“Signore, I would speak with the big Americano, the one who sent the daylight miracle to the palace of the archbishop.  I am sent by His Eminence the Archbishop.  I am Teobaldo his servant.  See, I carry the archbishop’s holy ring to show I speak the truth.”

Porter saw the ring distinctly, held between the man’s fingers—­“Yes!  I believe you.  Be quick!”

“I have ridden through the night, but I arrive late because I lost my path in the blackness.  Last night by chance it became known to the archbishop that there is a plot to assassinate the Americano.  I am come secretly to warn him.  The assassin is waiting along the road to the mine; it is to be there, and the hour is now!”

Porter sprang back into the room.  “Jack, Jack!  For God’s sake, are you there?” He tore back the covers of Derby’s bed, but it was empty.  He remembered with horror that the carabinieri were not to accompany Derby that morning.  He had insisted that they were no longer necessary.  Scrambling into his clothes any fashion—­his trousers over his pajamas, his shoes over stocking less feet—­he strapped on his revolvers, and took the window ledge at a bound.

He jumped astride his horse without stopping for a saddle, and beat and kicked the poor beast along the road as though the very fiends were after him.  The horse rocked on his legs and breathed hard, but Porter had no consideration for that.  The pale dawn revealed an empty road, along which he sped at breakneck pace, while beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead in his impatience at the seeming slowness of his progress.  At last the road cut through a tangled bit of forest with a sharp bend at the end.  Just as he reached the turn two shots rang out in quick succession.  With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush.  Like a wild man Porter shouted, “I’m coming, Jack, I’m coming!”—­impelling his already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the thicket.

Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal’s instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had caught a moving in the bushes.  To get his revolver in hand and drop forward behind his horse’s shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistled over his head.  But the immediate effect of the attack had been to enrage him out of all prudence.  Firing point-blank at the smudge of smoke, he jumped from his horse and rushed in pursuit of his assailant.

A second shot Derby thought had grazed his coat; he emptied two barrels of his revolver in the direction from which it came.  Another bullet whistled close to his ear, then two shots went entirely wide of him, and the next moment he reached a man lying prone—­with blood gushing from his head.  Derby knocked the rifle out of his hands, but there was no further danger of its being fired, for the man had fainted.