She had need, in truth, to cry me “Courage!” for I was weakening fast once more. It may have been the much that I had talked, or the infernal jolting of my mule, but I was losing blood again, and as we were on the point of riding forward my senses swam, so that I cried out; and but for her prompt assistance I might have rolled headlong from my saddle. As it was, she caught me about the waist as any mother might have done her son. “What ails you?” she inquired, her newly-aroused anxiety contrasting sharply with her joyous cry of a moment earlier. “Are you faint, my friend?” It needed no confession on my part. My condition was all too plain as I leaned against her frail body for support. “It is my wound,” I gasped. Then I set my teeth in anguish. So near the haven, and to fail now! It could not be; it must not be. I summoned all my resolution, all my fortitude; but in vain. Nature demanded payment for the abuses she had suffered. “If we proceed thus,” she ventured fearfully, “you leaning against me, and going at a slow pace—no faster than a walk—think you, you can bear it? Try, good Messer ‘Biancomonte.” “I will try, Madonna,” I replied. “Perhaps thus, and if I am silent, we may yet reach Pesaro together. If not—if my strength gives out—the town is yonder and the day is coming. You will find your way without me.” “I will not leave you, sir,” she vowed; and it was good to hear her. “Indeed, I hope you may not know the need,” I answered wearily. And thus we started on once more. Sant’ Iddio! What agonies I suffered ere the sun rose up out of the sea to flood us with his winter glory! What agonies were mine during those two hours or so of that last stage of our eventful journey! “I must bear up until we are at the gates of Pesaro,” I kept murmuring to myself, and, as if my spirit were inclined to become the servant of my will and hold my battered flesh alive until we got that far, Pesaro’s gates I had the joy of entering ere I was constrained to give way. Dimly I remember—for very dim were my perceptions growing—that as we crossed the bridge and passed beneath the archway of the Porta Romana, the officer turned out to see who came. At sight of me be gaped a moment in astonishment. “Boccadoro?” he exclaimed, at last. “So soon returned?” “Like Perseus from the rescue of Andromeda,” answered I, in a feeble voice, “saving that Perseus was less bloody than am I. Behold the Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, the noble cousin of our High and Mighty Lord.” And then as if my task being done, I were free to set my weary brain to rest, my senses grew confused, the officer’s voice became a hum that gradually waxed fainter as I sank into what seemed the most luxurious and delicious sleep that ever mortal knew.