ring down curtains and garlands
in their haste, the surging, sobbing human flood poured out upon the
street.

EPILOGUE.

"GEMMA, there's a man downstairs who wants to see you." Martini spoke in
the subdued tone which they had both unconsciously adopted during these
last ten days. That, and a certain slow evenness of speech and movement,
were the sole expression which either of them gave to their grief.

Gemma, with bare arms and an apron over her dress, was standing at a
table, putting up little packages of cartridges for distribution. She
had stood over the work since early morning; and now, in the glaring
afternoon, her face looked haggard with fatigue.

"A man, Cesare? What does he want?"

"I don't know, dear. He wouldn't tell me. He said he must speak to you
alone."

"Very well." She took off her apron and pulled down the sleeves of her
dress. "I must go to him, I suppose; but very likely it's only a spy."

"In any case, I shall be in the next room, within call. As soon as
you get rid of him you had better go and lie down a bit. You have been
standing too long to-day."

"Oh, no! I would rather go on working."

She went slowly down the stairs, Martini following in silence. She had
grown to look ten years older in these few days, and the gray streak
across her hair had widened into a broad band. She mostly kept her eyes
lowered now; but when, by chance, she raised them, he shivered at the
horror in their shadows.

In the little parlour she found a clumsy-looking man standing with his
heels together in the middle of the floor. His whole figure and the
half-frightened way he looked up when she came in, suggested to her that
he must be one of the Swiss guards. He wore a countryman's blouse,
which evidently did not belong to him, and kept glancing round as though
afraid of detection.

"Can you speak German?" he asked in the heavy Zurich patois.

"A little. I hear you want to see me."

"You are Signora Bolla? I've brought you a letter."

"A--letter?" She was beginning to tremble, and rested one hand on the
table to steady herself.

"I'm one of the guard over there." He pointed out of the window to the
fortress on the hill. "It's from--the man that was shot last week. He
wrote it the night before. I promised him I'd give it into your own hand
myself."

She bent her head down. So he had written after all.

"That's why I've been so long bringing it," the soldier went on. "He
said I was not to give