Evil tidings have their own trick of spreading abroad. You cannot bury them. The news which had come secretly to Venice was known from the Giudecca to Madonna dell'Orto in two hours. Before noon it was in Murano.

Young Zuan Gradenigo, making his way on foot from the crowded Merceria into the Piazza di San Marco, ran upon his friend, the young German captain, whom men called Il Lupo—his name was WÖlfart—and learned, what almost every other man in the city already knew, how Lewis of Hungary, taking excuse of a merchant ship looted in Venetian waters, was on his way to a second invasion, and had given over the Dalmatian towns to the ban of Bosnia to ravage.

The two men were still eagerly discussing the matter and its probable outcome, half an hour later, standing beside one of the gayly painted booths which, at this time—the spring of 1355—were clustered about the foot of the great Campanile, when a servant in the livery of the doge touched young Zuan's arm and, in a low tone, gave him a message.

Gradenigo turned back to the German.

"My uncle wishes to see me at once in the palace," he said. "If you are not pressed, go to my house and wait for me there. I may have important news for you." Then, with a parting wave of the hand, he went quickly across the Piazzetta and under the gateway to the right of St. Mark's.

At the head of the great stair two men were awaiting him, and they led him at once through a narrow passage with secret sliding-doors to an inner cabinet of the private apartments of the newly elected doge, his uncle, Giovanni Gradenigo.

The doge sat alone in a great carven chair before a table which was littered with papers and with maps and with writing-materials. From a high window at one side colored beams of light slanted down and rested in crimson and blue splashes upon the dark oak of the table and what lay there, and upon the rich velvet of the doge's robe, and upon his peculiar cap of office. He was not a very old man, but he was far from strong. Indeed, even at this time he was slowly wasting away with the disease which carried him off a year later, but as he sat there, bowed before the table, he looked old and very worn and tired. His face had no color at all. It was like a dead man's face—cold and damp.

And yet, although he was ill and seemed quite unfit for labors or duties of any sort, he was in reality an unusually keen and shrewd man, capable of unremitting toil. There burned somewhere within the shrunken, pallid body an astonishingly fierce flame of life. He had been elected to office hard upon the Faliero catastrophe partly because his name was one of the very greatest in Venice—two others of his house had worn the cap and ring within the century past—but chiefly because his sympathies were as remote as possible from the liberal views of the poor old man who had preceded him. He was patrician before all else, and fiercely tenacious of patrician rights—fiercely proud of his name and possessions.

He did not move as his nephew entered the room, only his pale eyes rose slowly to the young man's face and as slowly dropped again to the table before him. Young Zuan pulled forward one of the heavy, uncomfortable chairs of carved wood and sat down in it. He was wondering very busily what his uncle wanted of him, but he knew the old man too well to ask questions. Besides that, it would not have been respectful.

Presently the pale eyes rose again.

"You have—heard?" asked the doge, in his thin voice.

Young Zuan nodded.

"It is all over Venice," he said. "That Angevin devil Lewis is coming westward again, and, to begin with, has set his friend the ban on Zara and Spalato. He chose his time well, God knows!" He paused a moment as if in expectation of comment, but old Giovanni's face was a death-mask, immobile, and he went on: "As Il Lupo, the German captain, said to me a quarter of an hour ago, 'Venice is a very sick man—poison within, wounds without.' We shall lose Dalmatia."

Old Giovanni nodded once or twice, and for a moment he closed his pale eyes, sitting quite motionless in his great chair. It was as if he ceased even to breathe. Then, quite suddenly, the eyes snapped open and a swift flame of rage seemed to leap up in the old man, amazing in its unexpectedness. A momentary patch of crimson glowed upon each of the gray cheeks.

"That dog may have Dalmatia," he cried, "but, by God and by my ring of office! I'm damned if he shall have Arbe! I won't give up Arbe! I want to die there!"

