r forward on to the
ground. In an instant he was up and had turned, for all that he was
half-stunned by his fall and weakened by the loss of blood from
a pike-thrust in the shoulder--of which he had hitherto remained
unconscious in the heat of battle. Two mercenaries were bearing down
upon him--the same two that had been the last to fall back before him.
He braced himself to meet them, thinking that his last hour was indeed
come, when Fanfulla degli Arcipreti, who had followed him closely
through the press, now descended upon his assailants from behind, and
rode them down. Beside the Count he reined up, and stretched down his
hand.

"Mount behind me, Excellency," he urged him.

"There is not time," answered Francesco, who discerned a half-dozen
figures hurrying towards them. "I will cling to your stirrup-leather,
thus. Now spur!" And without waiting for Fanfulla to obey him, he caught
the horse a blow with the flat of his sword across the hams, which sent
it bounding forward. Thus they continued now that perilous descent,
Fanfulla riding, and the Count half-running, half-swinging from his
stirrup. At last, when they had covered a half-mile in this fashion,
and the going had grown easier, they halted that the Count might mount
behind his companion, and as they now rode along at an easier pace
Francesco realised that he and Fanfulla were the only two that had come
through that ugly place. The gallant Ferrabraccio, hero of a hundred
strenuous battles, had gone to the ignoble doom which half in jest he
had prophesied himself. His horse had played him false at the outset of
the charge, and taking fright it had veered aside despite his efforts to
control it, until, losing its foothold, man and beast had gone hurtling
over the cliff. Amerini, Fanfulla had seen slain, whilst the remaining
two, being both unhorsed, would doubtless be the prisoners of Masuccio.

Some three miles beyond Sant' Angelo, Fanfulla's weary horse splashed
across a ford of the Metauro, and thus, towards the second hour of
night, they gained the territory of Urbino, where for the time they
might hold themselves safe from all pursuit.

CHAPTER III. SACKCLOTH AND MOTLEY

The fool and the friar had fallen a-quarrelling, and--to the shame
of the friar and the glory of the fool be it spoken--their subject of
contention was a woman. Now the friar, finding himself no match for the
fool in words, and being as broad and stout of girth and limb as the