‘I think I don’t,’ Angelo replied; ’you do; cowards have to serve every party in turn.  Up, and follow at my heels till I dismiss you.  You know the pass into the Val Pejo and the Val di Sole.’  The innkeeper stood entrenched behind a sturdy negative.  Angelo eased him to submission by telling him that he only wanted the way to be pointed out.  ’Bring tobacco; you’re going to have an idle day,’ said Angelo:  ’I pay you when we separate.’  He was deaf to entreaties and refusals, and began to look mad about the eyes; his poor coward plied him with expostulations, offered his wife, his daughter, half the village, for the service:  he had to follow, but would take no cigars.  Angelo made his daughter fetch bread and cigars, and put a handful in his pocket, upon which, after two hours of inactivity at the foot of the little chapel, where Angelo waited for the coming of Vittoria’s messenger, the innkeeper was glad to close his fist.  About noon Lorenzo came, and at once acted a play of eyes for Angelo to perceive his distrust of the man and a multitude of bad things about him he was reluctant, notwithstanding Angelo’s ready nod, to bring out a letter; and frowned again, for emphasis to the expressive comedy.  The letter said: 

’I have fallen upon English friends.  They lend me money.  Fly to Lugano by the help of these notes:  I inclose them, and will not ask pardon for it.  The Valtellina is dangerous; the Stelvio we know to be watched.  Retrace your way, and then try the Engadine.  I should stop on a breaking bridge if I thought my companion, my Carlo’s cousin, was near capture.  I am well taken care of:  one of my dearest friends, a captain in the English army, bears me company across.  I have a maid from one of the villages, a willing girl.  We ride up to the mountains; to-morrow we cross the pass; there is a glacier.  Val di Non sounds Italian, but I am going into the enemy’s land.  You see I am well guarded.  My immediate anxiety concerns you; for what will our Carlo ask of me?  Lose not one moment.  Away, and do not detain Lorenzo.  He has orders to meet us up high in the mountain this evening.  He is the best of servants but I always meet the best everywhere—­that is, in Italy.  Leaving it, I grieve.  No news from Milan, except of great confusion there.  I judge by the quiet of my sleep that we have come to no harm there.

’Your faithfullest

‘Vittoria.’

Lorenzo and the innkeeper had arrived at an altercation before Angelo finished reading.  Angelo checked it, and told Lorenzo to make speed:  he sent no message.

‘My humanity,’ Angelo then addressed his craven associate, ’counsels me that it’s better to drag you some distance on than to kill you.  You ’re a man of intelligence, and you know why I have to consider the matter.  I give you guide’s pay up to the glacier, and ten florins buon’mano.  Would you rather earn it with the blood of a countryman?  I can’t let that tongue of yours be on the high-road of running Tedeschi:  you know it.