gray hair standing almost erect
upon his head. In the sudden flash of light his haggard eyes blazed like
those of a maniac. In his left hand he held a long, keen-bladed knife.
He glanced neither to the right nor the left, but kept straight on, as
if he were a ferocious bloodhound in pursuit of human prey. Esperance
came to an abrupt pause, and stared with wide-open eyes at the startling
apparition. It was old Pasquale Solara! The son of Monte-Cristo
shuddered as he thought that the father, with all his Italian ferocity
thoroughly aroused, was in pursuit of the man who had abducted his
daughter and murdered his son. In that event the Viscount's death was
sure, for he could not escape the vengeance of the distracted and
remorseless shepherd! Should he raise his voice and warn him? No, a
thousand times no! Giovanni deserved death, and did the furious old man
inflict it, he would be only advancing the just punishment of the
outraged law!

Quickly resolving to follow in the footsteps of Pasquale Solara,
Esperance dashed on, utterly regardless of the bushes and briars that
impeded his progress and tore great rents in his garments. Soon excited
voices reached him, then the noise of a violent struggle. He pushed
rapidly forward, intent upon reaching the scene of conflict, where he
did not doubt the hapless Annunziata would be found. Soon he
indistinctly saw two men engaged in a hand to hand strife. One was
evidently Pasquale Solara, for a torch was smouldering on the ground
half-extinguished by the damp moss, and the young man caught an
occasional flash of a knife such as the shepherd had carried when he
passed him, but beyond these circumstances all was supposition, for the
identity of the contending men could not be made out in the obscurity.

Grasping his pistol tightly, Esperance was about declaring his presence
when the figure of a man sprang up before him with the suddenness of a
flash of lightning, seeming to emerge from the very ground at his feet.
At that instant the torch gave a brilliant gleam and went out, but in
that gleam Esperance recognized the man who opposed his progress as the
strange peasant he had seen reading "Caesar's Commentaries" the previous
afternoon by the brook in the vicinity of the Solara cabin. Was he, too,
mixed up in the abduction, and how? Again the suspicion returned to
Esperance that he was the confederate, the accomplice of the Viscount
Massetti.

"Remain where you are!" commanded the i