Now Arbe needs a very brief word of comment. It was, and is, one of the northern Dalmatian islands—a tiny island, claw-fashioned, ten miles long, perhaps, not more than a mile wide at its thickest. It is hemmed about by greater isles—Veglia to the north, Cherso and Lussin Grande to the west, Pago to the south. Eastward the high, bare, rocky rampart of the Croatian hills rises sheer from the sea, almost throwing its shadow over the island that nestles under it. The northern expanse of Arbe is wooded, but at the extremity of one south-stretching claw sits a city in miniature.

It was at this time, and had been for more than a century, a summer resort for several of the great Venetian families, who had built there villas and campanili and churches as beautiful as anything beside the Grand Canal, though no more beautiful than those of the true, native, Arbesan families, such as the De Dominis and Nemira and Zudeneghi. As a witness that I do not lie, you may see the ruins of them even now—magnificent ruins, dwelt in by a horde of fishermen. And among these great families, by far the foremost had been the Gradenigo. There were three Gradenigo villas, cloistered and courtyarded, which were magnificent enough to be called palaces; a Gradenigo had, early in the thirteenth century, built the highest and finest of the four campanili—it still stands; a Gradenigo had been several times count of the island. Hence, as you see, Arbe was peculiarly a Gradenigo pride. It was the apple of their eye. Hence also you will comprehend old Giovanni's sudden flare of rage. His withered heart was wrung with fear. He saw, I have no doubt, hideous visions of the ban's barbarians slaying, looting, wielding torch and hammer in his fairy-land.

Young Zuan looked up with new concern.

"A-ah!" he said, half under his breath. "Arbe!—I had not thought of Arbe." His tone took on a shade of doubt.

"Is it likely," he wondered, aloud, "that the ban will go out of his way to attack the island? It's of no value whatever, strategically. It would be mere wanton vandalism."

"And what," snarled old Giovanni, "is that mongrel Bosnian but a vandal? 'Likely,' say you? It is more than that. The dog has sworn to take Arbe and give it to that Magyar strumpet of his, Yaga. He knows nothing would hurt me more. He went about Zara, a week ago, boasting openly of what he meant to do—so the word comes."

Young Zuan flushed red and cursed under his breath.

"That is beyond bearing!" he said. "That woman in Arbe? That shameless, thieving wanton who stole away Natalia Volutich?"

The doge nodded, licking his blue lips. "The same," he said. "The ban's Yaga would appear to have a grudge against the house of Gradenigo."

About a year before this time, for the sake of cementing a closer union between the two republics, a marriage had been arranged between young Zuan Gradenigo and the daughter of the Ragusan Senator Volutich. But before Zuan had reached Ragusa to make his visit of ceremony and see his prospective bride, the girl, riding with her women a little way beyond the land gate of the town, had been stolen by brigands. Such things were by no means extraordinary. Nothing had been heard of her since, save that, a fortnight after her capture, a letter, couched in most insulting terms, had come to Ragusa from the Princess Yaga, that infamous favorite of the ban, saying that the girl was in her household and somewhat preferred it to her former home.

"It's beyond bearing!" said young Zuan again, and he was so angry that his voice shook. Then, after the two had for a moment stared into each other's eyes, he threw out his hands with a little laugh of sheer exasperation.

"But what can we do?" he cried. "Madonna Santissima, what can we do? With this war upon our hands the council will never consent to sending aid to Arbe, which is, after all, of importance to only a few families."

"They must consent!" said the doge, fiercely. "I will not lose Arbe! Look you! Who are the families concerned? Loredan, Morosini, Dandolo, Celsi, Venier, Contarini, Corner. All of them members of the Ten. I will see them, and, among us, we shall be able to arrange it. The thing must remain a private matter. We who love Arbe must go to Arbe's aid unofficially. Three galleys will suffice. They must leave to-night, and the council must not know of it until after they have sailed."

Young Zuan looked up with a certain awe, for the scheme, when one considered the state of internal affairs in Venice at that time, was almost madness.

"It is a desperate plan," he said, gravely. "You must feel very deeply to risk such a scheme, after the Faliero affair."

