f.

"Where could Mendez be? What could have detained him? It was to be hoped
no harm had happened to him!" Such was the burden of the conversation
till--when at about an hour before midnight the party broke
up--Alessandro Malfi said, that to allay the anxiety of his wife, who
was getting extremely alarmed about her brother, he would walk as far as
Forni--which was the name of Gaspar's farm--to inquire what had become
of him.

As Ripa's way lay in the same direction, they naturally started
together; and after what appears to have been a very silent walk--for
the spirits of Giuseppe were so depressed that the other found it
impossible to draw him into conversation--they reached Forni, when,
having rung the bell, they were presently answered by Antonio Guerra,
who put his head out of an upper window to inquire who they were, and
what they wanted.

"It is I, Alessandro Malfi. I want to know where your master is, and why
he has not been to my house this evening as he promised?"

"I thought he was there," said Antonio; "he set off from here to go soon
after seven o'clock."

"That is most extraordinary!" returned Malfi; "what in the world can
have become of him?"

"It is very strange, certainly," answered the servant; "he has never
come home; and when you rang I thought it was he returned from the
party."

As there was no more to be learned, the two friends now parted; Malfi
expressing considerable surprise and some uneasiness at the
non-appearance of his brother-in-law: whilst of Giuseppe we hear nothing
more till the following afternoon, when, whilst at work in his vineyard,
he was accosted by two officers of justice from Aquila, and he found
himself arrested, under an accusation of having waylaid Mendez in a
mountain-pass on the preceding evening, and wounded him, with the design
of taking his life.

The first words Ripa uttered on hearing this impeachment--words that,
like all the rest of his behavior, told dreadfully against him--were:
"Isn't he dead, then?"

"No thanks to you that he's not," replied the officer; "but he's alive,
and likely to recover to give evidence against his assassin."

"_Dio!_" cried Giuseppe, "I wish I'd known he wasn't dead!"

"You confess, then, that you wounded him with the intent to kill?"

"No," answered Ripa; "I confess no such thing. As I was going through
the pass last night I observed a man's hat lying a little off the road,
and on lifting it, I saw it belonged to Senor Men