In fact, they have joined the league of patriots of which I am the leader.

And they are so bent on their new purpose that they are ready to be hearty friends to anyone sworn as our confederate.

I can arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and the Empire." All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern.

At this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the immobile horseman whom we had twice passed in the rain by the roadside the morning I had started from my villa for Rome.

His hooked nose was unmistakable.
Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his ideas and plans.
I felt my face redden.
"You have said enough!" I cut him short.