Old Giovanni Gradenigo beat his yellow hand upon the table before him, and once again the two spots of color came out upon his sunken cheeks.

"I will not lose Arbe!" he cried for the third time. "Leave the risk and the arrangements to me. As for you, Zuan, you must go at the head of the expedition. I want a Gradenigo to rescue my island, and you are the only one of the house who is experienced in warfare."

"Oh yes, of course I should go," said Zuan. "I have the best right." He rose to take his leave. "I shall have a busy day of it," he said, "but I can have the three galleys ready before midnight, and secretly at that. I shall take Il Lupo with me. He is very faithful and a better man than I. When shall I come to you for instructions and authority? I must have authority to clear the galleys, of course."

"Come to-night when I send for you," said the doge. "Everything shall be ready for you." He had sunk wearily back in his great chair once more, and all signs of life had faded from his face. It seemed to his nephew that he looked more than ever like a dead man. He raised one feeble hand a little way as if in sign of dismissal, but the hand dropped back upon the carved wood of the chair-arm with a sort of dry rattle, and Zuan left him so, still, silent, deathly, with the bars of colored light from the high window slanting across his velvet robes in billets and lozenges of vert and gules and azure.

The three galleys which slipped gently out of the canal of the Giudecca that night bore southward before a favoring maestrale. Of one galley young Zuan Gradenigo held the command, of another the German called Il Lupo, and of the third a Venetian captain whose name does not matter. By noon of the next day they were off Lussin Grande, and hove to, well out of sight of land, to await the darkness. They saw during the day nothing to disturb them. No ship passed save a Venetian fishing-boat or two, high-prowed and with colored triangular sails painted with some device; also, in the afternoon, three great trabacoli south bound from Trieste or Pola, bluff-bowed craft, with hawse-ports painted to represent ferocious eyes.

Towards evening the maestrale died away, as it so often does in these waters, and from the south a sirocco arose, bringing a rack of clouds over the sky and a heavy dampness to the air. Before dark it was freshening fast and a fine rain was beginning to drive. The three galleys pitched and plunged heavily in the mounting sea. Young Gradenigo signalled to the two other ships, and, leading the way himself, ran for the southern point of Lussin. He knew that, once within the shelter of the islands and scoglie, he would be well out of danger, for there is never a sea there, even though a storm may be raging outside.

By the time he reached the tranquil shelter between Lussin and Pago the night had fallen, black dark. It rained in spells, but once in a while the driving rack overhead parted for a moment and a flash of moonlight came down. Young Zuan ordered the galley brought to, and waited for one of these momentary floods of light. The light came, touching with silver the great, tumbling seas outside the barrier reef, but the seas were empty. There were no galleys making for the southern point of Lussin. Gradenigo turned with an oath of surprise to the old sailing-master who stood beside him, sheltering his eyes from the wind with one brown hand.

"They have been driven northward," he said. "They'll have to run between Cherso and the main-land and beat south again by Veglia." The sailing-master shook his head gloomily.

"It is a bad night, lord," said he. "That sea will be hell in another hour." And he moved off forward to give orders to his men.

There seemed nothing for it but to go on, and, in the sheltered cove at the north of Arbe, where the disembarkment was to take pace, await the other ships. Young Zuan felt no great anxiety over them; he was sure that they had merely been driven northward, and would have to round Cherso, and then make their way down again through the sheltered "canal" between that island and Veglia. His only fear was that they might not reach Arbe before morning, in which case the relief of the city—granting always that the ban's expedition had already occupied it—would have to be delayed until another night.

He put about again, and, running before the strong sirocco (the wind, of course, reaches these sheltered waters, somewhat abated, though there is no sea), made out the lights of Arbe within two hours. In another hour, leaving the galley well to the west of the island and hidden in the gloom, he was in a skiff, rowed by two strong sailor-men, creeping round the walls of the city.

