With regret that they had seized that large amount in money, and yet in the hope that they might regain their liberty and remain for some time longer--at least until I had learned the truth concerning my well-beloved--I crept softly back along the great salon, feeling my way before me with my hands. So thick was the carpet that my feet fell noiselessly, and my escape was rendered all the more easy by the noise the men were making by trying to batter down the door. Swiftly I retraced my steps along the corridors, through the picture-gallery and the older wing of the great house, until I came to the long dim stone corridor. I shuddered as I passed into it, for there lay still undiscovered, and in the same position in which the assassins had left it, the body of the unfortunate police agent who had been left in charge of the fugitive's property which had been seized by the Government. On tiptoe I approached it, and bending, replaced the revolver. Then with a final glance at the evidence of a horrible deed--a deed committed for the lust of gold--I crept out into the early morning air which blew fresh and cool from over the mountains, causing the leaves of the vines to rustle while a loose sun-shutter creaked mournfully as it swung to and fro overhead. Retracing my steps through the vineyard I gained the high-road, when the fancy took me to ascend to the back of the villa and listen if I could hear the imprisoned intruders. Hardly had I reached the top of the hill when the truth was revealed to me, as I expected. Their voices could be distinctly heard, for one of those strongly barred windows that looked out upon the roadway was that of the room wherein the absconding ex-Minister had concealed the money he had filched from the public purse. I halted in the darkness beneath the window, trying to catch the drift of the conversation, and even while I stood there one of them pulled aside the heavy curtains and allowed a stream of light to fall across the roadway. It was surely an injudicious action, yet they could not examine the bars without so doing. Standing back in the shadow I saw them open the window and feel the strength of that thick prison-like grating, the defence in those turbulent days when the place had been a miniature fortress. "Without a file, it's impossible to break them," declared Gavazzi, in a tone of deep disappointment. "But we must get out somehow. Every moment's delay places us in graver peril. What shall we do?" I saw that their position was utterly hopeless. They had been caught like rats in a trap. Therefore I crept along under the old stone wall of the villa and made my way down the hill in the direction of where the electric street lamps of the town of Tivoli were shining. It was, I saw by my watch, already half-past two. After walking near half a mile, at a bend in the road two carabineers in uniform, with their guns slung upon their shoulders, emerged suddenly upon me and called me to halt.