ce. And I, I was not going to
seek _you_; I was going to let hell claim you in its own time. But you
rode by me to-night. This is the end."

"Let go, fool!" roared the prince, slashing Giovanni across the face
with the heavy crop.

Giovanni laughed again and drew his knife. "I shall not miss you this
time!"

The prince, a trained soldier, shifted the reins to his teeth, buried
his knees in the barrel of the horse, unhooked his scabbard and swung it
aloft, deftly catching the reins again in his left hand. But Giovanni
was fully prepared. He released the bridle, his arm went back and the
knife spun through the air. Yet in that instant in which Giovanni's arm
was poised for the cast, the prince lifted his horse on its haunches.
The knife gashed the animal deeply in the neck. Still on its haunches it
backed, wild with the unaccustomed pain. The lip of the road, at this
spot rotten and unprotected, gave way. The prince saw the danger and
tried to urge the horse forward. It was too late. The hind-quarters
sank, the horse whinnied in terror, and the prince tried in vain to slip
from the saddle. There came a grating crash, a muffled cry, and horse
and rider went pounding down the rock-bound gorge.

Giovanni listened. He heard the light, metallic clatter of the empty
scabbard as it struck projecting boulders; he heard it strangely above
the duller, heavier sound. Then the hush of silence out of which came
the faint mutter of the stream. Giovanni trembled and the sweat on his
body grew cold: less from reaction than from the thought that actual
murder had been snatched from his hands. For several minutes he waited,
dreading, but there was no further sound. He searched mechanically for
his knife, recovered it, and then crept down the abrupt side of the
gorge till he found them. They were both dead. A cloud swept over the
benign moon.

"Holy Father, thou hast waited seven years too long!" Giovanni crossed
himself.

He gazed up at the ledge where the tragedy had begun. The cloud passed
and revealed the shining muskets of two _carabinieri_, doubtless
attracted by the untoward sounds. Giovanni, agile and muscular as a
wolf, stole over the stream and disappeared into the blackness beyond.
But there was an expression of horror on his face which could not have
been intensified had Dante and Vergil and all the shades of the Inferno
trooped at his heels.

CHAPTER XXV

FREE

It was Merrihew who woke the sleeping cabby, p