"Hold thy peace! Hold thy peace!" cried angry voices. "What hast thou to do with such as he?" and the old man, whose better intelligence made him a source of danger to the others, was dragged away. "But thou wilt not leave me here?" said Vittore, in distress. "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" But the peasant folk were not much moved by his misfortunes, too much used to scenes like this. "We risk our necks by staying by thee," growled one dark-browed man. "As for thy companion, it is his own mad doing. He is dead, and we may be dead this time to-morrow, and kicked into the ditch like him." Even the woman listened blankly to his entreaties, and the throng sullenly departed on its way. "Any moment a soldier of the Visconti may come by, or the Visconti himself may return, then anyone found tending one of his victims will be in sorry plight." This, mumbled out with curses at the delay, was their only answer. The peasants of Lombardy lived in the shadow of an awful name. Gian Galeazzo Maria Visconti knew neither fear of God nor man, neither pity nor remorse. The young Florentine sank down upon the grass, and looked after the retreating train in mute distress. To seek for help would mean to leave his cousin, and he could not move him. Tomaso lay in a deep swoon, for the blow had driven him back upon a stone. Terribly wounded about the face, Tomaso added to his young cousin's distress by his ghastly appearance, his head bound in rough bandages, torn from Vittore's clothing, and now darkly stained with blood. The boy wrung his hands and looked up and down the road--no one in sight. It was just after the victory in the long-standing wars between the cities; Verona had fallen into the Visconti's hands; interchange of traffic was for the time laid low; the road was likely to be deserted, and for hours none passed. The boy dragged Tomaso's head and shoulders as far into the shade as he could manage, remoistened the bandages about his head, and tried to force down his throat some of the food and drink they carried. But the youth muttered between clenched teeth, and lay with wide-staring eyes, inert and unresponsive. His consciousness had returned, but he was delirious in fever. As the day wore on, new and sickening terror seized on Vittore. The Visconti would return to Milan! Hiding his face in his hands, he sobbed aloud. Since the bright dawn of the morning, what a change in prospects! Della Scala's court a ruin--and Tomaso's father--his uncle, the only parent he had ever known--what of him! And Tomaso too! He must sit there and see him die beside him. As the noontide waned, he had fallen again into stupor, and the boy looked at his changed face distractedly.