features when he heard the summons of
the Hun. For a moment he stooped towards Antonina, as she clung
fainting round him. His mouth quivered and his eye glistened as he
kissed her cold cheek. In that moment all the hopelessness of his
position, all the worthlessness of his marred existence, all the
ignominy preparing for him when he returned to the camp, rushed over
his mind. In that moment the worst horrors of departure and death, the
fiercest rackings of love and despair, assailed but did not overcome
him. In that moment he paid his final tribute to the dues of
affection, and braced for the last time the fibres of manly
dauntlessness and Spartan resolve!

The next instant he tore himself from the girl's arms, the old
hero-spirit of his conquering nation possessed every nerve in his
frame, his eye brightened again gloriously with its lost warrior-light,
his limbs grew firm, his face was calm, he confronted the Huns with a
mien of authority and a smile of disdain, and, as he presented to them
his defenceless breast, not the faintest tremor was audible in his
voice, while he cried in accents of steady command--

'Strike! I yield not!'

The Huns rushed forward with fierce cries, and buried their swords in
his body. His warm young blood gushed out upon the floor of the
dwelling which had been the love-shrine of the heart that shed it.
Without a sigh from his lips or a convulsion on his features, he fell
dead at the feet of his enemies; all the valour of his disposition, all
the gentleness of his heart, all the vigour of his form, resolved in
one humble instant into a senseless and burdensome mass!

Antonina beheld the assassination, but was spared the sight of the
death that followed it. She fell insensible by the side of her young
warrior--her dress was spotted with his blood, her form was motionless
as his own.

'Leave him there to rot! His pride in his superiority will not serve
him now--even to a grave!' cried the Hun leader to his companions, as
he dried on the garments of the corpse his reeking sword.

'And this woman,' demanded one of his comrades, 'is she to be liberated
or secured?'

He pointed as he spoke to Goisvintha. During the brief scene of the
assassination, the very exercise of her faculties seemed to have been
suspended. She had never stirred a limb or uttered a word.

The Hun recognised her as the woman who had questioned and bribed him
at the camp. 'She is the traitor's kinswoman a