence, and almost equally brutal and unsympathetic to say a word of what was nearest to all our hearts. But if we had been embarrassed on the journey, all our memory of it vanished for the moment in the deeper embarrassment of the reception which Brunow's babble had prepared for us. His prophecy of what would happen was fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. The platform of the terminus swarmed with people of every nationality known to London, and everybody there present seemed crazy with excitement. How, or by whom, our little party was singled out was beyond my power to guess. But we were recognized in a moment, and in another moment were swept asunder from each other amid such a polyglot babel of voices as I had never heard before. People were laughing and crying and cheering and fighting all at once, and I had a glimpse of the count in the arms of a score of mustachioed, sallow-featured men who were weeping and shouting, and hugging and kissing him and each other like a pack of lunatics inspired with the instinct of welcome. I was faring little better at the hands of the populace, though I cooled the enthusiasm of more than one patriot, I am afraid, as I fought my way out of the railway station. I escaped to a hackney carriage and found my way to my own lodgings, accompanied by Hinge, who was as delighted at the scene as I was angry at it. Before I had driven away from the terminus I had seen from no great distance that the count, Miss Rossano, and Lady Rollinson had safely reached her ladyship's carriage, which had been telegraphed for before our leaving Dover. I had interfered to prevent the taking out of the horses, and had seen the carriage start for home amid a roar of "vivas" and "bravas" and "hurrahs." The last I had seen of Brunow was in the middle of a crowd, with whom he was exchanging polyglot congratulations in the height of good spirits and enjoyment.

Hinge had not been three minutes in my room before he had made himself master of the place. He installed himself without engagement or invitation as my body-servant, and I found him in my bedroom hunting the wardrobe and chest of drawers for a change of clothes.

"You'll find me 'andier when I gets to know my way about, sir," he said. "I was the colonel's batman for three years, and I can valley a gentleman as well here as there, sir. You'll feel more like London when you've got into these, sir."

He pointed to the garments laid out symmetrically on the bed, and, motioning to me to be seated, knelt down before me and began to unlace my boots.

I was still in the act of dressing when a knock sounded at the outer door; Hinge marched off to answer it, returning with a large visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presented this to me, and I read the words "Count Ruffiano," printed very badly in blunt script type.

I told Hinge to ask the visitor his business, and I learned that he came direct from Miss Rossano with a message. I excused myself for a minute, and hastily finished dressing.

The Count Ruffiano, a head and shoulders taller than myself, stood in the middle of the room and bowed with surprising courtliness when I entered. He was six feet seven or eight in stature, had an eagle beak, a huge gray mustache, and a head of stiff, upstanding hair, close cropped and mottled in jet black and snow white. His cheeks and chin had been strange to the razor for a week; his linen was limp and discolored; and his clothes, which were of foreign cut, had once been shapely and fashionable, but were now seedy beyond belief. The hat he held in one hand was a monument of shabbiness; but his habitual stoop had the air of having been acquired by a constant courtly condescension. He was as lean as his own walking-cane, and his air of condescending gentility put a strange emphasis on his shabby clothes, and made them ten times as noticeable as they would have been without it. And yet at the very first sight of him I was persuaded that he was a gentleman.

"You are Captain Fyffe?" he said, with a marked Italian accent.

"That is my name," I responded.

"You are possessed of mine," he answered. "Permit me that I shake hands. I read in your English Times this morning of the arrival of the Conte di Rossano. I have seen my friend, and, so far as I know, I am the only survivor of the enterprise in which he lost his liberty. I lose no moment in coming here to pay my homage to the disinterested valor which gave my compatriot his freedom, I am, sir," he bowed and extended his hands with a smiling humility—"I am, sir, this many years a pensioner on the bounty of Miss Rossano. She knows me as a comrade of the father whom she has always until now thought of as lost to her. She has pencilled for me a line or two on the back of my card."

I held the card still, and, turning it over, I read: "This brave and loyal gentleman is my father's one surviving friend. He wishes to know you. V. R."

I looked up after reading this brief but expressive message, and the face of the gaunt spectre who stood before me was flushed, and his head was in the air, as if he had read it with me, and was proud of the testimony it conveyed on his behalf.

I asked him to be seated, and gave him to understand that anybody carrying such a recommendation was welcome. He held out a long, lean hand, and when I gave him my own stooped over it and kissed it.

"Sir," he said, "you have done more than restore an individual to liberty. You have reanimated a cause: you have inspired a people. There are a thousand of us at this hour in London to whom the name of the Conte di Rossano is a legend and an inspiration. Twenty years ago he was our leader—a spirit of the subtlest and most indomitable. A soul without fear, and of resource astonishingly varied. 'You have restored him to us, and before a month is over his name will ring through Italy. We are preparing for such a rising as we have never made. For years our names have been written on the sands of failure. We shall write them to-morrow on the lasting granite of success."