Now it has been said that the city occupies a southward-jutting claw of rock. The villas and streets, indeed, crowd to the very edge of the narrow ridge. On the western side the sea-wall, a hundred feet high, rises sheer from the water, and is continued upward by the walls of the buildings. Eastward, however, round the point, the land slopes lower, and here is a sheltered cove in the crook of the rocky claw, with a mole and landing-place of hewn stone. Upon the landing-place opens a public square.

Young Zuan in his skiff crept round the point, and, always under the shelter of the sea-wall, into the still harbor where was the landing-place. Fifty yards from the point where the sea-wall dropped to the water's level and the open square began, he halted. From the wall near by lion heads of carved stone projected, and in each beast's mouth hung a great bronze ring for mooring ships. One of the two sailor-men laid hold of a ring and held the skiff steady, and Zuan rose to his feet to look.

Far over his head the wind—driving a thin rain before it once more—shrieked and whistled past the roofs of Arbe, and flapped the gay awnings which hung over the marble balconies. Once, above the wind's noise, a woman's shriek rose and held and then died suddenly. Beyond, in the open square, a great fire blazed on the flags, and hurrying men in strange dress threw armfuls of fuel upon it. Others held hands and danced about the fire in a ring, like devils, singing a weird and wild chant. It was a fine chant and stirring, and these Huns sang it well, but to young Zuan Gradenigo's ears it was the baying of unclean dogs.

He dropped back upon the thwart of his skiff with a sobbing curse. The ban's Magyar strumpet was set where the ban had sworn to set her.

"Row to the galley!" he said, and as the two sailor-men bent to their work, standing at their oars gondolier fashion, and the skiff leaped forward through the wet gloom, he laid his face in his hands and it twisted and worked bitterly. He was by no means a coward, and he was not a particularly imaginative man, but the picture of that leaping fire and the leaping, chanting devils about it persisted before his eyes, and he looked forward to the struggle which was to come, and an odd premonition of disaster took possession of him and would not be driven away.

In the tiny sheltered cove of rendezvous, two miles above the city, they anchored the galley and disembarked. There is a rocky headland beside the cove, high at its outer end, and here certain trusty officers took their station, with lanterns muffled in their cloaks, to watch for the approach of the other two ships. Young Zuan went within a deserted fisherman's hut which stood where wood and beach met, and there held council with his sailing-master and his chief lieutenant. He was still strong in the belief that Il Lupo's ship and the other were safe and would arrive in a few hours—it was by now somewhat after midnight—but the old sailing-master again shook a gloomy head. He had served Venice for forty years on land and sea, and he was a pessimist.

There arose cries and shoutings without, and a petty officer burst into the hut, puffed with importance and pride.

"Prisoners, lord!" he reported. "Three spies caught skulking and peeping in the wood."

"Bring them in!" said young Zuan. "And keep those men quiet outside. Do you wish the whole island to know we are here?"

The prisoners were thrust into the room—great, squat, hairy fellows in the barbaric dress of Huns, surly and villanous. They would not speak. It was evident that they understood neither Italian nor Greek, and they affected not to comprehend the sailing-master's halting efforts at their own tongue. They only stared under their shaggy brows, silent and stolid, and tugged at the hands which were bound behind them.

"Are these men?" cried out young Zuan, in fine Venetian scorn. "Take the cattle away! Bind their feet and set a guard over them. Hark! What is that?"

That was a woman's scream from without, low and very angry.

"But a woman, lord," explained the officer who had brought in the prisoners—"a young wench who was prowling with these fellows and was taken with them. Asking your lordship's pardon, I thought it idle to bring her to you—a common wench."

"Take these men away," said young Gradenigo, "and bring in the woman. It may be that she speaks a Christian tongue."

She crept into the hut, pressing against the side of the doorway, and stood against the farther wall—a girl, a mere slip of a girl, with her long brown hair down over her eyes. And there against the wall she stood, shaking, her hands twisting together over her breast, and her eyes, like the eyes of a hunted, cornered animal, went swiftly from one face to another of the men across the room, and finally settled upon the face of Zuan Gradenigo, and did not stir for a long time.

She stood in her thin white shift, and on her bared arms were marks as if rough hands and none too clean had been there.

