“There is a donkey-load of it here,” said Giovanni, tilting with his foot a stone in the floor. Under it gleamed a mass of irregular shining fragments and yellow lumps of stone. Alan picked up one and scraped it, struck it with a hammer, rubbed it across a chip of wood, “Guy was right,” he said, “it is not gold. I can prove that to the fellow if he gives me a chance.”
“What shall you do?”
“I am not sure. Are you safe here?”
“So long as they do not know I am here. Master Gay and his son are at Rheims, and I am to join them. If you will come to-morrow or the day after we can go together. I will show you a short way over the mountains that Cimarron found when we were here. Stefano knows of my coming, and I shall see him to-night.”
Alan had been thinking. “Vanni, I will do this. I will go with you to-morrow if I can, but if I do not meet you here before noon you will know that I must stay on. Will that answer?”
“I suppose it must. I dislike leaving you here with a twice-proved rascal like this Simon. You do not know what he may do.”
“I should like to thrash him,” said Alan. “He is planning to get the whole of this gold, as he thinks it, for himself.”
“Of course he is. But what good would it do to beat him? You cannot thrash the inside of him, can you?”
Alan laughed, and strode off to the place where the horses were tethered. Before returning to his lodgings he went to see Stefano.
“Well,” said the jester when he had heard all, “what shall you do?”