Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, “You want to be active, my friend.  Go, and we will wait for you here.  I know that I am never deceived by you, and when I see you I know that the truth speaks and bids me be worthy of it Go up there,” she pointed with shut eyes at the mountains; “leave me to pray for greater strength.  I am among Italians at this inn; and shall spend money here; the poor people love it.”  She smiled a little, showing a glimpse of her old charitable humour.

Merthyr counselled Laura that in case of evil tidings during his absence she should reject her feminine ideas of expediency, and believe that she was speaking to a brave soul firmly rooted in the wisdom of heaven.

“Tell her?—­she will die,” said Laura, shuddering.

“Get tears from her,” Merthyr rejoined; “but hide nothing from her for a single instant; keep her in daylight.  For God’s sake, keep her in daylight.”

“It’s too sharp a task for me.”  She repeated that she was incapable of it.

“Ah,” said he, “look at your Italy, how she weeps! and she has cause.  She would die in her grief, if she had no faith for what is to come.  I dare say it is not, save in the hearts of one or two, a conscious faith, but it’s real divine strength; and Alessandra Ammiani has it.  Do as I bid you.  I return in two days.”

Without understanding him, Laura promised that she would do her utmost to obey, and he left her muttering to herself as if she were schooling her lips to speak reluctant words.  He started for the mountains with gladdened limbs, taking a guide, who gave his name as Lorenzo, and talked of having been ‘out’ in the previous year.  “I am a patriot, signore! and not only in opposition to my beast of a wife, I assure you:  a downright patriot, I mean.”  Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at first, but controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered him to be a serviceable fellow.  Toward nightfall they heard shots up a rock-strewn combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating rifle-firing at long range.  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