When young Zuan spoke his voice was gentle and kindly, the maid was so sore beset, so full of fear, so alone.

"Do you—understand Italian?" he asked. The maid did not answer him, but when she spoke she spoke in perfectly fluent Venetian dialect—as good Venetian as Gradenigo's own. And the fear seemed to go from her, giving place to anger.

"My garments, lord!" she said, and laid her bruised arms across her bosom in a little, pitiful gesture of outraged modesty. "Your men have taken them from me. I am ashamed, lord. They—laid their foul hands on my arms." Her face twisted as at the memory of insult, and the lieutenant who stood across the room laughed aloud. Young Zuan turned upon him fiercely.

"Hold your laughter for a fitter excuse!" he said. "Are we Huns, to insult women? Go out to those men and find the maid's garments. Bring them here." The man went, staring, and, at a motion of Gradenigo's head, the sailing-master followed him, leaving the two alone.

"I am sorry, child," said Zuan Gradenigo. "We did not come here to ill-treat women. I shall see that my men are punished for what they have done. Meanwhile—" He took up the mantle which he had put aside over a near-by bench, and, crossing the room, laid it over the girl's shoulders. It covered her almost to the feet. And when he had done this he stood, for what he imagined to be a moment, looking down into the eyes that held his so steadily—brave eyes, unafraid, unclouded, unwavering. One could not be harsh or cruel in the gaze of such—even though they looked from the face of an enemy. An enemy? Nonsense! A girl taken by chance as she wandered through the wood—as she peeped, full of childish curiosity, at the disembarkment of a ship's load of soldiers. Brave eyes, unafraid. That was why they held him so, because they fronted him without fear—even with trust.

Ay, doubtless that was why they held him so, and yet—He stirred restlessly. Such great eyes! With such illimitable depths! How came a wandering child by such eyes? They moved him oddly. The child would seem to be an uncommon child. Those steady, burning eyes of hers had some uncommon power, worked some strange spell, some sorcery, not evil, but unfamiliarly sweet, unknown to his experience.

He gave a little, confused laugh and raised an uncertain hand towards his head, but the girl had, at the same moment, put out one of her own hands to fasten the clasp of Zuan's mantle at her throat, and his fingers touched her arm.

At that, as if it brought back her injuries to mind, she dropped her eyes, and the man was loosed incontinently from his chains.

"Lord!" she cried again, flushing red in the light of the lanterns, "they put their foul hands upon me! They put their hands upon me!" The very present peril in which she might well have believed herself to stand seemed not to occur to her. It seemed that only those rough, befouling hands were in her mind. Her face gave once more its little, shivering twist of anger and repulsion.

"They shall be punished, child!" said Zuan Gradenigo, between tight lips. "Oh, they shall suffer for it, you may be sure. And now"—he took a turn away from her, for her great eyes were upon him again, level and unafraid—"now will you tell me who you are and how you came to be found with those barbarians to-night? Surely you can have no traffic with such. Surely you are a lady. I have seen that." And indeed he had seen, while the girl stood in her thin white shift, how beautifully she was made—deep-bosomed, slim-waisted, with tapering wrists and ankles, and round white throat. No common wench was there. There was good blood under that white skin of hers.

"Surely you are a lady," said young Zuan, but the girl bent her head from him.

"Nay, lord," she said, very low, "I am only—a serving-maid to the Princess Yaga."

The red flamed into Zuan's cheeks.

"That woman!" he cried. "You serve that vile fiend in human flesh, that royal strumpet, that wanton at whose name men spit? You?" The girl stared at him under her brows.

"Oh!" cried Zuan Gradenigo. "Where is God that hell could devise such a wrong? What was God doing that you should stray into such clutches and He not know? That—that monster of vice and uncleanness!" He pointed a shaking hand towards the south.

"There she sits," said he, "polluting the castle where Jacopo Corner has sat for so many years, where my grandfather sat before him, and his father before him. There she sits gloating; but, by God and St. Mark's lion! before this week is over I shall tear her head from her body and throw it to the dogs. Nay! better than that! I shall send it, in the name of Venice, to the ban who sent her here to shame us."

