With an obeisance Giannotto went, in silence, and Visconti slowly broke the seal of the packet. Then he turned to Valentine. "Art thou waiting to see if it contains a message from thy Conrad?" he said fiercely. "Have no fear! Thou shalt see his head ere night." She shuddered before the taunt, and turned to leave him. It was always the same; let her meet Visconti with never so high courage, she left him quelled, discomfited, dismayed. "Go!" shouted Visconti, in sudden fury, and she stayed no longer to question or defy. Carrying the half-opened packet and the parchment, Visconti re-entered his private room. It was dark and silent; no sound from within or without broke its deserted gloom. He was alone, nor was he like to be disturbed. Seating himself, not without a furtive glance over his shoulder, he looked at the writing again, the writing and the seal, then opened the packet. A roll of parchment, close writ, strangely stained in places a reddish brown, fell with a rattle on the floor. Visconti started back, he stared at it, uttered a hoarse sound, stooped and picked it up. The parchment was inscribed with poetry. Here and there among the stains a line was readable. "Perchance thou wouldst not dare to turn----" His glance caught the words. He looked around with wild eyes. A huge, black bureau, fitted with many drawers, stood in one corner of the room. Visconti, the parchment in his shaking fingers, went to it, still with glances around, and drew out drawer after drawer, till he had found the thing he sought. It was among neat piles of parchments, annotated in Giannotto's clear, good hand. Visconti turned them over hastily, till he came upon a document hung with the seals of Verona, a cartel of defiance, neatly endorsed in a clerkly hand, and signed in large, bold writing, "Mastino della Scala." Eagerly he turned to the cover of the packet, and laid the two writings side by side. They were the same. Visconti leaned against the black chest, breathing heavily, his face not good to look on in its white devilry. "He lives! Della Scala lives!" he cried, and struck at himself in his rage. Then his gaze came back to the blood-stained parchment crumpled in his hand. "And this--? and this--where got he this? The parchment that I read from on the road that day; the parchment that I thought was left at Brescia, in that----" The words died away on his lips. In a sudden paroxysm of something more than fury, Visconti drove it down among the others within the drawer, and locked and double-locked it in. The day was fading; in that dull chamber the light fled early and entered late. Visconti glanced again stealthily at the dark arras, faint in the dusk. He strained his ears listening; the air was full of voices, far away, pleading, for the most part, yet some so near and threatening, Visconti held his ears. They died away as they had come, but to Visconti the silence was more terrible. "Giannotto!" he called. "Lights! It grows dark----"