ve wounds of Lucia of Viterbo!--I will have it. Will you
speak?"

Something like a sob shook the poor fool's deformed frame. But that was
all. With bowed head he preserved a stubborn silence. The Duke made a
sign to the men, and instantly the two of them threw their weight upon
the rope, hoisting Peppe by his wrists until he was at the height of the
canopy itself. That done, they paused, and turned their eyes upon the
Duke for further orders. Again Gian Maria called upon the fool to answer
his questions; but Peppe, a writhing, misshapen mass from which two
wriggling legs depended, maintained a stubborn silence.

"Let him go," snarled Gian Maria, out of patience. The men released the
rope, and allowed some three feet of it to run through their hands.
Then they grasped it again, so that Peppe's sudden fall was as suddenly
arrested by a jerk that almost wrenched his arms from their sockets. A
shriek broke from him at that exquisite torture, and he was dragged once
more to the full height of the canopy.

"Will you speak now?" asked Gian Maria coldly, amusedly almost. But
still the fool was silent, his nether lip caught so tightly in his teeth
that the blood trickled from it adown his chin. Again the Duke gave the
signal, and again they let him go. This time they allowed him a longer
drop, so that the wrench with which they arrested it was more severe
than had been the first.

Peppe felt his bones starting from their joints, and it was as if a
burning iron were searing him at shoulder, elbow and wrist.

"Merciful God!" he screamed. "Oh, have pity, noble lord."

But the noble lord had him hoisted anew to the canopy. Writhing there
in the extremity of his anguish, the poor hunchback poured forth from
frothing lips a stream of curses and imprecations, invoking Heaven and
hell to strike his tormentors dead.

But the Duke, from whose demeanour it might be inferred that he was
inured to the effect produced by this form of torture, looked on with
a cruel smile, as of one who watches the progress of events towards the
end that he desires and has planned. He was less patient, and his signal
came more quickly now. For a third time the fool was dropped, and drawn
up, now, a short three feet from the ground.

This time he did not so much as scream. He hung there, dangling at the
rope's end, his mouth all bloody, his face ghastly in its glistening
pallor, and of his eyes naught showing save the whites. He hung there,
and moaned