There, on the mule, I sat in the noontide sunlight, and pondered this, so absorbed in her affairs as to have grown forgetful of my own.

At last I resolved to ride on to Cagli alone, and inform her that her men were fled.
There was no time to lose, for as that rogue Giacopo had said, Ramiro del' Orca might discover at any moment how he had been tricked, and return hot-foot to find me and extort the truth from me by such means as I had no stomach for enduring.
First, then, it was of moment thoroughly to efface our tracks, leaving no sign that might guide Meser Ramiro to repair the error into which I had tricked him.

Slowly, says the proverb, one journeys far and safely.
Slowly, then, did I consider! The escort was, no doubt, on its way back to Rome, and if I could but rid myself of that cumbrous litter, Ser Ramiro would find himself mightily hard put to it to again pick up the trail.

I remembered a ravine a little way behind, and I rode my mule back to that as fast as it would travel with the litter and the other mule attached to it.

Arrived there, I unharnessed the beasts on the very edge of that shallow precipice.