"Lord!" said the maid, very low—"lord! Oh, you do not know! You—speak wildly. You do not know what you say."

"I know," said Zuan Gradenigo, "that all I say is true. That woman's name is infamous throughout Europe. It is a name of scorn. It means all that is vile—as you must know. Will Arbe ever be clean from her—even when we have washed its stones with her blood? But you!" he cried, in a new voice. "Oh, child, that you should have to serve her—be near to her! I cannot think of it with calmness."

The maid turned a little away from him and moved over to the wooden bench where Zuan's mantle had lain. And she seated herself at one end of the bench, looking across the room at him very soberly.

"And why not I, lord," she asked, "as well as another? What do you know of me? I am—a serving-maid, and such must serve whomever they may." He came nearer and stared into her face, and his own was oddly troubled, frowning.

"I cannot think of you—so," he said. "A serving-maid? There's something strange here. Oh, child, you have something about you—I cannot say what it is, for I have no words. I fight, I am not a poet, but were I such, I think—your eyes—their trick of looking—their—I cannot say what I mean. A serving-maid? Oh, child, you are fitter for velvets and jewels! I do not understand. Something breathes from you," he said, with that trouble upon his frowning face, an odd trouble in his eyes—bewildered, uncomprehending—like a child's eyes before some mystery. "Something breathes from you. I do not know what it is."

The maid looked at him in the yellow, flickering lantern-light, and she made as though she would speak, but in the end shook her head and turned it a little aside, and sat once more silent. And for a time the man also was silent, watching her averted face and thinking how amazingly beautiful it was; not white with the pallor which the Venetian women so prized, but sumptuously rich of color, sun-kissed, free, unashamed of the wholesome blood which flowed under its golden skin and stained it with red on either cheek. He found himself possessed of a mad desire to touch that cheek which was nearest him with his finger, and the sheer folly, the childishness of the thought would in any other mood have shaken a laugh of scorn from him. He was not a woman's man, as he had said, but a fighter.

One of the maid's hands stirred in her lap and dropped beside her on the wooden bench. The lantern-light fell upon it—long, slender, tapering.

"Your hand, child!" said young Zuan. "It is not the hand of a serving-maid. It has never done rough tasks."

"My princess is kind to me, lord," she said. "My tasks are easy."

He put out an uncertain hand and touched the hand that lay in the lantern-light. The maid drew a little, quick, gasping breath, and her eyes turned to him, great and dark. Then, like two silly, half-grown children caught holding hands, they both flushed red and their eyes turned aside once more.

Zuan raised a hand to his temples, where the blood throbbed.

"I—do not know what has come over me," he said, and turned a few steps away across the room. In a moment he was back again, on one knee before her.

"You lay a spell upon me!" he cried, whispering into her bent face. "I am unmanned. Strange things stir my heart, child—mount to my head like wine. You lay a spell upon me."

"No, lord," she said, very low. "I am but a maid. I cannot work spells or sorcery. It is only that I am alone and beset and miserable. It is pity that you feel, lord. Ah, you are kind and merciful. Lord, I—wish that I might do you a service for the service you have done me."

"Pity?" said young Zuan.

"Pity, lord," she said again, and to his awkward, unskilful tongue and to his unaccustomed hands no occupation seemed to come, so that he knelt silent and troubled before her in the lantern-light.

If it seem that enchantment came overswiftly upon him, overprecipitately, it must be borne in mind that he was a soldier, wholly unused to a woman's company, and that this girl, young, beautiful, and in sore straits, was brought before him in the manner most certain to waken his chivalry—ay, to stir his ready heart. The maid spoke shrewdly. It was pity he felt. But other emotions wait hard upon pity's threshold. Further, in young Zuan's day, love came swiftly or not at all. It was not the day of courtship. Love was born of a look—a smile—a hand-touch. And such love has wrecked empires. It is a sober truth that no great passion was ever of slow maturing.

