"An Orsini, an Orsini," shouted the multitude; "on, on!" and, despite
the prayers and remonstrances of the boy, he was placed in the
thickest of the crowd, and borne, or rather dragged along with the
rest--frightened, breathless, almost weeping, with his poor little
garland still hanging on his arm, while a sling was thrust into his
unwilling hand. Still he felt, through all his alarm, a kind of childish
curiosity to see the result of the pursuit.

By the loud and eager conversation of those about him, he learned that
the vessel he had seen contained a supply of corn destined to a fortress
up the river held by the Colonna, then at deadly feud with the Orsini;
and it was the object of the expedition in which the boy had been thus
lucklessly entrained to intercept the provision, and divert it to
the garrison of Martino di Porto. This news somewhat increased his
consternation, for the boy belonged to a family that claimed the
patronage of the Colonna.

Anxiously and tearfully he looked with every moment up the steep ascent
of the Aventine; but his guardian, his protector, still delayed his
appearance.

They had now proceeded some way, when a winding in the road brought
suddenly before them the object of their pursuit, as, seen by the light
of the earliest stars, it scudded rapidly down the stream.

"Now, the Saints be blest!" quoth the chief; "she is ours!"

"Hold!" said a captain (a German) riding next to Martino, in a half
whisper; "I hear sounds which I like not, by yonder trees--hark! The
neigh of a horse!--by my faith, too, there is the gleam of a corselet."