ped as it hit him, and then fastened on it like a beast of
prey.

In the twinkling of an eye he and his man were out of the inn. As
they ran to the place where the mule was tied to an old ring in the
crumbling wall of a half-ruined house near to the ascent to the
castle, the man told Nino that the fine gentleman had ridden toward
Trevi, down the valley, Nino mounted, and hastened in the same
direction.

As he rode he reflected that it would be wiser to meet the count on
his return, and pass him after the interview, as though going away
from Fillettino. It would be a little harder for the mule; but such
an animal, used to bearing enormous burdens for twelve hours at a
stretch, could well carry Nino only a few miles of good road before
sunset, and yet be fresh again by midnight. One of those great sleek
mules, if good-tempered, will tire three horses, and never feel the
worse for it. He therefore let the beast go her own pace along the
road to Trevi, winding by the brink of the rushing torrent: sometimes
beneath great overhanging cliffs, sometimes through bits of cultivated
land, where the valley widens; and now and then passing under some
beech-trees, still naked and skeleton-like in the bright March air.

But Nino rode many miles, as he thought, without meeting the count,
dangling his feet out of the stirrups, and humming snatches of song to
himself to pass the time. He looked at his watch,--a beautiful gold
one, given him by a very great personage in Paris,--and it was
half-past two o'clock. Then, to avoid tiring his mule, he got off and
sat by a tree, at a place where he could see far along the road. But
three o'clock came, and a quarter past, and he began to fear that the
count had gone all the way to Trevi. Indeed, Trevi could not be very
far off, he thought. So he mounted again, and paced down the valley.
He says that in all that time he never thought once of what he should
say to the count when he met him, having determined in his mind once
and for all what was to be asked; to which the only answer must be
"yes" or "no."

At last, before he reached the turn in the valley, and just as the sun
was passing down behind the high mountains on the left, beyond the
stream, he saw the man he had come out to meet, not a hundred yards
away, riding toward him on his great horse, at a foot pace. It was the
count, and he seemed lost in thought, for his head was bent on his
breast, and the reins hung carelessly loose from h