"Tell me," I said, facing him and dragging hard on the hurry in my voice, "and remember that I owe no love to this cub. You may be loyal to him as you will, but I am the Princess's man, I! You heard me promise her. Tell me, why has she no recruits?" He drew back yet farther, still with his teeth bared. "Am _I_ not her man?" he almost hissed. "So you tell me," I answered, with a scornful laugh, brazening it out. "You are her man, and Stephanu is her man, and the Prince too, and the Father Domenico, no doubt. Yes, you are all her men, you four: but why can she collect no others?" I paused a moment and, holding up a hand, checked them off contemptuously upon my fingers. "Four of you! and among you at least one traitor! Stop!" said I, as he made a motion to protest. "You four--you and Stephanu and the Prince and Fra Domenico--know something which it concerns her fame to keep hidden; you four, and no other that I wot of. You are all her men, her champions: and yet this secret leaks out and poisons all minds against the cause. Because of it, Paoli will have no dealing with you. Because of it, though you raise your standard on the mountains, no Corsicans flock to it. Pah!" I went on, my scorn confounding him, "I called you her champion, the other day! Be so good as consider that I spoke derisively. Four pretty champions she has, indeed; of whom one is a traitor, and the other three have not the spirit to track him down and kill him!" Marc'antonio stood close by me now. To my amazement he was shaking like a man with the ague. "Cavalier, you do not understand!" he protested hoarsely: but his eyes were wistful, as though he hoped for something which yet he dared not hear. "Eh? I do not understand? Well, now, listen to me. I am her man, too, but in a different fashion. You heard what I swore to her, that day, beside my friend's body; that whether in hate or love, and be her need what it might, I would help her. Hear me repeat it, lying here with my both legs broken, helpless as a log. Let strength return to me and I will help her yet, and in spite of all her champions." "In hate or in love, cavalier?" Marc'antonio's voice shook with his whole body. "That shall be my secret," answered I. (Yet well I knew what the answer was, and had known it since the moment she had bent over me in the sty, filing at my chain.) "It had better be hate--eh, Marc'antonio?--seeing that for some reason she hates all men, except you, perhaps, and Stephanu, and her brother." "We do not count, I and Stephanu. Her brother she adores. But the rest of men she hates, cavalier, and with good cause." "Then it had better be hate?" "Yes, yes"--and there was appeal in his voice--"it had a thousand times better be hate, could such a miracle happen." He peered into my eyes for a moment, and shook his head. "But it is not hate, cavalier; you do not deceive me. And since it is not--" "Well?"