ly! And woe to the
sentries if it be as thou sayest! I will go myself and see! Torches
there--what ho!--the good captain careth even for his dead!--Thy son! I
marvel I knew him not! Whom served he under?"

"My lord! my lord! pardon him! He is but a boy--they misled him! he
fought for the rebels. He crossed my path to-day, my arm was raised; we
knew each other, and he fled from his father's sword! Just as the strife
was ended I saw him again, I saw him fall!--Oh, mercy, mercy! do not let
him perish of his wounds or by the rifler's knife, even though a rebel!"

"Homo sum!" quoth the noble chief; "I am a man; and, even in these
bloody times, Nature commands when she speaks in a father's voice!
Mervil, I marked thee to-day! Thou art a brave fellow. I meant thee
advancement; I give thee, instead, thy son's pardon, if he lives; ten
Masses if he died as a soldier's son should die, no matter under what
flag,--antelope or lion, pierced manfully in the breast, his feet to the
foe! Come, I will search with thee!"

The boy yielded up his soul while Sibyll prayed, and her sweet voice
soothed the last pang; and the man ceased to curse while Adam spoke of
God's power and mercy, and his breath ebbed, gasp upon gasp, away. While
thus detained, the wanderers saw not pale, fleeting figures, that had
glided to the ground, and moved, gleaming, irregular, and rapid, as
marsh-fed vapours, from heap to heap of the slain. With a loud, wild
cry, the robber Lancastrian half sprung to his feet, in the paroxysm of
the last struggle, and then fell on his face, a corpse!

The cry reached the tymbesteres, and Graul rose from a body from which
she had extracted a few coins smeared with blood, and darted to the
spot; and so, as Adam raised his face from contemplating the dead, whose
last moments he had sought to soothe, the Alecto of the battlefield
stood before him, her knife bare in her gory arm. Red Grisell, who had
just left (with a spurn of wrath--for the pouch was empty) the corpse of
a soldier, round whose neck she had twined her hot clasp the day before,
sprang towards Sibyll; the rest of the sisterhood flocked to the place,
and laughed in glee as they beheld their unexpected prey. The danger
was horrible and imminent; no pity was seen in those savage eyes. The
wanderers prepared for death--when, suddenly, torches flashed over
the ground. A cry was heard, "See, the riflers of the dead!" Armed men
bounded forward, and the startled wretches utt