He who was once the great Lord of Verona and a proud and stainless knight stood without Brescia, awaiting the price of his dishonor. It was mid-day, of a swooning heat, and great purple clouds lay heavily about the horizon, with a somberness that foretold a storm. Mastino della Scala stood alone on a group of rocks scattered upon the plain, that sent his tall figure up against the deep sky, erect and motionless. All that was left of his army was behind him in the chestnut wood: half had been betrayed, half had been cut to pieces rather than yield. Some few--the lowest dregs of his camp, the men who cared not where or when they drew their swords, so they had food and drink--remained, to try their luck with him, now no better than one of themselves. Through all the miseries of that weary week his gallant band of Veronese, some two hundred, had stood by him, watching the others ambushed, attacked, surrounded, and destroyed, hearing of town after town that fell, and smiling scornfully at talk of treachery, accepting without question Mastino's silence. Was he not the son of Can' Gran' della Scala, and his name one with honor, the proudest name in Lombardy, the proudest badge in Italy, the ladder of the Scaligeri! So had they stayed with scorn at thoughts of betrayal whispered among the baser residue, until that morning when he had summoned their leaders and told them, with a strange calmness, he had sold them, Verona and Veronese, for his wife's release--sold Lombardy for Isotta d'Este. Then leaving them, standing silent and bewildered, Della Scala mounted to these rocks to await his wife--alone. His eyes were on the fields before him; he hardly noticed a slight figure that crept timidly to his feet--Tomaso. "My lord"--the boy's voice faltered, and he kept his eyes turned away--"the Duchess hath started safely; I saw her mount her litter with glad eyes; they bade me hasten forward and tell thee so." "Ah!" Della Scala stepped on to a higher rock and shaded his eyes with his hand. He was in armor, and bore on his arm his shield, across the boss the ladder, the ladder on which the Scaligeri had climbed so high, and from which they had fallen--to this! Tomaso crouched beside him, silent and dismayed. He had clung to Della Scala spite of his father's loss (that he could not understand), and spite of what was happening now, that began to make plain that and many things. Tomaso glanced up at the somber figure standing alone above him. Mastino wore no mantle, and the golden circlet was gone from his helmet. Mastino della Scala was no longer Duke of Verona. No pages or footmen followed; save for this one boy, he was alone, carrying his own shield, holding his own horse, despised of those he once had thought of as beneath even his scorn. A gallop of horses broke the summer quiet, and spears gleamed through the ruddy chestnuts behind them. The Veronese, thought Tomaso, the Veronese soldiers.