front of the castle. He was ready there to meet a
champion.

Three times each day did the odious trumpet sound the same notes of
defiance. Thrice daily did the steel-clad Rowski come forth challenging
the combat. The first day passed, and there was no answer to his
summons. The second day came and went, but no champion had risen to
defend. The taunt of his shrill clarion remained without answer; and the
sun went down upon the wretchedest father and daughter in all the land
of Christendom.

The trumpets sounded an hour after sunrise, an hour after noon, and an
hour before sunset. The third day came, but with it brought no hope. The
first and second summons met no response. At five o'clock the old Prince
called his daughter and blessed her. "I go to meet this Rowski," said
he. "It may be we shall meet no more, my Helen--my child--the innocent
cause of all this grief. If I shall fall to-night the Rowski's victim,
'twill be that life is nothing without honor." And so saying, he put
into her hands a dagger, and bade her sheathe it in her own breast so
soon as the terrible champion had carried the castle by storm.

This Helen most faithfully promised to do; and her aged father retired
to his armory, and donned his ancient war-worn corselet. It had borne
the shock of a thousand lances ere this, but it was now so tight as
almost to choke the knightly wearer.

The last trumpet sounded--tantara! tantara!--its shrill call rang over
the wide plains, and the wide plains gave back no answer. Again!--but
when its notes died away, there was only a mournful, an awful silence.
"Farewell, my child," said the Prince, bulkily lifting himself into his
battle-saddle. "Remember the dagger. Hark! the trumpet sounds for the
third time. Open, warders! Sound, trumpeters! and good St. Bendigo guard
the right."

But Puffendorff, the trumpeter, had not leisure to lift the trumpet to
his lips: when, hark! from without there came another note of another
clarion!--a distant note at first, then swelling fuller. Presently, in
brilliant variations, the full rich notes of the "Huntsman's Chorus"
came clearly over the breeze; and a thousand voices of the crowd gazing
over the gate exclaimed, "A champion! a champion!"

And, indeed, a champion HAD come. Issuing from the forest came a knight
and squire: the knight gracefully cantering an elegant cream-colored
Arabian of prodigious power--the squire mounted on an unpretending gray
cob; which, nevertheless