cause the excommunication of Rome had been
fulminated over his head. He was alone. He had refused every offer of
companionship, which zeal for the cause and personal friendship had
prompted, when suddenly he was aroused by the tramp of armed men, and
the heavy clattering of horses, coming up the glen. He knew his life was
sought for by his enemies, and what a grateful deed his assassination
would be to record within the halls of many a kingly palace.. In an
instant, he was on his legs, and grasping his trusty broad-sword, he
awaited the attack. Not too soon, however, for scarcely had the horsemen
come within sight, than, putting spurs to their steeds, they bore down
upon him; then checking their horses suddenly, the leader called aloud
to him, to surrender himself his prisoner.

Good Martin's reply was a stroke of his broad-sword that brought the
summoner from his saddle to the ground. Parley was at an end now, and
they rushed on him at once. Still, it was clear that their wish was not
to kill him, which from their numbers and superior equipment, could not
have been difficult. But Luther's love of liberty was as great as his
love of life, and he laid about him like one who would sell either as
dearly as he could. At length, pressed by his enemies on every side, his
sword broke near the hut, he threw the useless fragment from his hand,
and called out, "Ich kann nicht mehr!"--"I can do no more!"

He was now bound with cords, and his eyes bandaged, conveyed to the
castle of the Wartburg, about two miles distant, nor did he know for
several days after, that the whole was a device of his friend and
protector, the Elector of Saxony, who wished to give currency to the
story, that Luther's capture was a real one, and the Wartburg his
prison, and not, as it really proved, his asylum. Here he spent nearly
a year, occupied in the translation of the Bible, and occasionally
preaching in the small chapel of the "Schloss." His strange fancies of
combats with the evil one, are among the traditions of, the place, and
the torn plaster of the wall is pointed out as the spot where he hurled
his inkstand at the fiend, who tormented him in the shape of a large
blue-bottle fly.

One cannot see, unmoved, that rude chamber, with its simple furniture of
massive oak, where the great monk meditated those tremendous truths
that were to shake thrones and dynasties, and awake the world from the
charmed sleep of superstition, in which, for centuries