on. Wilfrid met them as he was trotting down from the Porta del Palio,
and to him his sister confided her new trouble in having a strange man
attached to her, who might be anything. 'We don't know the man,' said
her husband; and Adela pleaded for him: 'Don't speak to him harshly,
pray, Wilfrid; he says he has a mother dying in Milan.' Barto kept his
head down on his arms and groaned; Adela gave a doleful little grimace.
'Oh, take the poor beggar,' said Wilfrid; and sang out to him in Italian:
'Who are you--what are you, my fine fellow?' Barto groaned louder, and
replied in Swiss-French from a smothering depth: 'A poor man, and the
gracious lady's servant till we reach Milan.'

'I can't wait,' said Wilfrid; 'I start in half-an-hour. It's all right;
you must take him now you've got him, or else pitch him out--one of the
two. If things go on quietly we shall have the Autumn manoeuvres in a
week, and then you may see something of the army.' He rode away. Barto
passed the gates as one of the licenced English family.

Milan was more strictly guarded than when he had quitted it. He had
anticipated that it would be so, and tamed his spirit to submit to the
slow stages of the carriage, spent a fiery night in Brescia, and entered
the city of action on the noon of the fourteenth. Safe within the walls,
he thanked the English lady, assuring her that her charitable deed would
be remembered aloft. He then turned his steps in the direction of the
Revolutionary post-office. This place was nothing other than a blank
abutment of a corner house that had long been undergoing repair, and had
a great bank of brick and mortar rubbish at its base. A stationary
melonseller and some black fig and vegetable stalls occupied the
triangular space fronting it. The removal of a square piece of cement
showed a recess, where, chiefly during the night, letters and
proclamation papers were deposited, for the accredited postman to