"Aye, do," said Vincenzo wistfully again, "otherwise thou would'st forget--of a surety, forget." "Not I--I shall always remember." Horses were brought to the courtyard, and Vincenzo called his little page and put him on one. The sight of him brought memories to both of a certain game of chess--how fatal it had been: how long ago it seemed! "I tried to make atonement," he murmured. "My atonement, methinks, is to come," said Vincenzo. "But Mastino will never hear of it--Mastino is dead." Conrad winced. He knew Mastino was not dead, but he would as soon have stabbed Vincenzo d'Este as told him. "Fare thee well," he said, holding out his hand. "Fare thee well." Vincenzo took his hand, smiled up at him gravely, and re-entered the castle, mounting to the room he had left. Visconti was on the march. Vincenzo caught his breath sharply and went to the window to see the last of Conrad. Again he wished he was riding away into the sunshine, away from the dark walls that seemed closing round him forever. "Farewell!" called back Conrad, gayly waving his mailed hand, and Vittore, excited at the sudden journey, drew off his cap and waved it gayly too. "I go to my own land," cried the Count. Vincenzo's lips trembled, but his words sounded as cheerily as Conrad's. "And we stay here in ours," he called back. And in after days, in peaceful days in Germany, when that brilliant, bloodstained Lombard summer seemed far away and strange as a wild dream, Conrad remembered; a memory he shared only with the dead. The spurs jingled, with a trampling of hoofs the horses turned, the strong sun caught Conrad's plumes and Vittore's bright hair, he looked back with a laugh, and at a swift trot they passed through the castle gate. Down the long paved street they clattered, till that sound too was gone. Count Conrad had ridden away. Vincenzo stood silent in the great patch of sunlight that lay along the floor till Conrad's bridle bells were quite lost in the distance; then he turned, with something like a sigh. He was not alone long--Ippolito re-entered with a calm face, and yet one his son was startled by. "Count Conrad's news has been confirmed," he said; "a messenger has returned." He paused a moment. "All the country is in Visconti's hands." "The saints save us!" cried Vincenzo. "Aye, the saints, for there is no hope in man!" "We must get arms--and succor into the city----" Ippolito looked at him with a proud affection. "Follow me, Vincenzo." He opened one of the small doors; it led to a twisting flight of steps, and the two mounted in silence. At the head of the stairway was a chamber used as an outlook toward--Milan. "Gaze yonder," said Ippolito, pointing through the narrow arched window. Vincenzo obeyed, and looking out over the great wide plain, with its white campaniles dazzling in the sunlight, at first saw nothing.