Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/151

 'A dog that will pay well,' said the old man with a grin. 'You can read; I have only heard tell of it; look, it is up on the tower there.'

The south wall of the old martello tower in which the coastguard had of yore been located had a large white placard on it, covered with printed letters that were only confused lines and dots of black from where Andreino was sitting. It was but a step to the wall, and she went up to the proclamation.

What she read, printed there, was the declaration of the pardon of the State to an innocent man, in the common formula of the law.

The published words stated that one, Count Luitbrand d'Este, had been cleared of the imputed crime of blood-guiltiness by the confession, made in Mantua, of Ser Piero di Albano, who had acknowledged himself to have been the assassin of his wife, Donna Aloysia Gorgias; and who had further declared that he had planned and carried out the assassination in such wise that the accusation of it should fall upon his wife's lover, and be his vengeance of their adultery.