dungeon. All present, save the youthfuller Carlo, had suffered.
Imprisonment and exile marked the Chief. Ugo Corte, of Bergamo, had seen
his family swept away by the executioner and pecuniary penalties. Thick
scars of wounds covered the body and disfigured the face of Giulio
Bandinelli. Agostino had crawled but half-a-year previously out of his
Piedmontese cell, and Marco Sana, the Brescian, had in such a place
tasted of veritable torture. But if the calamity of a great oath was
upon them, they had now in their faithful prosecution of it the support
which it gives. They were unwearied; they had one object; the mortal
anguish they had gone through had left them no sense for regrets. Life
had become the field of an endless engagement to them; and as in battle
one sees beloved comrades struck down, and casts but a glance at their
prostrate forms, they heard the mention of a name, perchance, and with a
word or a sign told what was to be said of a passionate glorious heart at
rest, thanks to Austrian or vassal-Sardinian mercy.

So they lay there and discussed their plans.

"From what quarter do you apprehend the surprise?" Ugo Corte glanced up
from the maps and papers spread along the grass to question Carlo
ironically, while the latter appeared to be keeping rigid watch over the
safety of the position. Carlo puffed the smoke of a cigarette rapidly,
and Agostino replied for him:--

"From the quarter where the best donkeys are to be had."

It was supposed that Agostino had resumed the habit usually laid aside by
him for the discussion of serious matters, and had condescended to father
a coarse joke; but his eyes showed no spark of their well-known twinkling
solicitation for laughter, and Carlo spoke in answer gravely:--