Darkness made them seek shelter in a pine-hut; starting
from which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like
a dog over the place where the shots had sounded on
the foregoing day; he found a stone spotted with blood.
Not far from the stone lay a military glove that
bore brown-crimson finger-ends. They were striking
off to a dairy-but for fresh milk, when out of a
crevice of rock overhung by shrubs a man’s voice
called, and Merthyr climbing up from perch to perch,
saw Marco Sana lying at half length, shot through
hand and leg. From him Merthyr learnt that Carlo
and Angelo had fled higher up; yesterday they had
been attacked by coming who tried to lure there to
surrender by coming forward at the head of his men
and offering safety, and “other gabble,”
said Marco. He offered a fair shot at his heart,
too, while he stood below a rock that Marco pointed
at gloomily as a hope gone for ever; but Carlo would
not allow advantage to be taken of even the treacherous
simulation of chivalry, and only permitted firing after
he had returned to his men. “I was hit
here and here,” said Marco, touching his wounds,
as men can hardly avoid doing when speaking of the
fresh wound. Merthyr got him on his feet, put
money in his pocket, and led him off the big stones
painfully. “They give no quarter,”
Marco assured him, and reasoned that it must be so,
for they had not taken him prisoner, though they saw
him fall, and ran by or in view of him in pursuit of
Carlo. By this Merthyr was convinced that Weisspriess
meant well. He left his guide in charge of Marco
to help him into the Engadine. Greatly to his
astonishment, Lorenzo tossed the back of his hand at
the offer of money. “There shall be this
difference between me and my wife,” he remarked;
“and besides, gracious signore, serving my countrymen
for nothing, that’s for love, and the Tedeschi
can’t punish me for it, so it’s one way
of cheating them, the wolves! “Merthyr
shook his hand and said, “Instead of my servant,
be my friend;” and Lorenzo made no feeble mouth,
but answered, “Signore, it is much to my honour,”
and so they went different ways.
Left to himself Merthyr set step vigorously upward.
Information from herdsmen told him that he was an
hour off the foot of one of the passes. He begged
them to tell any hunted men who might come within hail
that a friend ran seeking them. Farther up,
while thinking of the fine nature of that Lorenzo,
and the many men like him who could not by the very
existence of nobility in their bosoms suffer their
country to go through another generation of servitude,
his heart bounded immensely, for he heard a shout
and his name, and he beheld two figures on a rock near
the gorge where the mountain opened to its heights.
But they were not Carlo and Angelo. They were
Wilfrid and Count Karl, the latter of whom had discerned
him through a telescope. They had good news to
revive him, however: good at least in the main.
Nagen had captured Carlo and Angelo, they believed;