shall arrive at Aosta before dark, and I am afraid----"

"I'll warrant you're not afraid of danger."

"That we shall get no such sport, Monsieur."

Even as he spoke there came, with the wind blowing up from the valley,
a loud, long-drawn shriek of fear or distress, uttered by a woman. We
looked at each other, Joseph and I, and then without a word set off
running down the hill, in the direction of the cry. Again it came, "A
moi-a moi!" We could hear the words, now, and then a wild,
inarticulate scream.

I bounded down the winding white road, where the evening shadows lay,
and Joseph followed, somehow dragging Finois--at least, I am sure that
he would not have left his beloved beast behind,--and so at last we
turned a sharp bend of the path, thickly fringed with a dense wood,
where suddenly Innocentina sprang almost into my arms. She ran to me,
blindly, not seeing who it was, but knowing by instinct that help was
at hand. "A robber--a murderer!" she panted. "Oh, save--" and then, I
think, she fainted.

I have a vague recollection of tossing her to Joseph, and plunging
into the dim wood, where something moved, half-hidden by the crowding
trees. It was the donkeys I saw at first, and then I came full upon a
man, dressed all in the brown of the tree trunks, so that at a
distance he would not be seen among them, in the dusk. He had the
_ruecksack_ I had noticed at the Cantine de Proz in one hand, and with
the other he had just drawn a knife from the belt under his coat. On
the ground crouched the Boy, shielding his bowed face with a slim,
blue-serge arm.

[Illustration: "ON THE GROUND CROUCHED THE BOY".]

CHAPTER XII

The Princess

"My little body is aweary of this great world."
--SHAKESPEARE.

This was the tableau photographed on my retina as I sprang forward;
but I drew the revolver which had occasioned Winston's mirth when
Molly gave it to me at Brig, and in an instant the picture had
dissolved. The man in brown dropped the _ruecksack_, and ran as I have
never seen man run before--ran as if he wore seven-leagued boots. My
revolver was not loaded, and all the cartridges were among my shirts
and collars, on Finois' back, therefore I could pursue him with
nothing more dangerous than anathemas, unless I had deserted the boy,
who seemed at first glance to be almost as near fainting as
Innocentina.

Reluctantly letting the man go free, I bent over the little figure