that there must be some other point of danger to which it was intended
to turn the attention of the people. Gazing about for some indication
of its source, he saw several gondolas hurrying towards the grand
canal, on which most of the palaces of the nobles were situated, and
he ordered Jacopo to steer in the same direction.

On reaching the palazzo of the Malipieri family, a strange scene
presented itself to him. The open space between the side of the palace
and the adjacent church of San Samuele, was crowded with men engaged
in a furious and sanguinary conflict. At one of the windows of the
palace, a tall man in a flowing white robe, with a naked sabre in one
hand and a musquetoon in the other, which, from the smoke still
issuing from its muzzle, had apparently just been discharged, stood
defending himself desperately against a band of fierce and bearded
ruffians, who swarmed up a rope ladder fixed below the window. The
person making so gallant a defence was the Senator Malipiero; the
assailants were Uzcoques from the fortress of Segna.

The arrival of the Proveditore Marcello at Gradiska, and his
subsequent recognition of his jewels at the ball, having destroyed
Strasolda's hopes of obtaining her father's liberation through the
intervention of the archducal counsellors, the high-spirited maiden
resolved to execute a plan she had herself devised, and which,
although in the highest degree rash and hazardous, might still succeed
if favoured by circumstances and conducted with skill and decision.
This was to seize upon the person of a Venetian of note, in order to
exchange him for the Uzcoques then languishing in the dungeons of the
republic.

The Venetians were not yet aware that the much-dreaded woivode