for the child did not love Paul but feared him. "Antonio knows that I love Your Highness," said Paul, seating himself on the seat by the Duke, "but he knows also that I am his friend, and a friend to the Lady Lucia, and a man of tender heart. Would it seem to him deep treachery if I should go privately to him and tell him how that on a certain day you would go forth with your guard to camp in the spurs of Mount Agnino, leaving the city desolate, and that on the night of that day I could contrive that Lucia should come secretly to the gate, and that it should be opened for her, so that by a sudden descent she might be seized and carried safe to his hiding-place before aid could come from Your Highness?" "But what should the truth be?" asked Valentine. "The truth should be that while part of the Guard went to the spurs of the Mount, the rest should lie in ambush close inside the city gates and dash out on Antonio and his company." "It is well, if he will believe." Then Paul laid his finger on his brother's arm. "As the clock in the tower of the cathedral strikes three on the morning of the 15th of the month, do you, dear brother, be in your summer-house at the corner of the garden yonder; and I will come thither and tell you if he has believed and if he has come. For by then I shall have learnt from him his mind: and we two will straightway go rouse the guards and lead the men to their appointed station, and when he approaches the gate we can lay hands on him." "How can you come to him? For we do not know where he is hid." "Alas, there is not a rogue of a peasant that cannot take a letter to him!" "Yet when I question them, aye, though I beat them, they know nothing!" cried Valentine in chagrin. "Truly, the sooner we lay him by the heels, the better for our security." "Shall it be, then, as I say, my lord?" "So let it be," said the Duke. "I will await you in the summer-house." Paul, perceiving that his brother had no suspicions of him, and would await him in the summer-house, held his task to be already half done. For his plan was that he and Antonio should come together to the summer-house, but that Antonio should lie hid till Paul had spoken to the Duke; then Paul should go out on pretext of bidding the guard make ready the ambush,
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