caught the sound of furious grunting from the sty, where I had
penned the hogs overnight, a little before sundown. Nat had watched
me as I numbered them, and it seemed now so long ago that I glanced
up with a start almost guilty, as though in my grief I had neglected
the poor brutes for days. In fact I had kept them in prison for a
short hour beyond their usual time, and some one even now was
liberating them.

It was the Princess, of whose presence I had not been aware.
She stood by the gate of the pen, her head and shoulders in sunlight,
while the hogs raced in shadow past her feet.

Marc'antonio glanced at her across his shoulder and growled angrily.

"Your pardon, Princess," said I, slowly, as she closed the gate after
the last of the hogs and came forward. "I have been remiss, but I
need no help either for this or for any of my work."

She halted a few paces from the grave. "You would rather be alone?"
she asked simply.

"I wish you to understand," said I, "that for the present I have no
choice at all but your will."

She frowned. "I thought to lighten your work, cavalier."

I was about to thank her ironically when the sound of a horn broke
the silence about us, its notes falling through the clear morning air
from the heights across the valley. The Corsicans dropped their
spades.

"Ajo, listen! Listen!" cried Marc'antonio, excitedly. "That will be
the Prince--listen again! Yes, and they are answering from the
mountain. It can be no other than the Prince, returning this way!"

While we stood with our faces upturned to the granite crags, I caught
the Princess regarding me doubtfully. Her gaze passed on as if to
interrogate Marc'antonio and Stephanu, who, however, paid no heed,
being preoccupied.

Again the horn sounded; not clear as before, although close at hand,
for the thick woods muffled it. For another three minutes we
waited--the Princess silent, standing a little apart, with thoughtful
brow, the two men conversing in rapid guttural undertones; then far
up the track beneath the boughs a musket-barrel glinted, and another
and another, glint following glint, as a file of men came swinging
down between the pines, disappeared for a moment, and rounding a
thicket of the undergrowth emerged upon the level clearing. In dress
and bearing they were not to be distinguished from Marc'antonio,
Stephanu, or any of the bandits on the mountain. Each man carried a
musket and each wore the jacket and br