said the man, "did you happen to see
Signor Maironi at Oria this morning?"

"I? No, indeed. Signor Maironi is in bed and asleep at this hour."

"And you yourself----where are you going?"

"I am going up that mountain, up that accursed Boglia, to see about the
communal bull."

"Idiot!" groaned the lawyer inwardly. "He is making it communal now!"
But the "communal" was allowed to pass unchallenged. The gendarme, who
had a face like a bull-dog, stared hard at his interlocutor. "You are a
political deputy," said he insolently, "and you wear that thing on your
chin?" Instinctively Pedraglio's hand went to his thin, black, pointed
beard, the abhorred beard of the liberals. "I will cut it off," said he,
with mock seriousness. "Most certainly, my dear sir! Are you also going
up the Boglia!" Very stiffly the gendarme moved away, without answering,
and all unconscious of the shameful gibbet to which the political deputy
was consigning him.

The two friends congratulated themselves on their narrow escape, but
they recognised that the game had become very serious. Now they had the
guards to reckon with, who knew Puttini well, and they must find a means
of avoiding them. And what if that bull-dog of a gendarme should blab
about the beard? "Come on! Come on!" said the lawyer. "Let us follow
them, and if we see or hear them turn back we must take to our heels and
make off to the left, towards the frontier." This would have been a
desperate move, for they were unacquainted with the ground, with which
the guards were undoubtedly familiar.

But in order to catch up with his companions the bull-dog had to sweat
and pant so hard that when he reached them he had no desire left to
speak of beards. Pedraglio and the lawyer climbed slowly upwards, and
saw the enemy reach the crest of the hill at the Madonnina beech-tree.
There they halted for some time and then disappeared.

The venerable beech-tree, which had the honour of bearing upon its trunk
an image of the Madonna, which, on its death, it bequeathed to a small
chapel, stood like a sentinel before the great forest of Boglia, like a
soldier posted in this dip of the crest, to keep watch over the
precipitous hillside, the lake, and the sloping ground of Valsolda. The
venerable army of colossal beeches stood marshalled in another silent
hollow between the slope of Colmaregia, the easily climbed Dorsi della
Nave, the rocky base of the Denti di Vecchia or Canne d'Organo, and that
othe