“Ho, boy!” cried the leader of the horsemen, Martino di Porto, one of the great House of the Orsini; “hast thou seen a boat pass up the river?—But thou must have seen it—how long since?”
“I saw a large boat about half an hour ago,” answered the boy, terrified by the rough voice and imperious bearing of the cavalier.
“Sailing right a-head, with a green flag at the stern?”
“The same, noble sir.”
“On, then! we will stop her course ere the moon rise,” said the baron. “On!—let the boy go with us, lest he prove traitor, and alarm the Colonna.”
“An Orsini, an Orsini,” shouted the multitude; “on, on!” and, despite the prayers and remonstrances of the boy, he was placed in the thickest of the crowd, and borne, or rather dragged along with the rest—frightened, breathless, almost weeping, with his poor little garland still hanging on his arm, while a sling was thrust into his unwilling hand. Still he felt, through all his alarm, a kind of childish curiosity to see the result of the pursuit.
By the loud and eager conversation of those about him, he learned that the vessel he had seen contained a supply of corn destined to a fortress up the river held by the Colonna, then at deadly feud with the Orsini; and it was the object of the expedition in which the boy had been thus lucklessly entrained to intercept the provision, and divert it to the garrison of Martino di Porto. This news somewhat increased his consternation, for the boy belonged to a family that claimed the patronage of the Colonna.
Anxiously and tearfully he looked with every moment up the steep ascent of the Aventine; but his guardian, his protector, still delayed his appearance.
They had now proceeded some way, when a winding in the road brought suddenly before them the object of their pursuit, as, seen by the light of the earliest stars, it scudded rapidly down the stream.
“Now, the Saints be blest!” quoth the chief; “she is ours!”