nce--"Montjoie! Montjoie!"--rang
clear above the fierce sound of the trumpets of the Saracen army.

"'Soldiers of the Lord,' cried Turpin,
'Be ye valiant and steadfast,
For this day shall crowns be given you
Midst the flowers of Paradise.
In the name of God our Saviour,
Be ye not dismayed nor frighted,
Lest of you be shameful legends
Chanted by the tongues of minstrels.
Rather let us die victorious,
Since this eve shall see us lifeless!--
Heaven has no room for cowards!
Knights, who nobly fight, and vainly,
Ye shall sit among the holy
In the blessed fields of Heaven.
On then, Friends of God, to glory!'"

Marsile fell, the first victim to a blow from the sword of Roland,
and even more fiercely than the one that had preceded it, waged this
terrible fight.

And now it seemed as though the Powers of Good and of Evil also took
part in the fray, for a storm swept down from the mountains, thick
darkness fell, and the rumble of thunder and the rush of heavy rain
dulled the shouts of those who fought and the clash and clang of their
weapons. When a blood-red cloud came up, its lurid light showed the
trampled ground strewn with dead and dying. At that piteous sight
Roland proposed to send a messenger to Charlemagne to ask him for aid,
but it was then too late.

When only sixty Franks remained, the pride of Roland gave way to pity
for the men whom he had led to death, and he took the magic horn
Olifant in his hand, that he might blow on it a blast that would bring
Charlemagne, his mighty army behind him, to wipe out the Saracen host
that had done him such evil. But Oliver bitterly protested. Earlier in
the day, when he had willed it, Roland had refused to call for help.
Now the day was done. The twilight of death--Death the inevitable--was
closing in upon them. Why, then, call now for Charlemagne, when nor he
nor any other could help them? But Turpin with all his force backed
the wish of Roland.

"The blast of thy horn cannot bring back the dead to life," he said.
"Yet if our Emperor return he can save our corpses and weep over them
and bear them reverently to la belle France. And there shall they lie
in sanctuary, and not in a Paynim land where the wild beasts devour
them and croaking wretches with foul beaks tear our flesh and leave
our bones dishonoured."

"That is well said," quoth Roland and Oliver.

Then did Roland blow three mighty blasts upon his ho