I knew enough of Brunow to be sure that he would treat this plain statement as if it were a jest, and I knew that he read me well enough to be sure that it was nothing of the sort. The threat made him safe. In an hour he was talking as if he had forgotten all about it, but I knew better. CHAPTER III We travelled at apparent random for nearly three weeks, and when at last we reached Itzia, no man could possibly have guessed that we had set out with that little place as our serious destination. It was Brunow who suggested this lingering method of approach, and it was he also who gave a semblance of nature to our proceedings by pausing here and there to set up his camp-stool and easel in some picturesque defile, or in the streets of some quaint village. Twice this innocent blind brought us into collision with the military police, who were in a condition of perpetual disquiet, and suspected everybody. Our papers, however, were in perfect order, and Brunow in particular was so well provided with credentials that we were easily set going again, and so by a circuitous road we approached Itzia, and finally pounced down upon it from the hills. I found it a village of not more than four or five hundred inhabitants, set in the midst of a green plateau surrounded by gaunt hills, and watered by a fair, broad stream. The fortress in which the Conte di Rossano was confined stood on the lowest slope of the nearest hill, and frowned down upon the village with a threatening aspect, dwarfed as it was almost into nothing by the surrounding majesties of nature. It was a building of modern date--not more than fifty years of age I should be inclined to say--and it boasted nothing in the way of architectural beauty. It was built of an ugly dark stone, was strongly fortified, and was flanked by outlying batteries which surrounded the mouth of the defile which led from Zetta on the frontier. The artillery of to-day would reduce the fortress of Itzia to a rubbish heap in less than an hour; but it was a strong place for the date of its erection, and even now the difficulty of bringing siege guns along the broken and difficult mountain pathways makes it worth calculating as a point of resistance against invasion.