me very willing."

White-faced, black-browed Giacopo scowled at this proclamation of her
identity.

I made her a low bow, and answered coldly, brusquely almost, for I hated
the very name of Sforza, and every living thing that bore it.

"Madonna, you overrate my service. It so chanced that I was travelling
this way."

She looked more closely at me, as if she would have sought the reason
of my churlish tone, and I was strangely thankful that she could not see
the motley worn by the muffled stranger who confronted her. No doubt
she accounted me a clown, whose nature inclined to surliness, and so she
turned away, telling Giacopo that as soon as the horses were breathed
they might push on.

"We must rest them yet awhile, Madonna," answered he, "if they are to
carry us as far as Cagli. Heaven send that we may obtain fresh cattle
there, else is all lost."

Her frown proclaimed how much his words displeased her.

"You forget that if there are no horses for us, neither are there any
for those others." And she waved her hand towards the valley below
and the road by which we had come. From this and from what was said
I gathered that they were a party of fugitives with pursuers at their
heels.

"They have a warrant which we have not," was Giacopo's answer, gloomily
delivered, "and they will seize cattle where they can find it."

With a little gesture of impatience, more at his fears than at the peril
that aroused them, she moved away towards her litter.

"Your horse would be better for the loan of your cloak, sir stranger,"
said Giacopo to me.

I knew him to be right, but shrugged my shoulders.

"Better the horse should die of cold than I," I answered gruffly, and
turning from him I set myself to pace the snow and stir the blood that
was chilling in my veins.

There was a beauty in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that
compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the luxuriant
splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a wondrously
impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse of snow,
expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by virtue of
that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was spread to
the east, the broad plain that lies twixt the Esino and the Masone, as
far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its round shoulder
from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under the same
winding-sheet of snow as far as