He talked with any amount of fire and vigor, and in a voice pitched so high that he might have been haranguing a multitude. He gesticulated with the shabby old hat and the slim walking-stick as if he had been wielding sword and buckler in an opera, and his narrow chest swelled under the tight buttons of his ragged old frock-coat. Every English word he spoke was supplemented by an Italian vowel, so that his language, though it was perfectly fluent and correct, sounded quite foreign. His extraordinary height and leanness made him grotesque to look at, but neither the comicality of his figure nor his theatrical voice and gesture could kill the fact that he was in earnest, and I felt an immediate liking for him.

"I am not here," he said, "on a visit of impertinence. I have an actual object. I am charged by the Conte di Rossano to tell you that a meeting has been already arranged to welcome him to London. It will be held to-night, and he beseeches you through me to be present at it."

I demurred at first, for I had no mind to be publicly embraced by the tatterdemalion patriots I had seen in the crowd that morning. But when my visitor incidentally mentioned the fact that Miss Rossano would accompany her father, I gave him my promise at once.

The ragged nobleman promised to call and conduct me to the place of meeting, and so went his way with a torrent of thanks and a rage of gesticulation.



CHAPTER VIII

I found Miss Rossano and her father in the vestry of a Wesleyan Methodist chapel. The room was crammed almost to suffocation, and there was such a crowd outside that it took us ten minutes' hard fighting to reach the neighboring school-room in which the public meeting was to be held. The way was cleared at last, and a score or so of us filed on to the platform, which was erected at one end of the crowded hall. My visitor of that afternoon immediately preceded Miss Rossano and the count, and I followed on their heels.

As we reached the platform the gaunt phantom swung round upon us, and in a voice like the call of a trumpet announced "The Exile."

I had already had a taste of the patriotic enthusiasm of the crowd that morning, but I had never seen anything which did more than approach the delirious excitement which set in at this announcement.

There was not a seat in the body of the room, and the men who occupied the floor were packed like herrings in a barrel. One could see nothing but a great wave of swarthy, eager faces, and could hear nothing but a tumult like the roaring of the sea. There was hardly a man in the whole assemblage who was not weeping with excitement; and though I have rather a knack of keeping a cool head under such circumstances, I have to own that I was deeply moved.

It seemed impossible to stop the cheering. Ruffiano, who had constituted himself chairman, gesticulated like a windmill, and roared till he was hoarse in the vain effort to secure silence. It took a full quarter of an hour to wear out this prodigious welcome, and even then it broke out anew in scattered bursts and spurts, as if the people could never have enough of it.

All this while Miss Rossano stood at her father's side, holding one of his hands in both her own. The tears were streaming down her face without cessation, but I had never seen her look so radiant—not even on the night when I first saw her, and the happy brightness of her beauty made me her life-long servant.

The count, poor man, was shaken altogether out of self-control. He hid his eyes with his frail hand, and his tears ran like rain through his wasted fingers. I have tried many and many a time to realize in my own mind what he must have felt, but I have always known the futility of the effort.

Twenty years of solitary imprisonment, a martyrdom of physical degradation quite unspeakable, and sickening even to think of for a moment, darkness, torture, utter despair, and then freedom and human tears, and this astounding roar of triumph, sympathy, and welcome! It was no wonder the scene unmanned him. The wonder was that he had not sunk into an unquestioning animalism—a mere brute state of idiocy—years ago.

There was speech-making enough and to spare when the cheering at last was over. The count himself spoke a few broken words of thanks, which elicited another roar of sympathy and welcome scarcely inferior in volume to the first and only less prolonged. To tell the truth, I felt the whole business rather trying, and I got heartily sick of the name of the courageous, illustrious, magnanimous, and altogether noble and magnificent Signor Fyfa. I knew perfectly well, though I could not understand a tenth part of what was said, that Brunow's shameless exaggerations were accepted here as solid truth, and that I was being lauded for a number of splendid qualities which, to say the least, I had had no chance of displaying. The illustrious, courageous, magnanimous, and altogether noble Brunow came in for his share of the praise, and bowed solemnly, with his hand upon his heart, whenever the crowd cheered him. He made a speech in Italian, and achieved an overwhelming success.

Finally, the whole business was over. We had got back to the vestry, and all but a few of the chieftains had gone away, when I first became aware of the presence of the Baroness Bonnar. A light hand touched my sleeve, and a foreign voice spoke to me in English.

"This is a noble occasion. I have never been so moved in my life. I have cried until I am not fit to be seen."

