At that they bared their knives and made shift to attack me.  But I flung myself on to one of the mules of the litter, and showing them the stout Pistoja dagger that I carried, I presented with it a bold and truculent front, no whit intimidated by their numbers.  Four to one though they were, they thought better of it.  A moment they stood off, consulting among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some mocking counsel as to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules, they made off, no doubt, to find their way back to Rome.  Giacopo, as I was afterwards to discover, was Madonna Paola’s purse-bearer, so that they would not lack for means.

Awhile I stayed there, cursing them for the white-livered cravens that they were, and thinking of that poor child who had ridden on to Cagli, and who would await them in vain.  There, on the mule, I sat in the noontide sunlight, and pondered this, so absorbed in her affairs as to have grown forgetful of my own.  At last I resolved to ride on to Cagli alone, and inform her that her men were fled.

There was no time to lose, for as that rogue Giacopo had said, Ramiro del’ Orca might discover at any moment how he had been tricked, and return hot-foot to find me and extort the truth from me by such means as I had no stomach for enduring.

First, then, it was of moment thoroughly to efface our tracks, leaving no sign that might guide Meser Ramiro to repair the error into which I had tricked him.  Slowly, says the proverb, one journeys far and safely.  Slowly, then, did I consider!  The escort was, no doubt, on its way back to Rome, and if I could but rid myself of that cumbrous litter, Ser Ramiro would find himself mightily hard put to it to again pick up the trail.  I remembered a ravine a little way behind, and I rode my mule back to that as fast as it would travel with the litter and the other mule attached to it.  Arrived there, I unharnessed the beasts on the very edge of that shallow precipice.  Then exerting all my strength, I contrived to roll the litter over.  Down that steep incline it went, over and over, gathering more snow to itself at every revolution, and sinking at last into the drift at the bottom.  There were signs enough to show its presence, but those signs would hardly be read by any but the sharpest eyes, or by such as might be looking for it in precisely such a position.  I must trust to luck that it escaped the notice of Messer Ramiro.  But even if he did discover it, I did not think that it would tell him overmuch.

That done I resumed my hat and cloak—­which I had retained—­mounted once more, and urging the other mule along, I proceeded thus as fast as might be for a half-league or so in the direction of Cagli.  That distance covered, again I halted.  There was not a soul in sight.  I stripped one of the mules of all its harness, which I buried in the snow, behind a hedge, then I drove the beast loose into a field.  The peasant-owner of that land might conclude upon the morrow that it had rained asses in the night.