by the two women. As they had said, a ray of
moonlight shone through the open window, and brought into prominence the
tranquil face of the old man, the sight of whose white hair had so
affected them.

This time they showed no mercy. One of them carried two great nails,
such as those portrayed in pictures of the Crucifixion; the other bore a
mallet: the first placed a nail upright over one of the old man's eyes;
the other struck it with the hammer, and drove it into his head. The
throat was pierced in the same way with the second nail; and thus the
guilty soul, stained throughout its career with crimes of violence, was
in its turn violently torn from the body, which lay writhing on the floor
where it had rolled.

The young girl then, faithful to her word, handed the sbirri a large
purse containing the rest of the sum agreed upon, and they left. When
they found themselves alone, the women drew the nails out of the wounds,
wrapped the corpse in a sheet, and dragged it through the rooms towards a
small rampart, intending to throw it down into a garden which had been
allowed to run to waste. They hoped that the old man's death would be
attributed to his having accidentally fallen off the terrace on his way
in the dark to a closet at the end of the gallery. But their strength
failed them when they reached the door of the last room, and, while
resting there, Lucrezia perceived the two sbirri, sharing the money
before making their escape. At her call they came to her, carried the
corpse to the rampart, and, from a spot pointed out by the women, where
the terrace was unfenced by any parapet, they threw it into an elder tree
below, whose branches retained' it suspended.

When the body was found the following morning hanging in the branches of
the elder tree, everybody supposed, as Beatrice and her stepmother had
foreseen, that Francesco, stepping over the edge of the 386 terrace in
the dark, had thus met his end. The body was so scratched and disfigured
that no one noticed the wounds made by the two nails. The ladies, as soon
as the news was imparted to them, came out from their rooms, weeping and
lamenting in so natural a manner as to disarm any suspicions. The only
person who formed any was the laundress to whom Beatrice entrusted the
sheet in which her father's body had been wrapped, accounting for its
bloody condition by a lame explanation, which the laundress accepted
without question, or pretended to do so; and i