CHAPTER XXXVII
Tebaldo slackened his speed at last and attempted to concentrate his thoughts. Exhausted as he was by exertion and by the ever-increasing strain on his faculties, it was not easy to think at all. But his bare feet, chilled in the cold stirrups, drew his attention to the present necessity of being shod as soon as possible. He could reach Randazzo long before dawn and get into the inn by knocking and rousing the man who slept on the ground-floor. He could invent some story to explain why he had ridden home on another horse. In the dark, with only a taper or a lantern, the man would not notice his bare feet, and he could get to his room in safety. After that, he did not know what he should do. He felt that if he could not get rest soon, he must fall ill. As a matter of fact, he was ill already, with the dangerous fever of the south, as the sudden chills he had lately felt would have told him at any other time.
He made up his mind that he must reach the inn; he put his horse to a canter again and got to Randazzo just as the first pallor of the dawn threw the dark outline of Etna into stronger relief against the sky. Everything happened as he had hoped. The sleepy man-servant gave him the key of the stable, and he hitched his horse in a stall, came back, entered the house, and reached his room in safety, the man not having noticed that he was barefoot.
He locked the door and almost staggered to his bed, falling upon it as he was, in his wet clothes. A moment later he was asleep.
It seemed but a moment more and he was waked by a loud knocking. He started up in one of those hideous dreams of fear, of which the whole length takes but an instant of time. The knocking was the sound of rifle-shots, and he was once more plunging down through the tangle below Camaldoli. Then he saw that it was broad daylight outside, and he heard the voice of the officer of carabineers speaking to him from without in a friendly tone. Forgetting or not caring how he looked, he opened the door.
The grey-haired lieutenant entered. He was already shaved and dressed with his usual scrupulous neatness, but he was extremely pale, and his arm was in a black sling.
'I am sorry to disturb you,' he said, 'though, as it is nearly twelve o'clock, I had expected to find you up. The fact is, I should be very much obliged to you if you could make it convenient to go to Rome—or Paris, if you please. One of the brigands escaped us last night.'
'Only one?' asked Tebaldo, mechanically.