I remarked this to Joseph, and he smiled his melancholy smile.  “It is beautiful,” he said, “and when you are down at the bottom, you will not be disappointed in the country.  But for happiness? it is no better than elsewhere.  Wait till you see the cretins; there is a cretin in almost every family.  And not long ago there was a dreadful murder in the neighbourhood of Aosta.  The criminal has not yet been caught.  He is supposed to be hiding somewhere in the mountains, and the police cannot find him.  There is a printed notice out, warning people to beware of the murderer—­so I read in a newspaper not long ago and I have heard that the inhabitants of all these little hamlets we see here and there, dare not go from village to village after dark, for fear of being attacked.”

“Then, if we should happen to be belated, we might have an adventure?” I said.

“Indeed, it is not at all unlikely, Monsieur.  No doubt the man is desperate, and if he saw a chance to get a change of clothing, a mule, and some money, he might risk attacking even two travellers, from behind.  But we shall arrive at Aosta before dark, and I am afraid——­”

“I’ll warrant you’re not afraid of danger.”

“That we shall get no such sport, Monsieur.”

Even as he spoke there came, with the wind blowing up from the valley, a loud, long-drawn shriek of fear or distress, uttered by a woman.  We looked at each other, Joseph and I, and then without a word set off running down the hill, in the direction of the cry.  Again it came, “A moi-a moi!” We could hear the words, now, and then a wild, inarticulate scream.

I bounded down the winding white road, where the evening shadows lay, and Joseph followed, somehow dragging Finois—­at least, I am sure that he would not have left his beloved beast behind,—­and so at last we turned a sharp bend of the path, thickly fringed with a dense wood, where suddenly Innocentina sprang almost into my arms.  She ran to me, blindly, not seeing who it was, but knowing by instinct that help was at hand.  “A robber—­a murderer!” she panted.  “Oh, save—­” and then, I think, she fainted.

I have a vague recollection of tossing her to Joseph, and plunging into the dim wood, where something moved, half-hidden by the crowding trees.  It was the donkeys I saw at first, and then I came full upon a man, dressed all in the brown of the tree trunks, so that at a distance he would not be seen among them, in the dusk.  He had the ruecksack I had noticed at the Cantine de Proz in one hand, and with the other he had just drawn a knife from the belt under his coat.  On the ground crouched the Boy, shielding his bowed face with a slim, blue-serge arm.

[Illustration:  “ON THE GROUND CROUCHED THE BOY".]

CHAPTER XII

The Princess

“My little body is aweary of this great world.” 
—­SHAKESPEARE.