ing it up by dashing a bracelet or necklace into the face of some
hapless philosophaster.

'I have no lady, my young friends,' said old Wulf, in good enough Greek,
'and owe you nothing: so I shall keep my money, as you might have kept
yours; and as you might, too, old Smid, if you had been as wise as I.'

'Don't be stingy, prince, for the honour of the Goths,' said Smid,
laughing.

'If I take in gold I pay in iron,' answered Wulf, drawing half out of
its sheath the huge broad blade, at the ominous brown stains of which
the studentry recoiled; and the whole party swept into the empty
lecture-room, and seated themselves at their ease in the front ranks.

Poor Hypatia! At first she determined not to lecture--then to send for
Orestes--then to call on her students to defend the sanctity of the
Museum; but pride, as well as prudence, advised her better; to retreat
would be to confess herself conquered--to disgrace philosophy--to lose
her hold on the minds of all waverers. No! she would go on and brave
everything, insults, even violence; and with trembling limbs and a pale
cheek, she mounted the tribune and began.

To her surprise and delight, however, her barbarian auditors were
perfectly well behaved. Pelagia, in childish good-humour at her triumph,
and perhaps, too, determined to show her contempt for her adversary by
giving her every chance, enforced silence and attention, and checked
the tittering of the girls, for a full half-hour. But at the end of
that time the heavy breathing of the slumbering Amal, who had been twice
awoke by her, resounded unchecked through the lecture-room, and deepened
into a snore; for Pelagia herself was as fast asleep as he. But now
another censor took upon himself the office of keeping order. Old Wulf,
from the moment Hypatia had begun, had never taken his eyes off her
face; and again and again the maiden's weak heart had been cheered, as
she saw the smile of sturdy intelligence and honest satisfaction which
twinkled over that scarred and bristly visage; while every now and then
the graybeard wagged approval, until she found herself, long before the
end of the oration, addressing herself straight to her new admirer.

At last it was over, and the students behind, who had sat meekly through
it all, without the slightest wish to 'upset' the intruders, who had so
thoroughly upset them, rose hurriedly, glad enough to get safe out of so
dangerous a neighbourhood. But to their astonishment, as w