Beyond, I stayed a moment to look over my shoulder.

They stood gazing after me, a group of some half-dozen men, looking black against the whiteness of the ground.

Behind them rose the brown walls of the rocca illumined by the flare of torches, from which the smell of rosin reached my nostrils as I paused.

I waved my hat to them in token of farewell, and digging my spurless heels into the flanks of my horse, I ambled down through the biting wind and drifting snow, into the town.
The streets were deserted and dark, save for the ray that here fell from a window, and there stole through the chink of a door to glow upon the snow in earnest of the snug warmth within.

Silence reigned, broken only by the moan of the wind under the eaves, for although it was no more than approaching the second hour of night, yet who but the wight whom necessity compelled would be abroad in such weather?
All night I rode despite that weather's foulness--a foulness that might have given pause to one whose haste to bear a letter was less attuned to his own supreme desires.
Betimes next morning I paused at a small locanda on the road to Magliano, and there I broke my fast and took some rest.