He raised his eyes for a moment to the starlit heaven, and then continued his brisk walk.  His way lay through winding alleys; over bridges so narrow that two men could not pass abreast; through passages where rogues lurked, and repulsive faces were thrust grinning into his own.  But he knew the city as one who had lived there all his life; and for the others, the thieves and scum of Venice, he had no thought.  Not until he came out before the church of Santa Maria Formosa did he once halt or look behind him.  The mystery of the night was a joy to him.  Even in the shadow of the church, his rest was but for a moment; and, as he rested, the meaning smile hovered again upon his wan face.

“The play begins,” he muttered, while he loosened slightly the girdle of his habit and thrust his right hand inside it; “the God of Venice give me courage.”

A man was following him now—­he was sure of it.  He had seen him as he turned to cross the bridge which would set him on the way to the church of San Salvatore—­a short, squat man, masked and dressed from head to foot in black.  Quick as the movements of the fellow were, dexterous his dives into porches and the patches of shadow which the eaves cast, the priest’s trained eye followed his every turn, numbered, as it were, the very steps he took.  And the smile upon Fra Giovanni’s face was fitful no more.  He walked as a man who has a great jest for his company.

“Rocca the fool, and alone!  They pay me a poor compliment, those new friends of mine; but we shall repay, and the debt will be heavy.”

He withdrew his hand from his habit, where it had rested upon the hilt of a dagger, for he knew that he had no need of any weapon.  His gait was quick and careless; he stopped often to peer into some windowless shop where a sickly lamp burned before the picture of a saint; and wares, which had not tempted a dead generation, appealed unavailingly to a living one.  The idea that his very merriment might cost him his life never entered his head.  He played with the assassin as a cat with a mouse, now tempting him to approach, now turning suddenly, and sending him helter-skelter into the door of a shop or the shadow of a bridge.  He was sure of his man, and that certainty was a delight to him.

“If it had been any other but Rocca the clown!” he said to himself, his thoughts ever upon the jest; “surely we shall know what to say to him.”

He had come almost to the church of San Salvatore by this time.  His walk had carried him out to the bank of a narrow, winding canal, at whose quays once-splendid gondolas were rotting in neglect.  It seemed to him that here was the place where his tactics might well be changed and the role of the hunted put aside for that of the hunter.  Quick to act, he stepped suddenly behind one of the great wooden piles driven into the quay for the warping of barges.  The bravo, who did not perceive that he had been detected, and who could not account for the sudden disappearance of his prey, came straight on, his cloak wrapped about his face, his naked sword in his hand.  The wage would be earned easily that night, he was telling himself.  No one would miss a beggarly monk—­and he, Rocca, must live.  A single blow, struck to the right side of the back, and then—­and then—­