o gentle. "Of what do you talk, you knave?
Ride on at once."

"It is vain to ride on," he answered obdurately, insolence rising in his
voice. "Another half-league--another league at most, and we are taken."

"Cagli is less than a league distant," she reminded him. "Once there, we
can obtain fresh horses. You will not fail me now, Giacopo!"

"There will be delays, perforce, at Cagli," he reminded her, "and,
meanwhile, there are these to guide the Borgia sbirri." And he pointed
to the tracks we were leaving in the snow.

She turned from him, and addressed herself to the other three.

"You will stand by me, my friends," she cried. "Giacopo, here, is a
coward; but you are better men." They stirred, and one of them was
momentarily moved into a faint semblance of valour.

"We will go with you, Madonna," he exclaimed. "Let Giacopo remain
behind, if so he will."

But Giacopo was a very ill-conditioned rogue; neither true himself, nor
tolerant, it seemed, of truth in others.

"You will be hanged for your pains when you are caught!" he exclaimed,
"as caught you will be, and within the hour. If you would save your
necks, stay here and make surrender."

His speech was not without effect upon them, beholding which, Madonna
leapt from the litter, the better to confront them. The corners of
her sensitive little mouth were quivering now with the emotion that
possessed her, and on her eyes there was a film of tears.

"You cowards!" she blazed at them, "you hinds, that lack the spirit even
to run! Were I asking you to stand and fight in defence of me, you could
not show yourselves more palsied. I was a fool," she sobbed, stamping
her foot so that the snow squelched under it. "I was a fool to entrust
myself to you."

"Madonna," answered one of them, "if flight could still avail us, you
should not find us stubborn. But it were useless. I tell you again,
Madonna, that when I espied them from the hill-top yonder, they were but
a half-league behind. Soon we shall have them over the mountain, and we
shall be seen."

"Fool!" she cried, "a half-league behind, you say; and you forget that
we were on the summit, and they had yet to scale it. If you but press
on we shall treble that distance, at least, ere they begin the descent.
Besides, Giacopo," she added, turning again to the leader, "you may be
at fault; you may be scared by a shadow; you may be wrong in accounting
them our pursuers."

The man shrugged his shoulders, shook his