was this?"

"On the Wednesday before Easter, as Monna Valentina was journeying from
Santa Sofia to Urbino."

No word spake the Duke in answer. He stood still, his head bowed, and
his thoughts running again on that conspiracy. The mountain fight in
which Masuccio had been killed had taken place on the Tuesday night, and
the conviction--scant though the evidence might be--grew upon him that
this man was one of the conspirators who had escaped.

"How came your lady to speak with this man--was he known to her?" he
inquired at last.

"No, Highness; but he was wounded, and so aroused her compassion. She
sought to minister to his hurt."

"Wounded?" cried Gian Maria, in a shout. "Now, by God, it is as I
suspected. I'll swear he got that wound the night before at Sant'
Angelo. What was his name, fool? Tell me that, and you shall go free."

For just a second the hunchback seemed to hesitate. He stood in awesome
fear of Gian Maria, of whose cruelties some ghastly tales were told. But
in greater fear he stood of the eternal damnation he might earn did he
break the oath he had plighted not to divulge that knight's identity.

"Alas!" he sighed, "I would it might be mine to earn my freedom at so
light a price; yet it is one that ignorance will not let me pay. I do
not know his name."