If I have employed at times dishonest means, at least the purpose for which they have been employed has been unfalteringly, unswervingly honest, and one in the final achievement of which there can be only pride and a sense of duty done. To this if you believe it--and the facts will presently constrain you to do so, unless my fortune in the field should presently desert me--I need add no details of the many steps in your service. By the light of faith in me from what is written and what is presently to do, you will now read aright those details for yourself. We touch now the goal whither all these efforts have been addressed. Upon this follows his concise account of the events from the moment of his escape from Quinto, and upon that an injunction to her to come at once with her brother to Casale, depending upon the protection of his arm and the loyalty of a people which only awaits the sight of its rightful Prince to be increased to enthusiasm and active support. That letter was despatched next day to Quinto, but it did not reach her until almost a week later between Alessandria and Casale. Meanwhile early on the morrow the city was thrown into alarm by the approach of a strong body of horse. This was Ugolino da Tenda's condotta, and Ugolino himself rode in with a trumpeter to make renewed submission to the Lord Bellarion, and to give him news of what had happened in Quinto upon the coming of Barbaresco. Bellarion racked him with questions, as to what was said, particularly as to what the Princess said and how she looked, and what passed between her and Carmagnola. And when all was done, far from the stern reproaches Ugolino had been expecting he found himself embraced by a Bellarion more joyous than he had ever yet known that sardonic soldier. That gaiety of Bellarion's was observed by all in the days that followed. He was a man transformed. He displayed the light-heartedness of a boy, and moved about the many tasks claiming his attention with a song on his lips, a ready laugh upon the slightest occasion, and a sparkle in his great eyes that all had hitherto known so sombre. And this notwithstanding that these were busy and even anxious days of preparation for the final trial of strength. He rode abroad during the day with two or three of his officers, one of whom was always Stoffel, surveying the ground of the peninsula that lies between Sesia and Po to the north of Casale, and at night he would labour over maps which he was preparing from his daily notes. Meanwhile he kept himself day by day informed, by means of a line of scouts which he had thrown out, of what was happening at Vercelli.