s, the Athenian courier, do I believe that any man had run as
desperately and doggedly as I ran that night.

By dawn, having in some three hours put twenty miles or so between
myself and Piacenza, I staggered exhausted and with cut and bleeding
feet through the open door of a peasant's house.

The family, sat at breakfast in the stone-flagged room into which I
stumbled. I halted under their astonished eyes.

"I am the Lord of Mondolfo," I panted hoarsely, "and I need a beast to
carry me home."

The head of that considerable family, a grizzled, suntanned peasant,
rose from his seat and pondered my condition with a glance that was
laden with mistrust.

"The Lord of Mondolfo--you, thus?" quoth he. "Now, by Bacchus, I am the
Pope of Rome!"

But his wife, more tender-hearted, saw in my disorder cause for pity
rather than irony.

"Poor lad!" she murmured, as I staggered and fell into a chair, unable
longer to retain my feet. She rose immediately, and came hurrying
towards me with a basin of goat's milk. The draught refreshed my body as
her gentle words of comfort soothed my troubled soul. Seated there, her
stout arm about my shoulders, my head pillowed upon her ample, motherly
breast, I was very near to tears, loosened in my overwrought state by
the sweet touch of sympathy, for which may God reward her.

I rested in that place awhile. Three hours I slept upon a litter of
straw in an outhouse; whereupon, strengthened by my repose, I renewed my
claim to be the Lord of Mondolfo and my demand for a horse to carry me
to my fortress.

Still doubting me too much to trust me alone with any beast of his, the
peasant nevertheless fetched out a couple of mules and set out with me
for Mondolfo.

BOOK III. THE WILDERNESS

CHAPTER I. THE HOME-COMING

It was still early morning when we came into the town of Mondolfo, my
peasant escort and I.

The day being Sunday there was little stir in the town at such an hour,
and it presented a very different appearance from that which it had worn
when last I had seen it. But the difference lay not only in the absence
of bustle and the few folk abroad now as compared with that market-day
on which, departing, I had ridden through it. I viewed the place to-day
with eyes that were able to draw comparisons, and after the wide streets
and imposing buildings of Piacenza, I found my little township mean and
rustic.

We passed the Duomo, consecrated to Our Lady of Mondolfo. It