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Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound his wrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the old sergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood with his thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leaned forward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at the prisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips part in a movement of pain.
She turned to the prisoner and began to speak with a quick, low urgency; her face, importunate and fearful, was close to the still mask of his. "Luigi, promise me! If I let them, if they untie your hands, will you promise not to, not to do it? Luigi will you?" Jovannic could only stare at them, bewildered. He heard her pleading "Will you?
The man had spoken no word; he showed now to the flush of the evening a face young and strongly molded, from which all passion, all force, seemed to have been drawn in and absorbed. It was calm as the face of a sleeper is calm; only the mark of Captain Hahn's blow, the great swollen bruise on the brow, touched it with a memory of violence. His eyes traveled beyond Jovannic and paused, looking.
The noble Captain Hahn I knew as soon as I saw it!" "Shut up, you!" ordered Jovannic, with the parade-snarl in his voice. "And now, untie that man!" He flung out a peremptory hand; in the girl's presence he meant to have an end of the sergeant's easy manners. But now it was she who astonished him by intervening. "No!" she cried. "No!"
His bamboo cane, thick as a stout thumb, rose and fell twice smashingly; Jovannic saw the second blow go home upon the hair above the prisoner's forehead. The man was down in an instant, and the soldiers were over him and upon him. Captain Hahn, cane in hand, stood like a victorious duelist.
Then she knelt, and, taking in both hands the bough of laurel which she carried, she bent above the covered shape and laid it upon the blanket. She rose. It seemed to Jovannic that for an instant she looked him in the face with eyes that questioned; but she did not speak.
The sergeant clapped the man on the shoulder. "Be a good lad now!" he said. "Promise the young lady you'll behave and we'll have the cords off as quick as we can cut them. Promise her, such a nice young lady and all!" The prisoner shook his head wearily. The girl, watching him, shivered. "All this" Jovannic roused himself. "I don't understand. What's going on here? Sergeant, what's it all about?"
If you could suggest something, signorina, I'd do what I could." She seemed to consider. Then "No," she answered; "nothing can be done." She paused, and he was about to speak when she added: "I was wrong to try to persuade him." "Wrong!" exclaimed Jovannic. "Why?" "It is your punishment," she said. "They have doomed you. You made them slaves but they make you murderers!"
Then her face came round to him. "You, oh!" she gasped at him. "You haven't, you didn't strike him?" Jovannic stared at her. He understood nothing. Granted that she knew the man, as no doubt she knew every peasant of the village, he still didn't understand the touch of agony in her manner and her voice. "No, signorina," he answered stiffly. "I have not touched him.
"You can watch yourself, for all I care," snapped Jovannic. "Now bring me the book." The signing and so forth were completed; the prisoner, unbound, stood between two watchful guards, who attitudinised as though ready to pounce and grapple him upon the least movement. "Now," commanded Jovannic, "take him in and feed him. And for the rest you have your orders."
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