Trembling, I glanced at my girdle: but a half of my chaplet hung there; the other was grasped in the tenacious hand of Rosario. Overwhelmed with terror, I attempted to escape; and, in the blindness of his fury, the old man struck me repeatedly with his sword, while he cried aloud for help. Transported with fury at the sight of my own blood, and dreading discovery, I became mad, and plunged yet deeper into crime: closing with him, my strength and youth prevailed over his frame, now enfeebled by age, wounds, and long campaigns; I struck him to the earth, and with his own sword stabbed him to the heart. His blood streamed over Paula—I remember nothing more. I fled to the hills, and, throwing off my upper vestments, wandered in wild places, far from the reach of the Grand Bailiff; who offered five hundred ducats for my head, sent the carbineers of Gradiska and the vassals of the duchy to hunt me down, and established such a close chain of communication along the frontiers that escape was almost impossible. He solemnly vowed to avenge the murder of Batello (who had been the friend and fellow-soldier of his father, the old Count of Lanthiri) and I should assuredly have become his victim, and been consigned to the gallows or the Holy Office, had I not been joined by Gaspare Truffi; who, after transferring to his own pouch every bajoccho in the convent treasury, had come to share my fortunes in the wilderness. Changing our attire, we embarked for Greece; but were captured off Calabria by a corsair of Tunis. Whereupon I instantly turned Mussulman, and served his highness the Bey with such courage and devotion, that, as Osman Carora, I became the idol of the Tunisians, and terror of the Mediterranean. Enough!—thou knowest the rest. Shipwreck and the fortune of war placed me in the power of my old friend Petronio—and I am here." "And Paula?" "Became Contessa di Lanthiri, and soon forgot poor Fra Lancelloti." Such was the story related to me by the third captive whom those vaults contained: I have jotted it down just as it was related to me; but without the many pauses of maudlin grief, or oaths of rage, with which his half-intoxicated state caused him to intersperse it. I need hardly add that I left this deliberate ruffian to his fate, locking all the doors securely behind me; and, to make the keeper more alert in future—as I intended to return no more—I left my false keys in his niche in the little chapel. The terrified warder, on finding a set of keys the exact counterpart of his own, declared they must have belonged either to Virgil or to the devil: they were destroyed, the vaults sprinkled with holy water, and the wizard was seen no more. *CHAPTER III.* *A NARROW ESCAPE.*