Standing in the stirrups, he lashed at the foaming horse in a blind rage and horror. His cap was gone, and hair and cloak were blown about him. He shouted wildly, cursed and shrieked. For a breath Francisco paused. This could be no human rider; well was it known in Lombardy that the Visconti trafficked with the fiend, and this must be he; and the man shrank and turned his eyes, lest he should see his damning face. But the next instant his courage and his purpose had returned. The horse was upon him. Swift as thought, Francisco leaped and clutched the bridle in a hand of steel. But the mad impetus defeated him. He was dragged forward like a reed; only his own great strength for the moment saved him. And now his wild shouts were added to the rider's. He struck upward with his dagger; he tore blindly. "Do you not know me, Visconti?" he called. "Do you not know me?" But his dagger was dashed from him. The horse's foam blinded him as it sprang desperately on. He heard Visconti's demon scream, and as the earth whirled round with him, caught one fleeting glimpse of the white, distorted, hated face--then, he was prone upon the ground, and Visconti, spurring on his way, looked back upon him with triumphant yells. "Fly, fly!" he screamed, "they are after us, but we escape them. Fly!" The dawn was showing when Francisco, spent with the passion of failure rather than from any hurt, came slowly back and picked his dagger from the road. Not far from it he saw a parchment roll tossed from Visconti's doublet in that frantic forward lunge--Visconti who had safely disappeared within the walls of Milan! Francisco picked up the roll. It was inscribed with poetry and patched with blood. CHAPTER THREE THE HOSTAGE OF THE ESTES "A hundred thousand florins--and no more, even if they refuse the bargain." It was the Visconti who spoke. In a small dark room in the Visconti palace, he and the pale-faced, red-haired man, who had held the bridle of his horse two days before in the procession that had wended toward Brescia, were seated opposite to one another at the table; between them a pile of papers over which the secretary bowed his shoulders. "The demand is a hundred and fifty, my lord," he said, his voice meek, his eyes furtive. "They said two hundred to begin with," was the curt answer. "A hundred thousand florins, or I go elsewhere." The secretary's pen flew nervously across the parchment, filling it with a cramped, mean writing that trailed unevenly along the page. Visconti's secretary wrote a characteristic hand. Visconti leaned back in his chair, watching him in silence. The room was small and circular, hung with leather stamped in gold, and furnished plainly even to bareness. A narrow lancet window, placed low in the wall, admitted a subdued light, which fell upon the only spot of color in the room, the suit of turquoise blue the secretary wore. "A hundred thousand florins, to be paid in gold," repeated Visconti; "and no more, Giannotto."