illains! touch but a
hair of her head, and I . . ."

Here, with a sudden plunge and a squeal of agony, Bavieca sprang forward
wildly, and fell as wildly on her back, rolling over and over upon the
knight. All was dark before him; his brain reeled; it whizzed; something
came crashing down on his forehead. St. Waltheof and all the saints of
the Saxon calendar protect the knight! . . .

When he came to himself, Wamba and the lieutenant of his lances were
leaning over him with a bottle of the hermit's elixir. "We arrived here
the day after the battle," said the fool; "marry, I have a knack of
that."

"Your worship rode so deucedly quick, there was no keeping up with your
worship," said the lieutenant.

"The day--after--the bat--" groaned Ivanhoe. "Where is the Lady Rowena?"

"The castle has been taken and sacked," the lieutenant said, and pointed
to what once WAS Rotherwood, but was now only a heap of smoking ruins.
Not a tower was left, not a roof, not a floor, not a single human being!
Everything was flame and ruin, smash and murther!

Of course Ivanhoe fell back fainting again among the ninety-seven
men-at-arms whom he had slain; and it was not until Wamba had applied
a second, and uncommonly strong dose of the elixir that he came to life
again. The good knight was, however, from long practice, so accustomed
to the severest wounds, that he bore them far more easily than common
folk, and thus was enabled to reach York upon a litter, which his men
constructed for him, with tolerable ease.

Rumor had as usual advanced before him; and he heard at the hotel where
he stopped, what had been the issue of the affair at Rotherwood. A
minute or two after his horse was stabbed, and Ivanhoe knocked down, the
western bartizan was taken by the storming-party which invested it, and
every soul slain, except Rowena and her boy; who were tied upon
horses and carried away, under a secure guard, to one of the King's
castles--nobody knew whither: and Ivanhoe was recommended by the
hotel-keeper (whose house he had used in former times) to reassume his
wig and spectacles, and not call himself by his own name any more, lest
some of the King's people should lay hands on him. However, as he had
killed everybody round about him, there was but little danger of his
discovery; and the Knight of the Spectacles, as he was called, went
about York quite unmolested, and at liberty to attend to his own
affairs.

We wish to be brief in narrating th