ough he wears a sky-blue doublet laced with silver,
it only serves to render his vulgar punchy figure doubly ridiculous;
although his nether garment is of salmon-colored velvet, it only draws
the more attention to his legs, which are disgustingly crooked and
bandy. A rose-colored hat, with towering pea-green ostrich-plumes, looks
absurd on his bull-head; and though it is time of peace, the wretch is
armed with a multiplicity of daggers, knives, yataghans, dirks, sabres,
and scimitars, which testify his truculent and bloody disposition. 'Tis
the terrible Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschreckenstein.
Report says he is a suitor for the hand of the lovely Helen. He
addresses various speeches of gallantry to her, and grins hideously as
he thrusts his disgusting head over her lily shoulder. But she turns
away from him! turns and shudders--ay, as she would at a black dose!

Otto stands gazing still, and leaning on his bow. "What is the prize?"
asks one archer of another. There are two prizes--a velvet cap,
embroidered by the hand of the Princess, and a chain of massive gold, of
enormous value. Both lie on cushions before her.

"I know which I shall choose, when I win the first prize," says a
swarthy, savage, and bandy-legged archer, who bears the owl gules on a
black shield, the cognizance of the Lord Rowski de Donnerblitz.

"Which, fellow?" says Otto, turning fiercely upon him.

"The chain, to be sure!" says the leering archer. "You do not suppose I
am such a flat as to choose that velvet gimcrack there?" Otto laughed
in scorn, and began to prepare his bow. The trumpets sounding proclaimed
that the sports were about to commence.

Is it necessary to describe them? No: that has already been done in the
novel of "Ivanhoe" before mentioned. Fancy the archers clad in Lincoln
green, all coming forward in turn, and firing at the targets. Some hit,
some missed; those that missed were fain to retire amidst the jeers of
the multitudinous spectators. Those that hit began new trials of skill;
but it was easy to see, from the first, that the battle lay between
Squintoff (the Rowski archer) and the young hero with the golden hair
and the ivory bow. Squintoff's fame as a marksman was known throughout
Europe; but who was his young competitor? Ah? there was ONE heart in the
assembly that beat most anxiously to know. 'Twas Helen's.

The crowning trial arrived. The bull's eye of the target, set up at
three-quarters of a mile dist