ely across the back of his hands.
The cut was true, strong, and rapid--it divided the tendons from first
to last--he was crippled for life.

At that instant the fire touched the very heart of the log that had
been laid on it. It crackled gaily; it blazed out brilliantly. The
whole room was as brightly illuminated as if a Christmas festival of
ancient England had been preparing within its walls!

The warm, cheerful light showed the Goth the figure of his assassin,
ere the first cry of anguish had died away on his lips, or the first
start of irrepressible horror ceased to vibrate through his frame. The
cries of his hapless companion, as the whole scene of vengeance,
treachery, and mutilation flashed in one terrible instant before her
eyes, seemed not even to reach his ears. Once he looked down upon his
helpless hands, when the sword rolled heavily from them to the floor.
Then his gaze directed itself immovably upon Goisvintha, as she stood
at a little distance from him, with her blood-stained knife, silent as
himself.

There was no fury--no defiance--not even the passing distortion of
physical suffering in his features, as he now looked on her. Blank,
rigid horror--tearless, voiceless, helpless despair, seemed to have
petrified the expression of his face into an everlasting form,
unyouthful and unhopeful--as if he had been imprisoned from his
childhood, and a voice was now taunting him with the pleasures of
liberty, from a grating in his dungeon walls. Not even when Antonina,
recovering from her first agony of terror, pressed her convulsive
kisses on his cold cheek, entreating him to look on her, did he turn
his head, or remove his eyes from Goisvintha's form.

At length the deep steady accents of the woman's voice were heard
through the desolate silence.

'Traitor in word and thought you may be yet, but traitor in deed you
never more shall be!' she began, pointing to his hands with her knife.
'Those hands, that have protected a Roman life, shall never grasp a
Roman sword, shall never pollute again by their touch a Gothic weapon!
I remembered, as I watched you in the darkness, how the women of my
race once punished their recreant warriors when they fled to them from
a defeat. So have I punished you! The arm that served not the cause
of sister and sister's children--of king and king's nation--shall serve
no other! I am half avenged of the murders at Aquileia, now that I am
avenged on you! Go, fly with the