tation with his sword. Stung finally beyond the control of an
irritable temper, Weisspriess walked out of sight of the soldiery with
Carlo, to whom, at a special formal request from Weisspriess, Nagen
handed his sword. Again he begged Count Ammiani to abstain from fighting;
yea, to strike him and disable him, and fly, rather--than provoke the
skill of his right hand. Carlo demanded his cousin's freedom. It was
denied to him, and Carlo claimed his privilege. The witnesses of the duel
were Jenna and another young subaltern: both declared it fair according
to the laws of honour, when their stupefaction on beholding the proud
swordsman of the army stretched lifeless on the brown leaves of the past
year left them with power to speak. Thus did Carlo slay his old enemy who
would have served as his friend. A shout of rescue was heard before Carlo
had yielded up his weapon. Four haggard and desperate men, headed by
Barto Rizzo, burst from an ambush on the guard encircling Angelo. There,
with one thought of saving his doomed cousin and comrade, Carlo rushed,
and not one Italian survived the fight.

An unarmed spectator upon the meadow-borders, Beppo, had but obscure
glimpses of scenes shifting like a sky in advance of hurricane winds.

Merthyr delivered the burden of death to Vittoria. Her soul had crossed
the darkness of the river of death in that quiet agony preceding the
revelation of her Maker's will, and she drew her dead husband to her
bosom and kissed him on the eyes and the forehead, not as one who had
quite gone away from her, but as one who lay upon another shore whither
she would come. The manful friend, ever by her side, saved her by his
absolute trust in her fortitude to bear the burden of the great sorrow
undeceived, and to walk with it to its last resting-place on earth
unobstructed. Clear knowledge of her, the issue of reverent love, enabled
him to read her unequalled strength of nature, and to rely on her
fidelity to her highest mortal duty in a conflict with extreme despair.
She lived through it as her Italy had lived through the hours which
brought her face to face with her dearest in death; and she also on the
day, ten years later, when an Emperor and a King stood beneath the vault
of the grand Duomo, and the organ and a peal of voices rendered thanks to
heaven for liberty, could show the fruit of her devotion in the dark-eyed
boy, Carlo Merthyr Ammiani, standing between Merthyr and her, with old
blind Agostin