ut, eagerly as Saturninus watched for the galleys expected from
Arbor, another was to learn their anticipated departure long before he
knew of it. This was Duke Hariowald.

On a wooded hill, the hill of Zio, named the Geerebuehl, east of the
Holy Mountain, almost directly opposite to Arbor, a little band of
Alemanni spies watched night and day, one, relieved every hour, gazing
steadily across the lake at the Hill of Mercury, the nearest height
south of Arbor on the southern shore of the lake.

The region around this harbor fortress, which was wholly under Roman
rule, was inhabited by colonists of various tribes: among them many
Alemanni whom capture, or voluntary surrender and removal, had led to
the better-tilled, more richly cultivated southern shore.

At noon on the day of Adalo's secret message a slender, almost
invisible column of smoke rose from the Hill of Mercury on the southern
shore: instantly a thick grayish-black cloud of smoke ascended from the
Geerebuehl on the north shore. This was clearly seen from the eastern
side of the summit of the Holy Mountain,--the Hill of Mercury was _not_
visible from it,--and one of the guards who constantly watched the
Geerebuehl, instantly rushed into the Duke's tent "Smoke is rising on
Zio's Mountain! A high column of smoke."

Hariowald came out of his tent in full armor (during the past week he
had scarcely removed it night or day), with his battle helmet on his
noble head. This helmet was a very strange one: whoever unexpectedly
saw it gleam before him might well be startled.

In those days, as well as now, the great white owl was a rare visitor
to Lake Constance. Scarcely once in a decade did this stranger from the
far north go so far southwest in its migratory flight as the
neighborhood of the Alps. Early in the winter of the previous year
Adalo had brought down with his arrow a magnificent specimen of the
superb bird of prey from a tall fir-tree in the forest by the lake, and
given the huge bird with its gleaming snow-white plumage, marked only
with a few rusty brown feathers in undulating lines on the breast, to
his white-haired cousin as a splendid ornament for his helmet.

The owl now spread above the bronze head-piece its huge pinions which,
though not stretched to their full width, extended more than three
feet. It was not mounted as eagle and swan wings usually were, with the
tips of the feathers toward the back of the helmet, but in the opposite
way, turned