er to his friend,
"Do you see this? Ought I to lose such an opportunity of revenging our
beloved master? Keep watch, and I will do it. Look about you, and listen
on every side, while I make a passage for us among these sleepers with my
sword."

Without waiting an answer, the vigorous huntsman pushed into the first
tent before him. It contained, among other occupants, a certain Alpheus,
a physician and caster of nativities, who had prophesied to himself a
long life, and a death in the bosom of his family. Cloridan cautiously
put the sword's point in his throat, and there was an end of his dreams.
Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given
them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched
himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself
a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening
a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German
followed, who had been playing late at dice; fortunate, if they had
continued to do so a little longer; but they never counted a throw like
this among their chances.

By this time the Saracen had grown ferocious with his bloody work, and
went slaughtering along like a wild beast among sheep. Nor could
Medoro keep his own sword unemployed; but he disdained to strike
indiscriminately--he was choice in his victims. Among these was a certain
Duke La Brett, who had his lady fast asleep in his arms. Shall I pity
them? That will I not. Sweet was their fated hour, most happy their
departure; for, embraced as the sword found them, even so, I believe, it
dismissed them into the other world, loving and enfolded.

Two brothers were slain next, sons of the Count of Flanders, and
newly-made valorous knights. Charlemagne had seen them turn red with
slaughter in the field, and had augmented their coat of arms with his
lilies, and promised them lands beside in Friesland. And he would have
bestowed the lands, only Medoro forbade it.

The friends now discovered that they had approached the quarter in
which the Paladins kept guard about their sovereign. They were afraid,
therefore, to continue the slaughter any further; so they put up their
swords, and picked their way cautiously through the rest of the camp into
the field where the battle had taken place. There they experienced so
much difficulty in the search for their master's body, in consequence of
the horrible mixture of the corpses, that th