“The Princess laid this task upon me,” I answered cheerfully, indeed with elation, feeling that so long as I could keep my tyrants puzzled I still kept, somehow, the upper hand.

“I have travelled, in my time,” said Marc’antonio with a touch of vainglorious pride.  “I have made the acquaintance of many continentals, even with some that were extremely rich.  But I never crossed over to England.”

“You would have found it full of eccentrics,” said I.

“I dare say,” said he.  “For myself, I said to myself when I took ship, ‘Marc’antonio,’ said I, ’you must make it a rule to be surprised at nothing.’  But do Englishmen clean hogs’-sties for pleasure?”

“And the Princess?  She has also travelled?” I asked, meeting his question with another.

For the moment my question appeared to disturb him.  Recovering himself, he answered gravely—­

“She has travelled, but not very far.  You must not do her an injustice. . . .  We form our opinions on what we see.”

“It is admittedly the best way,” I assented, with equal gravity.

At the shut of night he left me and went his way up the mountain path, and an hour later, having attended to Nat’s wants, tired as in all my life I had never been, I stretched myself on the turf and slept under the stars.

The grunting of the hogs awakened me, a little before dawn.  I went to the pen, and as soon as I opened the hatch they rushed out in a crowd, all but upsetting me as they jostled against my legs.  Then, after listening for a while after they had vanished into the undergrowth and darkness, I crept back to my couch and slept.

That day, though the sun was rising before I awoke again and broke fast, I caught up with it before noon:  that is to say, with the work I had promised myself to accomplish.  Before sunset I had scraped over and cleaned the entire area of the sty.  Also I had fetched fern in handfuls and strewn the floor of the hut, which was now dry and clean to the smell.

In the evening I blew my horn for the hogs, and they returned to their pen obediently as the Princess had promised.  I had scarcely finished numbering them when Marc’antonio came down the track, this time haling a recalcitrant she-goat by a halter.

He tethered the goat and instructed me how to milk her.

The next evening he brought, at my request, a saw.  I had cleaned out the sty thoroughly, and turned-to at once to enlarge the window-openings to admit more light and air into the hut.

Still, as I worked, my spirits rose.  Nat was bettering fast.  In a few more days, I promised myself, he would be out of danger.  To be sure he shook his head when I spoke of this hope, and in the intervals of sleep—­of sleep in which I rejoiced as the sweet restorer—­lay watching me, with a trouble in his eyes.

He no longer disobeyed my orders, but lay still and watched.  My last rag of shirt was gone now, torn up for bandages.  Marc’antonio had promised to bring fresh linen to-morrow.  By night I slept with my jacket about me.  By day I worked naked to the waist, yet always with a growing cheerfulness.