"Yes!" Arisa laughed softly. "But what did he do? Why did he take the trouble to dress the monk in his clothes?"
"In order to receive his dying confession, of course. I thought you would understand! And his dying confession was that he, Michael Pandos, a Greek robber, had killed the man for whose murder I was being hanged that morning. My man came just in time, for as the friar's head was half shaved, as monks' heads are, he had to shave the rest, as they do for coolness in the south, and he had only his knife with which to do it. But no one found that out, for he had been a barber, as he had been a monk and most other things. He looked very well in a cowl, and spoke Neapolitan. I did not know him when he came to the foot of the gallows, howling out that I was innocent."
"Were you?" asked Arisa.
"Of course I was," answered Aristarchi with conviction.
"Who was the man that had been killed?"
"I forget his name," said the Greek. "He was a Neapolitan gentleman of great family, I believe. I forget the name. He had red hair."
Arisa laughed and stroked Aristarchi's big head. She thought she had made him betray himself.
"You had seen him then?" she said, with a question. "I suppose you happened to see him just before he died, as your man saw the monk."
"Oh no!" answered Aristarchi, who was not to be so easily caught. "It was part of the dying confession. It was necessary to identify the murdered person. How should Michael Parados, the Greek robber, know the name of the gentleman he had killed? He gave a minute description of him. He said he had red hair."
"You are not a Greek for nothing," laughed Arisa.