If Lucia had known, she would have realized that her Italian soldier was in some way responsible for their absence, and she would have been delighted.  As it was, she dismissed the Captain with a shrug and turned her attention to the few soldiers who remained.  They were a little distance from her, and most of them had their backs to her.

Lucia determined to try to slip out unnoticed.  She waited until they were all talking at once.  By their angry gestures they appeared to be discussing something of great importance; none of them even glanced towards the shed.

Lucia pushed open the door very gently and waited.  No one noticed it, then she laid down flat and crawled out into the mud; it was slow work, but in the end it proved the best way, for she reached the tree and Garibaldi without being discovered.  The shed hid her from sight.  She hurriedly untied the rope and freed the goat.  It had never entered her mind to escape and leave her behind.

Garibaldi, free once more, ran down the steep hill her hoofs making no more than a soft, pad, pad noise in the mud.  Lucia dropped to the ground again and crawled slowly after her.  Below her, almost at the river’s edge, she could see the two soldiers slipping and stumbling along.

She wriggled on in the mud until she was well below the crest of the hill, then she got up and began to run.  She jumped from one rock to the next, always keeping the two men in sight, but keeping under cover herself.  The men kept to the bank of the river and moved forward cautiously.  Lucia kept abreast of them, but stayed high up above their heads.

It was a long walk, for the river twisted and turned many times before it reached the walls of Cellino.  But it did not tire Lucia, as it did the two men.  They walked slower and slower as the afternoon wore on, stopping every few minutes to rest and talk excitedly.

At a little before sunset the guns grew louder and seemed to be much nearer.  All day there had been a dull rumble, but now they burst out into a terrific roar.  Lucia saw the men below her stop and look up.  They stood still for a long time, and then hurried on.  Until now the road had been deserted, but ahead at the end of a footbridge, just around a sharp turn, Lucia, from her vantage point, could see another figure.  The soldiers could not have seen him, but when they reached the turn of the road they both left the open and took cover in the rocks above.

Lucia watched narrowly.  They did not stop as she half expected them to do, but crept on until they were abreast of the man.  He was a beggar to judge by his shabby clothes, and he was apparently whiling away his afternoon by staring into the river.

Lucia’s first thought was that the Austrians would shoot him.  She caught her breath sharply when a queer thing happened.  One of the soldiers picked up a stone and threw it down into the stream.