“Are you going to the council direct, signor?”

“No.  I am going first to the magistrates, to tell them that I have in my hands five persons, who have been engaged in carrying off my daughters, and beg them to send at once to take them into their custody.  Then I shall go before the council, and demand justice upon Mocenigo, against whom we have now conclusive evidence.  You will not be wanted at the magistracy.  My own evidence, that I found them keeping guard over my daughters, will be quite sufficient for the present, and after that the girls’ evidence will be sufficient to convict them, without your name appearing in the affair at all.

“I will try whether I cannot keep your name from appearing before the council also.  Yes, I think I might do that; and as a first step, I give you my promise not to name you, unless I find it absolutely necessary.  You may as well remain here in the gondola until I return.”

It was upwards of an hour before Signor Polani came back to the boat.

“I have succeeded,” he said, “in keeping your name out of it.  I first of all told my daughters’ story, and then said that, having obtained information that Ruggiero, before he was banished from Venice, was in the habit of going sometimes at night to a hut on San Nicolo, I proceeded thither, and found my daughters concealed in the hut whose position had been described to me.  Of course, they inquired where I had obtained the information; but I replied that, as they knew, I had offered a large reward which would lead to my daughters’ discovery, and that this reward had attracted one in the secret of Mocenigo, but that, for the man’s own safety, I had been compelled to promise that I would not divulge his name.

“Some of the council were inclined to insist, but others pointed out that, for the ends of justice, it mattered in no way how I obtained the information.  I had, at any rate, gone to the island and found my daughters there; and their evidence, if it was in accordance with what I had stated, was amply sufficient to bring the guilt of the abduction of my daughters home to Ruggiero, against whom other circumstances had already excited suspicion.  A galley has already started for the mainland, with orders to bring him back a prisoner, and the girls are to appear to give evidence tomorrow.  The woman, Castaldi, is to be interrogated by the council this afternoon, and I have no doubt she will make a full confession, seeing that my daughters’ evidence is, in itself, sufficient to prove her guilt, and that it can be proved, from other sources, that it was she who inveigled them away by a false message from me.”

“I am glad indeed, signor, that I am not to be called, and that this affair of the conspiracy is not to be brought up.  I would, with your permission, now return home.  Giuseppi took a message to my father from me, the first thing, explaining my absence; and I told him, when we left your house, to go at once to tell him that your daughters had been recovered, and that I should return before long.  Still, he will want to hear from me as to the events of the night.”