half-empty flask of wine, a few dice, a pack of cards, a mask, a wisp of lace, and a broken fan. The walls were bare of all ornament, except over the entrance door, whence a crucified Christ looked down in His agony over the musty room. A spare chair or two, a couple of valises and a saddle, together with a bed, hidden behind some old and shabby curtains, completed the furniture of the chamber; but such as it was, it was better accommodation than the captain had enjoyed for many a day. For be it known that "The Devil on Two Sticks" was meant for the aristocrats of the "profession." The charges were accordingly high, and there was no credit allowed. No! No! The _padrone_ knew better than to trust his longest-sworded clients for even so small a matter as a brown _paolo_. But at present Moratti was in funds, for thirty broad crowns in one's pocket, and a horse worth full thirty more, went a long way in those days, and besides, he had not a little luck at the cards last night. He thrust a sinewy hand into his pocket, and jingled the coins there, with a comfortable sense of proprietorship, and for the moment his face was actually pleasant to look upon. The face was an eminently handsome one. It was difficult to conceive that those clear, bold features were those of a thief. They were rather those of a soldier, brave, resolute, and hasty perhaps, though hardened, and marked by excess. There was that in them which seemed to point to a past very different from the present. And it had been so. But that story is a secret, and we must take the captain as we find him, nothing more or less than a bravo. Let it be remembered, however, that this hideous profession, although looked upon with fear by all, was not in those days deemed so dishonourable as to utterly cast a man out of the pale of his fellows. Troches, the bravo of Alexander VI., was very nearly made a cardinal; Don Michele, the strangler of Cesare Borgia, became commander-in-chief of the Florentine army, and had the honour of a conspiracy being formed against him--he was killed whilst leaving the house of Chaumont. Finally, there was that romantic scoundrel "Il Medighino," who advanced from valet to bravo, from bravo to be a pirate chief and the brother of a pontiff, ending his days as Marquis of Marignano and Viceroy of Bohemia. So that, roundly speaking, if the profession of the dagger did lead to the galleys or the scaffold, it as often led to wealth, and sometimes, as in the case of Giangiacomo Medici, to a coronet. Perhaps some such thoughts as these flitted in the captain's mind as he jingled his crowns and slowly sipped his wine. His fellow-men had made him a wolf, and a wolf he was now to the end of his spurs, as pitiless to his victims as they had been to him. He was no longer young; but a man between two ages, with all the strength and vitality of youth and the experience of five-and-thirty, so that with a stroke of luck he might any day do what the son of Bernardino had done.