There came from without the door eager voices and quick steps, and the lieutenant whom Zuan had sent to fetch the maid's outer garments—krozet, saruk, and girdle—burst into the room. His eyes were round, starting out of his head, and his face was flushed with excitement.

"She's still here, lord?" he cried out, almost before he had entered. "The woman is here? You have not let her go?" His gaze searched the hut swiftly.

"She is here," said Zuan Gradenigo, "but you will speak more respectfully. Give me the garments!" The man's excitement was too great to heed reproofs. He thrust the things he held into his master's arms.

"See!" he cried. "See the girdle—the necklace—the charm she wore about her neck! See whom we have taken!"

Young Zuan looked at the jewels, and they slipped from his fingers and fell, flashing in the light, and lay about his feet. He turned very slowly towards the girl, who stood against the farther side of the wall, and his eyes were once more like a child's eyes—bewildered, hurt, uncomprehending. He stretched out a hand towards her, and the hand shook and wavered.

"It is the princess herself!" cried the lieutenant. "It is Yaga!" and fell into a chattering, hysterical laugh.

"It is not—true," whispered Zuan Gradenigo, across the little room. "Say it is not true!" His voice rose to a sharp, agonized appeal, but there was no conviction in his tone. He knew.

At the name the girl had cried out suddenly, and to smother the cry she caught her two hands up to her mouth. Even then her eyes went from one man to the other, swift and keen.

"Say it is not true!" pleaded Zuan Gradenigo, but the lieutenant babbled on, stammering in his excitement.

"See, Messer Zuan! We have her! We have her fast! Why not set sail at once with her on board—at once, before they in the city know she is taken? Why not? See! they are helpless without her. We can force them to give up Arbe for her. She is worth fifty Arbes to them—all of Dalmatia, perhaps. Why not do that? Messer Lupo's galley has not come, nor the other. We can do nothing alone. Take her on board, lord, before it is too late, and set sail. Leave Arbe to itself for a little. The Huns will give it up to us. Come, come!"

It is doubtful if young Zuan even heard. His eyes, stricken and hopeless, were upon the girl across the room, and he whispered over and over again:

"Say it is not true! Say it is not true!" But the woman's eyes were upon the floor, and her hands dropped to her breast, and then to her side with a little forlorn gesture, and she bent her head.

"It is true, lord," she said. "I am the princess Yaga."

The lieutenant gave a great shout and dashed out to his fellows. Young Zuan dropped down upon the near-by bench, covering his face.

Then the woman came to him, crossing the room swiftly, and dropped upon her knees on the floor beside him.

"Lord!" she said, touching his arm with her two hands—"lord, it would have been of no avail to deny it. You would have found me out in time. I am that—dreadful woman, lord; perhaps not so dreadful as you have thought; perhaps men have lied about me—made things worse than they truly are. Still—lord—" She crept closer to him on her knees, and her hands pressed eagerly at his arm. "Lord, it was wise, very wise, what your officer begged you to do. You have me fast—the ban's Yaga. Will you not set sail with me and leave Arbe? Will you not hold me hostage for your island? The ban will give it up to you in exchange for me. Lord, will you not do this?" She pleaded with him in an odd tone of eager anxiety which might have aroused his suspicions had the man been less overwhelmed in his misery. I do not think he heard more than the pleading voice. I do not think he followed her words at all.

"Lord!" she cried again, shaking his arm with her two hands, "will you not do this? It will be best for you. Oh, far best! Listen, lord! You have been kind to me, gentle and pitiful. You saved me from—from great shame at the hands of those men. You saved me when you knew that I must be an enemy—even though you did not know how great an enemy—and now I am trying to save you. You are in great danger, lord, you and your men. Will you not listen to me?"

Young Zuan raised a white face, and his eyes looked bitterly into the woman's eyes that burned so near.

"Danger?" he said, dully, under his breath. It seemed as if he did not care. "What danger?"

And then, as if his gaze held for her some of the strange sorcery which hers had laid upon him, the woman faltered in her swift speech, and she gave a little sob.

