The men were shaken from their strained vigilance as by a wind. The utter gray of the hour seemed to stifle them, then a sound stumbled out of the silence and set them listening. It dwindled and grew again, came nearer: it was the smite of hoofs in the wood-ways. The rider dismounted, tethered his foam-flecked steed to a tree and stumbled up to where the Duke of Spoleto and Francesco stood, their gaze riveted upon the ghostly masonry of Astura. Panting and exhausted he faced the twain. "They have all died on the scaffold," he said with a hoarse, rasping voice. "The Swabian dynasty is no more." With a cry and a sob that shook his whole being, Francesco covered his face with his hands. For a moment the duke stared blankly at the speaker. "And the Frangipani?" he asked, his features ashen-gray and drawn. The messenger pointed to Astura. "There is feasting and high glee: the Pontiff's bribe was large."-- Francesco trembled in every limb. "Such a day was never seen in Naples," the messenger concluded with a shudder. "To a man they died under the axe--the soil was dyed crimson with their blood." There was a silence. The messenger pointed to the sea, which had melted into the indefinite background of the night. Dim and distant, like a pearl over the purple deeps, one sail after another struck out of the vague west. They came heading for the land, the black hulls rising and falling against the tumultuous blackness of the clouds. A red gleam started suddenly from the waves. A quick flame leaped up like a red finger above the cliff. The duke ignited a pine-wood torch. The blue resinous light spluttered in the wind. Three times he circled it above his head, then he flung it into the sea. "Bernardo Sarriano and the Pisan galleys," he turned to Francesco. "They are heading for the Cape of Circé." A shout of command rang through the woods. As with phantom cohorts the forest-aisles teemed with moving shadows. A ride of some five miles lay between them and the Cape of Circé. Much of that region was wild forest land and moor; bleak rocky wastes let into woods and gloom. Great oaks, gnarled, vast, terrible, held giant sway amid the huddled masses of the underbrush. Here the wild boar lurked and the wolf hunted. But for the most it was dark and calamitous, a ghostly wilderness forsaken by man. As they rode along they struck the occasional trail of the Crusaders of the Church. A burnt hamlet, a smoking farmhouse with a dun mist hanging over it like a shroud, and once they stumbled upon the body of a dead girl. They halted for a brief space to give her burial. The duke's men dug a shallow grave under an oak and they left her there and went on their way with greater caution. "There is one man on earth to whom I owe a debt," the duke, leading the van beside Francesco, turned to the latter, "a debt that shall be paid this night, principal and interest."