d into the thickest of the fight.

One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses, a
flashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, and
then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by their
neighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own horses' heads instead
of their enemies', find themselves, they know not how, either running
away or being run away from--not one blow in ten having taken effect on
either side. And even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cut
down several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an altogether
undignified posture, among innumerable horses' legs, in all possible
frantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the way of another; so he
philosophically sat still, speculating on the sensation of having his
brains kicked out, till the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himself
kneeling abjectly opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat,
utterly unmoved, a tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The
stranger, instead of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly
lifted his hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet,
heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausurians
galloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standing
close by him, wiping a bloody sword.

'Is the litter safe'?' were his first words.

'Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you run
through with that lance.

'Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said Raphael,
laughing.

'Probably the fellow took the butt instead of the point, in his hurry.
So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four fellows running
with the flat of your sword.'

Ah, that explains,' said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the best
swordsman on the Armenian frontier....'

'I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors,' said
Synesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the first
time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then turned
haughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, 'Clumsy fool that I
was!'

'Thank God rather that you have been kept from the shedding of blood,'
said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with a peculiarly
clear and delicate enunciation. 'If God have given us the victory, why
grudge His having spared any other of His creatures besides ourselves?'

'Because there are so many the more of them left to ra