The old man laughed harshly.
"Where will you on to? Are we to drag you into Milan to be whipped to death for harboring you; and Verona is in the hands of the Visconti—his last and greatest victory!"
"But my uncle—Della Scala's court!" cried the boy distractedly. The old man drew himself up in his rags and spoke with a mixture of pride and awe.
"Mastino della Scala perished in the flames of his burning palace; his wife is a prisoner, yonder in Milan, in the Visconti's hands. Thou hast not much to look for from Della Scala's court," he said.
"Hold thy peace! Hold thy peace!" cried angry voices. "What hast thou to do with such as he?" and the old man, whose better intelligence made him a source of danger to the others, was dragged away.
"But thou wilt not leave me here?" said Vittore, in distress. "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" But the peasant folk were not much moved by his misfortunes, too much used to scenes like this.
"We risk our necks by staying by thee," growled one dark-browed man. "As for thy companion, it is his own mad doing. He is dead, and we may be dead this time to-morrow, and kicked into the ditch like him."
Even the woman listened blankly to his entreaties, and the throng sullenly departed on its way.
"Any moment a soldier of the Visconti may come by, or the Visconti himself may return, then anyone found tending one of his victims will be in sorry plight." This, mumbled out with curses at the delay, was their only answer.
The peasants of Lombardy lived in the shadow of an awful name. Gian Galeazzo Maria Visconti knew neither fear of God nor man, neither pity nor remorse.