Turning and looking at the speaker, I failed for a mere instant to recognize her. I had seen her but twice before, and then only for a moment at a time, and under circumstances of no especial interest. She saw the doubt in my face, and reintroduced herself. She looked extremely pretty, and even fascinating, in a coquettish little bonnet of the fashion of that time.

When her face was in repose one could judge of her age, but when she smiled all her wrinkles—and there were a good many of them—melted into the smile, and her face looked almost girlishly young and innocent. She owned that look of youth and freshness in spite of the fact that she was rouged and powdered and painted as if she had been ready for the stage. It was pretty easy to see that she had not been quite as much affected by the "noble occasion" as she pretended to have been, for the slightest shower of tears would have ruined that admirable and artistic make-up.

"I pass for Austrian," said the baroness; "but I am Hungarian all over, and I hate, I hate, I hate the Austrians! If I had my way I would kill them every one."

She spoke with a pretty enough pretence of vindictiveness, but her manner was not very convincing.

Supposing I had been aware of this little person's purpose, what should I have done, I wonder? What should I have been justified in doing? I had rather not answer that question, even to myself. But if I had known for a certainty what was in her heart, and what lay in the future, there are not many things at which I should have hesitated to spoil her plans.

She did not find me very sympathetic or very ardent. I was tired, for one thing, and for another I can never take very kindly to humbug, even when a pretty woman offers it. The baroness turned from me to Brunow, beseeching him to introduce her to the acquaintance of that dear and charming Miss Rossano, who had so much her sympathy, and the spectacle of whose natural emotion had so much affected her. I am not very observant in such matters, but though Brunow disguised it pretty well, I am sure that I noticed some reluctance in his manner. He made the presentation, however, and the baroness flowed out in sympathy and congratulation.

"I am myself Hungarian," I heard her say, "but I have lived in Austria half my life. There is no need to tell you anything about that terrible government, but—mon Dieu! the things I have seen and known! I am a stranger, Mees Rossano, and the hour is sacred; but you will forgive this intrusion, will you not? because I could not help it."

She spoke with so much vivacity and feeling that I felt a little sorry for my contemptuous thoughts of her. She had said her say, and she behaved with more reticence and more apparent delicacy than I should have been disposed to give her credit for. She said something to the count in a low and rapid voice, and he answered by the offer of his hand, and a mere broken murmur of response. I made out that she had asked to be honored by taking the hand of one ennobled by so much suffering, and the quiet and unobtrusive fashion in which she slipped from the room after offering this tribute raised her anew in my opinion. It would have been a just thing, had one known all, to have crushed that dangerous and wicked little viper exactly as if she had really been a snake, instead of a woman with a snake's nature.

She went her way, however, having begun her work of mischief under my eyes.

Another night or two of such emotion would have been fatal to our rescued prisoner; and, indeed, he gave us all a fright before we got him home that evening. All the enthusiasts had cleared away, and I was leading the poor gentleman towards a cab which had been already summoned and was now waiting in the street, when, without warning, he swooned away. I felt his arm slipping rapidly from mine, and caught him just in time to save him from a heavy fall. I carried him back to the vestry, and there we loosened his collar and laid him on the couch, and dashed water in his face, while Brunow ran for brandy. He recovered in a while, but was even then too weak to walk, so that I carried him in my arms to the street, and set him down in the cab. My wife has often told me, in talking over those old times, that she looked on me at that moment as a man possessed of Herculean strength; but, in truth, the poor fellow was so attenuated that his weight was scarcely greater than a child's.

I could hardly do less than call at Lady Rollinson's house next day to inquire after the sufferer's condition; and yet I went with great reluctance. I was so eager to be there, I was so willing to spend every hour in Miss Rossano's company, that I was afraid of being intrusive, and my very anxiety to be near her kept me away from her in this foolish fashion many a time.

The Baroness Bonnar was before me when I called, and I found her there in the daintiest and most becoming of visiting costumes, chatting away with excellent tact and unfailing vivacity.

She gave Miss Rossano time to welcome me, and then assailed me at once with laudation's of my devotion and courage, which I received, I know, with an extremely evil grace. I resemble my neighbors in liking to have credit for what I have done, but I know nothing more hateful than unmerited praise. I silenced her at last, and she turned upon Miss Rossano with a stage-whisper intended for my hearing: "I adore these brave men who are too modest to endure praise."

"You are too oily for my personal taste, madame," I said to myself, and my earlier dislike for her came back again.

The count, I learned, was better. Immediately on his arrival at Lady Rollinson's the family doctor had been sent for. Like a wise man, he had prescribed rest and complete freedom from all excitement. There were to be no more public meetings, and the sufferer was seriously warned against all stress of emotion.

