But the vision had disappeared. Pietro's voice made itself audible. "This that you saw was but a vision called up by my art. I must confirm it by my mathematics."
[CHAPTER IX.]
AN ITALIAN AND A SPANIARD.
An hour before dawn came Sergeant Blick to awaken Nigel with the news, "We have the man on the sorrel horse!"
Nigel awoke completely, sprang out of bed, and was attired, even to his jack-boots and spurs, in a few minutes. Then getting astride his horse he was out of Eger and a mile on the road to Pilsen in a very few more.
"A kind of accursed Jew fellow! Some dark Moorish infidel of a heretic!" was Sergeant Blick's summing up.
Sure enough it was that learned Doctor Pietro Bramante himself.
But this was not the field of prophecy or of divination. This was the atmosphere of dawn, the kingdom of cold fact. Nigel nodded and said in his brief military manner—