horses know the way, Signor Inglese, and all our bones are going to be broken, yours and your sweet bride's as well as mine."
The driver took the whip and fired off a fusilade of cracks overhead, beside them, and under them. The horses dashed madly down the slope, almost sending the carriage over at the next turn. Standish looked at his wife. She had apparently fainted, but in reality had merely closed her eyes to shut out the horrible sight of Pietro's face. Standish thrust his arm out of the open window, unfastened the door, and at the risk of his neck jumped out. Tina shrieked when she opened her eyes and found herself alone. Pietro now pushed in the frame of the front window and it dropped out of sight, leaving him face to face with her, with no glass between them. "Now that your fine Inglese is gone, Tina, we are going to be married; you promised it, you know."
"You coward," she hissed; "I'd rather die his wife than live yours."
"You're plucky, little Tina, you always were. But he left you. I wouldn't have left you. I won't leave you. We'll be married at the chapel of the Three Holy Springs, a mile below the Weisse Knott; we'll fly through the air to it, Tina, and our bed will be at the foot of the Madatseh Glacier. We will go over together near where the man threw his wife down. They have marked the spot with a marble slab, but they will put a bigger one for us, Tina, for there's two of us."
Tina crouched in the corner of the carriage and watched the face of the Italian as if she were fascinated. She wanted to jump out as her husband had done, but she was afraid to move, feeling certain that if she attempted to escape Pietro would pounce down upon her. He looked like some wild beast crouching for a spring. All at once she saw something drop from the sky on the footboard of the carriage. Then she heard her husband's voice ring out—
"Here, you young fool, we've had enough of this nonsense."
The next moment Pietro fell to the road, propelled by a vigorous kick. His position lent itself to treatment of that kind. The carriage gave a bump as it passed over Pietro's leg, and then Tina thinks that she fainted in earnest, for the next thing she knew the carriage was standing still, and Standish was rubbing her hands and calling her pleasant names. She smiled wanly at him.
"How in the world did you catch up to the carriage and it going so fast?" she asked, a woman's curiosity prompting her first words.
"Oh, the villain forgot about the short cuts. As I warned him, he ought to have paid more attention to what was going on outside. I'm going back now to have a talk with him. He's lying on the road at the upper end of this slope."
Tina was instantly herself again.
"No, dearest," she said caressingly; "you mustn't go back. He probably has a knife."
"I'm not afraid."
"No, but I am, and you mustn't leave me."
"I would like to tie him up in a hard knot and take him down to civilisation bumping behind the carriage as luggage. I think he's the fellow who knifed me, and I want to find out what his game is."
Here Tina unfortunately began to faint again. She asked for wine in a far-off voice, and Standish at once forgot all about the demon driver. He mounted the box and took the reins himself. He got wine at the little cabin of the Weisse Knott, a mile or two farther down. Tina, who had revived amazingly, probably on account of the motion of the carriage, shuddered as she looked into the awful gulf and saw five tiny toy houses in the gloom nearly a mile below.
"That," said Standish, "is the chapel of the Three Holy Springs. We will go there to-night, if you like, from Trefoi."
"No, no!" cried Tina, shivering. "Let us get out of the mountains at once."
At Trefoi they found their own driver awaiting them.
"What the devil are you doing here, and how did you get here?" hotly inquired Standish.
"By the short cuts," replied the bewildered man. "Pietro, one of master's old drivers, wanted—I don't know why—to drive you as far as Trefoi. Where is he, sir?"
"I don't know," said Standish. "We saw nothing of him. He must have been pushed off the box by the madman. Here, jump up and let us get on."
Tina breathed again. That crisis was over.
They live very happily together, for Tina is a very tactful little woman.
The Hour and the Man.
Prince Lotarno rose slowly to his feet, casting one malignant glance at the prisoner before him.
"You have heard," he said, "what is alleged against you. Have you anything to say in your defence?"
The captured brigand laughed.
"The time for talk is past," he cried. "This has been a fine farce of a fair trial. You need not have wasted so much time over what you call evidence. I knew my doom when I fell into your hands. I killed your brother; you will kill me. You have proven that I am a murderer and a robber; I could prove the same of you if you were bound hand and foot in my camp as I am bound in your castle. It is useless for me to tell you that I did not know he was your brother, else it would not have happened, for the small robber always respects the larger and more powerful thief. When a wolf is down, the other wolves devour him. I am down, and you will have my head cut off, or my body drawn asunder in your courtyard, whichever pleases your Excellency best. It is the fortune of war, and I do not complain. When I say that I am sorry I killed your brother, I merely mean I am sorry you were not the man who stood in his shoes when the shot was fired. You, having more men than I had, have scattered my followers and captured me. You may do with me what you please. My consolation is that the killing me will not bring to life the man who is shot, therefore conclude the farce that has dragged through so many weary hours. Pronounce my sentence. I am ready."
There was a moment's silence after the brigand had ceased speaking. Then the Prince said, in low tones, but in a voice that made itself heard in every part of the judgment-hall—
"Your sentence is that on the fifteenth of January you shall be taken from your cell at four o'clock, conducted to the room of execution, and there beheaded."
The Prince hesitated for a moment as he concluded the sentence, and seemed about to add something more, but apparently he remembered that a report of the trial was to go before the King, whose representative was present, and he was particularly desirous that nothing should go on the records which savoured of old-time malignity; for it was well known that his Majesty had a particular aversion to the ancient forms of torture that had obtained heretofore in his kingdom. Recollecting this, the Prince sat down.
The brigand laughed again. His sentence was evidently not so gruesome as he had expected. He was a man who had lived all his life in the mountains, and he had had no means of knowing that more merciful measures had been introduced into the policy of the Government.
"I will keep the appointment," he said jauntily, "unless I have a more pressing engagement."
The brigand was led away to his cell. "I hope," said the Prince, "that you noted the defiant attitude of the prisoner."
"I have not failed to do so, your Excellency," replied the ambassador.
"I think," said the Prince, "that under the circumstances, his treatment has been most merciful."
"I am certain, your Excellency," said the ambassador, "that his Majesty will be of the same opinion. For such a miscreant, beheading is too easy a death."
The Prince was pleased to know that the opinion of the ambassador coincided so entirely with his own.
The brigand Toza was taken to a cell in the northern tower, where, by climbing on a bench, he could get a view of the profound valley at the mouth of which the castle was situated. He well knew its impregnable position, commanding as it did, the entrance to the valley. He knew also that if he succeeded in escaping from the castle he was hemmed in by mountains practically unscalable, while the mouth of the gorge was