ot and crushed out every spark of fire.

"Begone," said the Archbishop, "thou art banned and banished. If
within three days thy feet be found on the earth of Sarras, thou shalt
hang from the nearest tree."

As he spoke the great bell of the High Church began to toll as for one
whose spirit has passed away. At the sound Talisso started; then
taking the rope from his neck and flinging it on the ground with a
mocking laugh, he turned and fled down the Mound and into the green
fields that lie to the north.

Not far had he fled into the open country before the recklessness of
the reiver and strong-thief fell on Talisso. Entering a homestead he
smote down the master, and got himself clothing and food and weapons,
and seizing a horse, pushed on apace till he came to the red field
where he had routed the Avars, and thence onward to Danube water.

Beyond Danube, some days' riding into the north, lay that mysterious
stronghold, the Hring, the camp-city of the Avar robber-horde. And
thither Talisso was now speeding, for he said to himself: "They are
raiders and slayers, and this kind is quick to know a _man_. They will
love me none the less that I have stricken and chased them. Rather
will they follow me and avenge me, if not for my sake for the sake of
the fat fields and rich towns of Sarras."

Now the stronghold was a marvel in the manner of its contrivance, and
in its size and strength; for it was bulwarked with seven rings, each
twenty feet high and twenty feet wide, and the rings were made of
stockades of oak and beech and pine trunks, filled in with stones and
earth, and covered atop with turf and thick bushes. The distance
across the outer ring was thirty miles, and between each ring and the
one within it there were villages and farms in cry of each other, and
each ring was pierced by narrow gateways well guarded. In the midst of
the innermost ring were the tent of the Chagan or Great Chief, and the
House of the Golden Hoard. Piled high were the chambers of that house
with the enormous treasure of a century of raiding--silken tissues and
royal apparel and gorgeous arms, great vases and heavy plate of gold
and silver, spoil of jewels and precious stones, leather sacks of
coined money, the bribes and tribute of Greece and Rome, and I know not
what else of rare and costly. Long afterwards, when the Avars were
broken and the Hring thrown down, that hoard filled fifteen great
waggons drawn each by four oxen.