"We have had great difficulty," said Miss Rossano, "in bringing him to reason. The enthusiasm of last night's meeting has convinced him that a great uprising is near at hand, and that in a year or two at the outside Italy will have her freedom back again. He would die for that," she said, with a flash of her beautiful eyes, and her face suddenly pale with feeling. "The house was overrun with Italians yesterday," she added. "My father saw some of them, and they are all full of the news that Charles Albert is ready to march into Piedmont, and that the Pope is favorable to devolution. One never knows how much truth there is in these stories, but I have lived in an atmosphere of them all my life." Then she laughed on a sudden, and, clapping her hands together, turned on me with a swift gesture like that of a pleased child. "You saw the Count Ruffiano yesterday?" she asked; and I, answering in the affirmative, she laughed again. "The poor dear old gentleman," she said, "is my father's one surviving comrade, and ever since I have been able to understand he has talked to me about Italy and The Cause. He is in fiery earnest, and such a dreamer that he has been looking forward to every month of his life as the date of Italy's liberty. I have had a great deal of influence with the count"—she was serious again by this time—"and through him over the Italian revolutionists in London, and I have always counselled them not to strike until they were sure of their aim. An unsuccessful revolution is a crime. You think it strange that a girl should be thinking of these things."

"Indeed, no," I answered. "I should think it strange in your case if you had no such thoughts. And let me tell you, Miss Rossano, that I think your friend Count Rumano's dream is coming near at last. He may wake any fine morning to find it very near indeed."

"You think so?" she cried, with a restrained vehemence. "You have heard news while you were abroad?"

"No news," I answered; "but I can see the general trend of things. There is an awakening spirit of liberty on the Continent, and unless I am much mistaken, a map of Europe of this date will be a surprising thing to look at in half a dozen years."

I should be a fool to pretend that I foresaw all the political changes which have taken place since then, but I should have been blind if I had not foreseen some of them. Liberty was in the air; there was an underlying strife and turmoil in the world's affairs which was not evident to everybody, though a soldier of fortune like myself, who made the cause of liberty his trade, was bound to be aware of it. The great politicians knew it all, no doubt; but they kept their knowledge to themselves, and waited, as we know now, with a bitter anxiety and fear for what events might bring. For the great politicians were, for the most part, then, as now, afraid of liberty, and looked on it as being very much of a curse rather than a blessing.

"You would fight for Italy," she said, "if there were a real chance?"

"If there were anything approaching a chance," I responded, "I would fight for Italy."

If I had dared I would have told her what was really at the bottom of my thought: I would have fought gladly for Italy; but the fact that it was her cause, that she espoused it and hoped for it, that her father had been buried alive for it, made it dearer to me than any other in the world. I had almost forgotten that we were not alone when the Baroness Bonnar proclaimed her presence.

"Italy!" she cried; and as I turned at the sound of her voice I saw her bring the palms of her gloved hands together and turn her fine eyes to the ceiling as if the word inspired her—"Italy! oh, if I were a man I would fight for Italy! Ah, those hateful Austrians! And what a man is Cavour! and what a man Garibaldi! Oh, they will fight! They will win!"

"There is plenty of time yet. Liberty, my dear Miss Rossano, will restore your father to health, and he will not lose his share of the glory." We English always excuse a foreigner who shows a tendency to bombast in conversation; and allowing for her partial knowledge of the language, and for the oratorical turn her people have, I saw nothing overstrained in the little woman's raptures. I had even a modified belief in their reality; and even to this day I cannot blame myself for having been deceived by her. She had an astonishing capacity in her own line, and though she had achieved no great success on the stage, she was the most perfect actress off it I have ever known.

She showed no disposition to prolong her visit, but withdrew after a stay of a quarter of an hour or so, with many expressions of good-will and ardent hope for the count's early recovery. If she might have the honor, she would call again upon Miss Rossano.

"Pardon me," she said; "beside you I am an old woman, and I can take a liberty. I like you for your interest in poor Italy and for your father's sake, who has been a martyr in such a cause. You will let me see you sometimes. People who know me better than you do will tell you that I am a butterfly, and without a heart. But that is not true. I do not show my heart often, and never unless I mean it."

She was gone without waiting for a response, and Miss Rossano, turning to me with a blush and a smile, asked me if I did not consider her visitor quite a charming little person. It would have been ungracious on no evidence at all to have stated my real mind, and I compromised by saying nothing. My silence on that topic went unobserved; and until I took my leave we talked about the count and the prospects of The Cause. It makes me smile now to remember how savagely in earnest I grew to be about that matter of Italian independence when once I had discovered that Miss Rossano was seriously interested in it. That, if I had only thought about it, was the way to her heart; but anxious as I was to secure her good opinion, I was guilty of no pretences. The mere fact that she desired it would have been enough to make me desire it also, even if I had had no wishes that way to begin with.