“What serves it to be armed?” she answered. “They know the lay of the lands and the ways of the woods better than you, and they will follow you some night when it is dark like this, and you will know nothing till you fall on your beast’s neck, or back on his crupper, as it may be.” “I do my best by the people. If they please to pay me so, they must,” he replied. “Good-night. You mean well. Thanks.” She drew back in silence, discouraged, to let the impatient horse and his rider go onward. II. These estates, known generally as Le Selve, were vast tracts of forest and pasture land lying along and beyond the Mons Ciminius, between the lakes of Bracciano and of Vico. They were of immeasurable antiquity, but had for more than a century been ill preserved, and much robbed and desecrated. Their timber was chiefly oak, ilex, and pine, with occasional groups of silver birch; their undergrowth was of arbutus, myrtle, bay, privet, and box, with much broom and heather. They covered many miles, and were the property of a Roman nobleman, and had within them oaks which might have seen the litters of Poppea and Faustina pass. In later times they had belonged to the Countess Matilda, and had been given by her to the Popes with the rest of her superb bequest. Here and there in them was a farm, a water-mill, a charcoal burner’s hut, patches of semi-cultivation due to squatters; but these were very few and isolated. For the most part the woods were little altered since the days of the Cæsars; wholly unaltered since the days of the Farnese and the Borgia. An old hunting-palace, which was now given up to the use of underlings, stood in the centre of the woods, the only large house in them, a gray stone building of the fifteenth century, which had once been a favourite retreat of the sporting cardinal from whom the Gandolfo had inherited this property. Around it were level grasslands, bordered by low granite balustrades, with colossal stone hounds seated on the coping; and, immediately beyond, the great woods began, enclosing the grassy squares with walls of foliage which were pierced at intervals by narrow avenues or drives; in full view of the front terraces rose the peaks of the Sabine mountains; from the back were visible very far off Monte Amiata and the Cetona range. It was a distance of five miles and more to this dwelling, and it was long past midnight when the young steward rode in at the gates. The stablemen and guards of the place ran to take his horse. But he followed the animal, and saw it safe in stall before he himself entered the house, and felt the warmth of the oak logs burning on an open hearth in the great vaulted hall of which he made his chief sitting-room.