'You keep an indifferent watch somewhere between here and Aulara,' was Bellarion's greeting.
'You often bewilder me,' Stoffel complained.
'Here's to enlighten you, then.'
Bellarion slapped down the shoe on the table, adding precise information as to where he had found it and his reasons for supposing it so recently cast.
'And that's not all. For half a mile along that track there was a white trail in the grass, which investigation proved to be wheaten flour, dribbled from some sack that went that way perhaps last night.'
Stoffel was aghast. He had not sufficient men, he confessed, to guard every yard of the line, and, after all, the nights could be very dark when there was no moon.
'I'll answer for it that you shall have more men to-night,' Bellarion promised him, and, without waiting to dine, rode back in haste to Pavone.
He came there upon a council of war debating an assault upon Alessandria now that starvation must have enfeebled the besieged.
In his present impatience, Facino could not even wait until his leg, which was beginning to mend, should be well again. Therefore he was delegating the command to Carmagnola, and considering with him, as well as with Koenigshofen and Giasone Trotta, the measures to be taken. Monna Beatrice was at her siesta above-stairs in the house's best room.
Bellarion's news brought them vexation and dismay.