"What, ho there! my helmet and breast-plate!"

"Stay, noble Orsini," said Stefanello. "The insult offered to thee is my
quarrel--mine was the deed--and against me speaks this degenerate scion
of our line. Adrian di Castello--sometime called Colonna--surrender your
sword: you are my prisoner!"

"Oh!" said Adrian, grinding his teeth, "that my ancestral blood did
not flow through thy veins--else--but enough! Me! your equal, and the
favoured Knight of the Emperor, whose advent now brightens the frontiers
of Italy!--me--you dare not detain. For your friends, I shall meet
them yet perhaps, ere many days are over, where none shall separate our
swords. Till then, remember, Orsini, that it is against no unpractised
arm that thou wilt have to redeem thine honour!"

Adrian, his drawn sword in his hand, strode towards the door, and passed
the Orsini, who stood, lowering and irresolute, in the centre of the
apartment.

Savelli whispered Stefanello. "He says, 'Ere many days be past!' Be
sure, dear Signor, that he goes to join Rienzi. Remember, the alliance
he once sought with the Tribune's sister may be renewed. Beware of him!
Ought he to leave the castle? The name of a Colonna, associated with the
mob, would distract and divide half our strength."

"Fear me not," returned Stefanello, with a malignant smile. "Ere you
spoke, I had determined!"

The young Colonna lifted the arras from the wall, opened a door, and
passed into a low hall, in which sate twenty mercenaries.

"Quick!" said he. "Seize and disarm yon stranger in the green
mantle--but slay him not. Bid the guard below find dungeons for his
train. Quick! ere he reach the gate."

Adrian had gained the open hall below--his train and his steed were in
sight in the court--when suddenly the soldiery of the Colonna, rushing
through another passage than that which he had passed, surrounded and
intercepted his retreat.

"Yield thee, Adrian di Castello," cried Stefanello from the summit of
the stairs; "or your blood be on your own head."

Three steps did Adrian make through the press, and three of his enemies
fell beneath his sword. "To the rescue!" he shouted to his band, and
already those bold and daring troopers had gained the hall. Presently
the alarum bell tolled loud--the court swarmed with soldiers. Oppressed
by numbers, beat down rather than subdued, Adrian's little train was
soon secured, and the flower of the Colonna, wounded, breathless,
disarmed, but still utter