At last the sign I had been waiting for was given. I saw it as plainly as if it had been meant for me; I believe I saw it before the man for whom it was intended, and but for my fears concerning Madonna Paola, I could have laughed outright at their clumsy assurance. The man who rode on Madonna’s right turned in his saddle and put up his hand as if to beckon Stefano. I was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer Sacchetti’s paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano, and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I knew his dagger to be slung. Yet was I patient. There should be no blundering through an excessive precipitancy. I talked on until I saw that my suspicions were amply realised. I caught the cold gleam of steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried it to his poniard. Sant’ Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk, to go so slyly about the business of stabbing a poor, helpless, defenceless Fool. “But Sacchetti makes his point clear,” I babbled on, most blandly; “almost as clear, as comprehensive and as penetrating as should be to you the point of this.” And with a swift movement I swung half-round in my saddle, and sank my dagger to the hilt in his side even as he was in the act of raising his. He made no sound beyond the faintest gurgle—the first vowel of a suddenly choked word of wonder and surprise. He rocked a second in his saddle, then crashed over, and lay with arms flung wide, like a huge black crucifix, upon the white ground. At the same moment a piercing scream broke from Madonna Paola. I tremble still to think what might have been her fate had not those ruffians who had laid hands on her fallen into the sorry error of holding their single adversary too lightly. They heard the thud of the gallant Stefano’s fall, and they never doubted that mine was the body that had gone down. They heard the rapid hoof-beats of my approach, yet, they never turned their heads to ascertain whether they might not be mistaken in their firm conviction that it was Messer Stefano who was joining them. I kissed my blade for luck, and drove it straight and full into the back of the fellow on Madonna Paola’s right. He cried out, essayed to turn in his saddle that he might deal with this unlooked-for assailant, then, overcome, he lurched forward on to the withers of his horse and thence rolled over, and was dragged away at the gallop, his foot caught in a stirrup, by the suddenly startled brute he rode.