and retribution is at hand! Colonna the painter is no more, but the son of Montalto has escaped thy dagger, and demands atonement for his father's blood. Dismount, assassin! and defend thy worthless life!" The deep and startling grandeur of Colonna's voice, and the implacable hostility which flashed from his fierce eyeballs, shook the firm sinews of the guilty governor, and again his swarthy lineaments were blanched with terror. By a sudden and powerful effort, however, he regained self-mastery, and gathering into his grim features all the pride and insolence of his soul, he darted upon his youthful enemy a sneer of contempt. "Presuming vagrant!" he shouted, in accents hoarse with wrath, "dare to impede my progress, and my retinue, which is at hand, shall scatter thy limbs on the highway!" Still firmly grasping the bridle, Colonna eyed him for a moment with quiet scorn, and then he smiled--briefly indeed, but with a stinging mockery, a hot and withering scorn of eye and lip, that seared the haughty chieftain to the brain. Writhing with sudden frenzy, he spurred his mettled charger, and endeavoured to ride down his opponent; but the generous animal, true to the instincts of a nature nobler than his master's, refused to advance, and plunged and demi-volted with a violence which would have unseated a less experienced rider. At this moment, the heavy trampling of approaching horses rolled in doubling echoes through the ravine. Encouraged by the welcome sound, Barozzo attempted to draw his sword, but before the plunging of his horse would allow him to reach the hilt, the vigilant Colonna smote him on the cheek with his sheathed weapon. Then relinquishing the bridle, and stepping lightly sideways, he struck the horse's flank, and the startled animal, straining every sinew, bounded away like a ball, and quickly disappeared round the second angle of the cliff, followed by the loud laugh of the exulting Colonna, whose fierce ha! ha! re-echoed through the rocky hollow like a trumpet-call. Meanwhile the Greeks, who had turned the first angle in time to behold the termination of the struggle, drew their sabres, and pushing their horses into a gallop, rushed down upon us like infuriated tigers. Anticipating their attack, I was not unprepared to aid my gallant friend in this emergency; but all assistance was superfluous to one so fertile in resources. He turned with graceful promptitude upon the savage Cretans, and before their powerful steeds could measure the short intervening distance, his sword was firmly set between his teeth, and two pistols appeared with magical abruptness in his grasp. Levelled by an eye which never failed, these weapons lodged a bullet in the breast of each approaching Greek. The colossal riders reeled in their saddles; their sabres quivered in their weakened grasp, and reclining for support upon the necks of their startled horses, they successively passed us, and turned the angle beyond which their chief had disappeared.