“After all,” I reflected, “conspirators must choose uncanny holes!” And so I stepped inside. The instant I had done so, however, I turned on my conductor sharply. “Fellow, you declared you would bring me to an inn. This silent house is no more an inn than it is a cathedral.” Before I could receive his answer, I was startled by the rush of feet down the dark passage. At least four men were on me, and the door was instantly closed behind, cutting off nearly all the light. I struggled desperately to draw my walking rapier, but the odds were too great. In a moment I was on my back, with some sort of a shawl closely pressed over my head, stifling my outcries. “Lie quiet, Excellency,” spoke a guttural voice which I recognized as possibly Hans Lange’s, “we are rough valets, but your life is in no danger if you but submit quietly.” Having exerted myself to the very limit of my powers, I was fain to yield, being in fact too bruised and out-of-breath to think connectedly, and presently I was rudely hoisted to my feet with a muffler tied across my mouth, a dark handkerchief across my eyes, and my arms pinioned together not very gently. In this condition I was perforce led some distance through what I conceived to be, by the smell, musty apartments, and then again out into the open air; next I was thrust, or rather cast, upon the straw of what seemed a wagon. My captors beyond a doubt had been entirely prepared to deal with me, for the instant I was in the vehicle I felt them all clambering in beside me, and the former speaker ordered huskily “To close the wagon cover, and drive away.” I heard the cracking of a whip, and in a moment we were off, bumping and rattling over the merciless cobbles of the city streets until every bone of my body, already sorely bruised, ached as if on the rack. Speech was forbidden to me, and my custodians said little, save that one cursed at times “that I had nigh bitten off his ear whilst we struggled on the floor.” Presently we were beyond the paved streets, and to my great relief upon some kind of a more level earthern road. Forcing myself to collect my wandering wits I tried to note the turns the wagon might take, and to compute the lapse of time consumed in the driving; but any guesses were obviously futile. I could only imagine I was being conveyed to some prison at a distance from the city walls. I was too conscious of much physical pain to reason connectedly; I could only console myself that at least my kidnappers were not assassins, until a “_Jesu-Maria!_” from one of the men about me taught half the story instantly. “Ah! Eminenza di Forli,” spoke I in my heart, “it is to you that I owe this fair hospitality: you are about to repeat with greater address those worthy deeds you attempted at Palaestro! But we shall discover.” In fact, my spirits rose a little. After all, in dealing with Forli I was dealing with a man whose means and mental processes I thoroughly understood, and was not that half the battle?