Lost in reveries of the past, and brooding over what the times to come might hold for him, Francesco trotted on through a grove of birches, whose filmy foliage arabesqued the heavens. A glade opened to the road below. All around him were tall hills deluged with green woods. A stream glittered through the flats under elms and drooping willows. Suddenly a half-score of mounted men rounded the angle of the road. They sighted the solitary traveller. At once they were at full gallop over the grass, swords agleam, lances pricking the blue, while the hot babel of their tongues echoed from the valley. Francesco, with a grim twist of the mouth, heeled on his horse and took to the woods. The great trees overarched him, beams of gold came slanting through. The grass was a deep green under the purple shadows. Through the silence came the dull thunder of hoofs as the men cantered on, swerving and blundering through the trees. They rode faster than Francesco upon his tired steed, and the distance dwindled between the pack and the chase. Onward Francesco fled. The black boughs grazed his head, the tree-trunks seemed to gallop in the gloom. He could see steel flashing through the wood, like meteorites plunging through a cloud. Yet he hardly so much as turned his head, for his eyes were piercing the shadows before him. As he swayed along, he now heard a great trampling of hoofs in the woods. The nearest galloper swung out from the gloom. He was leaning over the neck of his horse, his lips parted over his teeth, his sword poised from his outstretched arm. The sword circled over Francesco's head, its whistling breath fanning his hair. He cowered; his horse swerved aside. The horse of his assailant stumbled over a projecting tree stump, hurling its rider over its head some six feet away upon the ground, where he lay stunned, dropping his sword in his fall. Like lightning Francesco leaped from his saddle, picked up the weapon, and remounted, just in time to ward off a vicious blow aimed at his head from a second horseman who had plunged from the thickets. Francesco's early training served him well and proved his foe's undoing. Drawing up his horse on sluthering hoofs he faced the second assailant. Their swords whimpered, screamed and clashed. Francesco's blade struck the man's throat through. Catching his upreared shield as he fell, he tore it from its supporting arm, just as two more horsemen blundered out of the gloom. They sighted the horseless steed, the dead man on the ground; they saw the monk with sword and shield, and paused for a moment staggered at the uncommon sight.