"You can untie his hands now," he said to the men of the escort as the sergeant moved away to fetch the committal book. The sergeant turned at his words.
"Plenty of time for that," he said in his hoarse and too familiar tones. "It's me that's responsible for him, isn't it? Well, then, let them stay tied up till I've had a look at him. I know these fellows I do."
"He can't get away from here," began Jovannic impatiently; but the old sergeant lifted a vast gnarled hand and wagged it at him with a kind of elderly rebuke.
"They're getting away in dozens every day," he rumbled. He put his hands on the silent man and turned him where he stood to face the light. "Yes," he said; "you've been knocking him about, too!"
The man had spoken no word; he showed now to the flush of the evening a face young and strongly molded, from which all passion, all force, seemed to have been drawn in and absorbed. It was calm as the face of a sleeper is calm; only the mark of Captain Hahn's blow, the great swollen bruise on the brow, touched it with a memory of violence. His eyes traveled beyond Jovannic and paused, looking. Upon the pebble path beside the screen of yews a foot sounded; Jovannic turned.
It was the Contessina; she came hurrying towards them. Jovannic saluted. Only two or three times had he stood as close to her as then; and never before had he seen her swift in movement, or anything but grave and measured in gait, gesture and speech. He stared in surprise at her tall slenderness as it stood in relief against the rose and bronze of the west.
"It is" she was a little breathless. "It is yes! young Luigi!" The prisoner, silent till then, stirred and made some little noise of acquiescence. Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound his wrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the old sergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood with his thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leaned forward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at the prisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips part in a movement of pain. Then her face came round to him.
"You, oh!" she gasped at him. "You haven't, you didn't strike him?"
Jovannic stared at her. He understood nothing. Granted that she knew the man, as no doubt she knew every peasant of the village, he still didn't understand the touch of agony in her manner and her voice.
"No, signorina," he answered stiffly. "I have not touched him. In fact, I was ordering him to be unbound."