"Oh!" she cried. "Why did I not know? Why did I not know?"

"What danger?" repeated Zuan Gradenigo, as if the words meant nothing to him.

"They know that you are here, lord," she said. "We knew, in the city, that you were coming. The fishing-boat which passed you this morning at sea brought us news of three galleys from Venice. Now two of your galleys have been blown away by the sirocco. You are but a few men, a handful, and you will be overwhelmed. Oh, lord, we whom your men took to-night were spying upon you, but there were three more who escaped—three more men. They will have reached the city before this time, and you may be attacked at any moment. Lord, why do you sit there silent? Why will you not take me on board your ship and sail away?"

It came dully to Gradenigo's mind, through the stress and whirl which obscured it, that the maid showed a strange eagerness, out of reason.

"Why do you tell me this?" he asked, suddenly. "Why not let your barbarians capture us—put us to death? Why do you wish to defeat your own cause? There's trickery here." He rose to his feet, frowning, but the woman was before him.

"If you—cannot see—lord," she said, and a bit of bright color came into her cheeks, "then I cannot tell you." Suddenly she put out her two hands upon his breast and fell to sobbing.

"I will not have you killed!" she cried. "Oh, lord, I will not have you taken or slain! For your men I care nothing. They may die where they stand and it will be nothing to me, but you—lord, I cannot bear to have you taken!" There was no trickery in that. It came from the woman's soul, shaking her sorely.

Zuan looked at her, this slim, pale girl shaken with her sobbing—this monster of vice and sin, at whose name men spat with derision—and again he felt the strange, paralyzing weakness creep over him. He could not hate her. He turned his eyes away and shook himself into attention.

"Come!" he said, "we will go. You cannot be lying to me. We will go."

But before he could take a step there arose in the night without a babel of cries and screams and the clashing of steel. Above it all the same strange, barbaric chant which those devils leaping about the fire in the landing-place of the city had sung together.

"Too late!" cried the girl. "Oh, too late! They are here already!"

Zuan Gradenigo sprang silently for his sword, which he had laid aside in a far corner of the room, but as he did so the woman threw herself upon the half-open door of the hut and crashed it to, swinging the great bar into place.

"You shall not go!" she said, in a gasping whisper. "You shall not go out there to be slain!"

"Out of my way!" cried Zuan, sword in hand. "Out of my way, or by Heaven I'll run you through! Would you have me skulk here while my men are fighting? Get out of my way!" He ran at her and caught her by the arm, swinging her aside from the door, but the woman was back again, on hands and knees, before he could recover his balance. She caught him about the knees with her arms, and she was as strong as a young animal and as lithe. He could not move.

He raised the Venetian dagger which he held in his left hand. His eyes were on fire.

"Once more," said he, "will you stand out of my way and let me go?" Outside, in the night, the cries and clash of arms clamored on, and that barbaric chant, broken sometimes, sometimes swelling loud and triumphant, rang over all.

"You shall not go through this door!" gasped the woman, clinging fast to young Zuan's knees. "They are four to one out there. They would kill you the moment you stepped beyond the door."

Strategy came to her, and she shot out a bare arm towards the single window.

"Go by the window!" she cried. "It opens upon a thicket. They will not see you there." She loosed him and he sprang for the window, swinging away the bar and pushing open the heavy wooden shutters.

The woman was upon his heels as he leaped into the night, but he did not know or care. Through the tangle of shrubbery and vine in which he found himself he could see the battle raging in the clear space of the beach beyond, and towards it he fought his way. A heavy creeper laid hold upon his ankles, and, cursing savagely, he slashed at it with his sword. A little rise of ground was before him. He mounted it in a single leap, and from its crest leaped again.

Then he fell a long way, crashing first through the mask of thicket which covered a narrow ravine, striking thence upon the earth of the farther side and rolling down that. Once or twice he threw out his hands to catch himself, but as he slipped and fell again his head struck upon something hard—a stone, probably—and that was the last he knew.