“One thing is clear,” I said to myself, as I went to bed:  “unless something is done immediately, that poor girl will consume herself and die.”  And all that night her poor thin face and staring eyes were in my dreams; so that I woke up several times, thinking I was trying to comfort her, and could not.  But toward dawn I felt sure that Nino was coming, and that all would be well.

I was chatting with my old landlady the next morning, and smoking to pass the time, when there was suddenly a commotion in the street.  That is to say, someone was arriving, and all the little children turned out in a body to run after the stranger, while the old women came to their doors with their knitting, and squinted under the bright sunlight to see what was the matter.

It was Nino, of course—­my own boy, riding on a stout mule, with a countryman by his side upon another.  He was dressed in plain gray clothes, and wore high boots.  His great felt hat drooped half across his face, and hid his eyes from me; but there was no mistaking the stern square jaw and the close even lips.  I ran toward him and called him by name.  In a moment he was off his beast, and we embraced tenderly.

“Have you seen her?” were the first words he spoke.  I nodded, and hurried him into the house where I lived, fearful lest some mischance should bring the party from the castle riding by.  He sent his man with the mules to the inn, and when we were at last alone together he threw himself into a chair, and took off his hat.

Nino too was changed in the two months that had passed.  He had travelled far, had sung lustily, and had been applauded to the skies; and he had seen the great world.  But there was more than all that in his face.  There were lines of care and of thought that well became his masculine features.  There was a something in his look that told of a set purpose, and there was a light in his dark eyes that spoke a world of warning to anyone who might dare to thwart him.  But he seemed thinner, and his cheeks were as white as the paper I write on.

Some men are born masters, and never once relax the authority they exercise on those around them.  Nino has always commanded me, as he seems to command everybody else, in the fewest words possible.  But he is so true and honest and brave that all who know him love him; and that is more than can be said for most artists.  As he sat in his chair, hesitating what question to ask first, or waiting for me to speak, I thought that if Hedwig von Lira had searched the whole world for a man able to deliver her from her cruel father and from her hated lover she could have chosen no better champion than Nino Cardegna, the singer.  Of course you all say that I am infatuated with the boy, and that I helped him to do a reckless thing, simply because I was blinded by my fondness.  But I maintain, and shall ever hold, that Nino did right in this matter, and I am telling my story merely in order that honest men may judge.