erned him through a telescope. They had good news to revive him,
however: good at least in the main. Nagen had captured Carlo and Angelo,
they believed; but they had left Weisspriess near on Nagen's detachment,
and they furnished sound military reasons to show why, if Weisspriess
favoured the escape, they should not be present. They supposed that they
were not half-a-mile from the scene in the pass where Nagen was being
forcibly deposed from his authority: Merthyr borrowed Count Karl's
glass, and went as they directed him round a bluff of the descending
hills, that faced the vale, much like a blown and beaten sea-cliff.
Wilfrid and Karl were so certain of Count Ammiani's safety, that their
only thought was to get under good cover before nightfall, and
haply into good quarters, where the three proper requirements of the
soldier-meat, wine, and tobacco--might be furnished to them. After an
imperative caution that they should not present themselves before the
Countess Alessandra, Merthyr sped quickly over the broken ground. How
gaily the two young men cheered to him as he hurried on! He met a sort
of pedlar turning the bluntfaced mountain-spur, and this man said, "Yes,
sure enough, prisoners had been taken," and he was not aware of harm
having been done to them; he fancied there was a quarrel between two
captains. His plan being always to avoid the military, he had slunk
round and away from them as fast as might be. An Austrian common
soldier, a good-humoured German, distressed by a fall that had hurt
his knee-cap, sat within the gorge, which was very wide at the mouth.
Merthyr questioned him, and he, while mending one of his gathered
cigar-ends, pointed to a meadow near the beaten track, some distance up
the rocks. Whitecoats stood thick on it. Merthyr lifted his telescope
and perceived an eager air about the men, though they stood ranged in
careless order. He began to mount forthwith, but amazed by a sudden
ringing of shot, he stopped, asking himself in horror whether it could
be an execution. The shots and the noise increased, until the confusion
of a positive mellay reigned above. The fall of the meadow swept to
a bold crag right over the pathway, and with a projection that seen
sideways made a vulture's head and beak of it. There rolled a corpse
down the precipitous wave of green grass on to the crag, where it
lodged, face to the sky; sword dangled from swordknot at one wrist,
heels and arms were in the air, and the bod