Adventure Magazine Cover — page 159: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Way of Sinners trembling ceased; we said nothing, but looked. Looked. Until suddenly, Anita bent, and snatched up the brocaded bag. “Nay,” says she, and flung it over the precipice. ‘Not so.” ‘‘What then?” I asked hoarsely. Still our eyes held. “Sure of all people we should not need pinchbeck intrigue,” says she. “Why should I pretend I know not what I know: why make love like a whore in a tavern?” She was breathing heavily; so was I. Now she came close and laid her hands on my mailed sleeve, and looked closely into my face. “T do know well our situation,” she said; and paused. “Francesco, dost thou love me?”’ “As my life; thou art—thou art all—”’ ‘““And I love thee,” she said; and went back to the rampart; I stood still, rooted to the spot until, turning, she began to walk slowly along the wall, and then I followed her. Up to the angle where the tower marked the turn of the battlement, she moved steadily; but where the moon-cast shadow fell deep-blue across the stones, she stopped, and of a sudden, turned. Her eyes shone in that half-dark with a strange fire. ‘“‘Francesco!”’ she cried in a soft, sweet voice of fear. And I crushed her in my arms. CHAPTER XV IN WHICH I SWALLOW MY PRIDE T WAS nigh a week after, that we found out the desertion of the steward; he had tied a rope to . one of the shackles of the preci- pice-turret and had slid down the same; he, the fearful man that had kept his room since the siege began, for fear of the half-dozen 153 blind balls that might fall in the court- yard daily! And here I do protest against the legend that only great, pure ends to be attained, can force men to prodigies of valor; after some experience both of men and of their prodigies, I do believe the con- trary. Sure I have seen some do well enough for loyalty, for gratitude, and for love; give up their lives, even. But the useful desperadoes; the fellows that would attack the impossible, smiling, and not ose their lives either, were those on treachery bent; or after some great advantage for themselves; or, if there was a woman in the case, who lusted rather than loved. The steward (it was Anita guessed it, when his absence was reported, and the rope found) had from his window espied us together on the battlements; I know not what he had seen—no great matter, evi- dently; but it was to tell Count Roberto of. it that he had risked his trembling life. He was of the folk whose great proverb runs: “Pet the savage dog; the gentle one biteth not; and Roberto had been more brutal with him even than with the rest of his servants. Wherefore, in the terror which would not let the poor wretch sit still, with- out some action destined to save his hide, it was to be expected that he would betray Anita to this tyrant; for she had aye been kind to him. Ah me! matter. ‘‘Were it to have been hid from him,” says Anita, her white chin upflung, ‘“‘I would not have done it. And what is there to hide?” “He will say, sin,”’ I told her, staring at Roberto’s camp, whence a horseman was departing; ‘“‘and your brother likewise.” She bit her lip at mention of her brother; and burst forth with a vehemence that showed she feared him still. “Sin? ’Tis they have sinned, my brother above all, in this matter; sinned and lied about their sin. We have remedied their evil, and spoken truth. How then?” The reply to that, from point of view of the defense of that castle, and of our con- tinuing in this life was that the departing horseman had gone west, toward the coun- try where the duke was embattled; and, had I been alone, such would have been my point of view. The sight of Anita, proud and defiant as flame, her consideration of right and wrong as far above the No matter; we said it was no COnmiclbooks.c©