out upon bloody business!' Angelo told him
that he had now an opportunity of earning the approval of Barto Rizzo,
and then said, 'On,' and they went in the track of the two whitecoats;
the innkeeper murmuring all the while that he wanted the approval of
Barto Rizzo as little as his enmity; he wanted neither frost nor fire.
The glacier being traversed, they skirted a young stream, and arrived at
an inn, where they found the soldiers regaling. Jacopo was informed by
them that the lady whom they were pursuing had not passed. They pushed
their wine for Angelo to drink: he declined, saying that he had sworn
not to drink before he had shot the chamois with the white cross on his
back.

'Come: we're two to one,' they said, 'and drink you shall this time!'

'Two to two,' returned Angelo: 'here is my Jacopo, and if he doesn't
count for one, I won't call him father-in-law, and the fellow living at
Cles may have his daughter without fighting for her.'

'Right so,' said one of the soldiers, 'and you don't speak bad German
already.'

'Haven't I served in the ranks?' said Angelo, giving a bugle-call of the
reveille of the cavalry.

He got on with them so well that they related the object of their
expedition, which was, to catch a runaway young rebel lady and hold her
fast down at Cles for the great captain--'unser tuchtiger Hauptmann.'

'Hadn't she a servant, a sort of rascal?' Angelo inquired.

'Right so; she had: but the doe's the buck in this chase.'

Angelo tossed them cigars. The valley was like a tumbled mountain, thick
with crags and eminences, through which the river worked strenuously,
sinuous in foam, hurrying at the turns. Angelo watched all the ways from
a distant height till set of sun. He saw another couple of soldiers meet
those two at the inn, and then one pair went up toward the vale-head.
It seemed as if Vittoria had disconcerted them by having chosen another
route.

'Padrone,' said Jacopo to him abruptly, when they descended to find a
resting-place, 'you are, I speak humbly, so like the devil that I must
enter into a stipulation with you, before I continue in your company,
and take the worst at once. This is going to be the second night of my
sleeping away from my wife: I merely mention it. I pinch her, and she
beats me, and we are equal. But if you think of making me fight, I tell
you I won't. If there was a furnace behind me, I should fall into it
rather than run against a bayonet. I 've heard say that