r horses, kept step
with their swiftest gallop, and when arrived at the goal, securely
swung themselves upon their unsaddled backs.

"What a pity," cried young Gudila, who was the first to arrive at the
goal in one of these races, and now stroked his yellow locks out of his
eyes, "what a pity that Totila is not present! He is the best rider in
the nation, and has always beaten me. But now, with this horse, I would
try again with him."

"I am glad that he is not here," said Gunthamund, who had arrived
second, "else I had scarcely won the first prize in hurling the lance
yesterday."

"Yes," said Hilderich, a stately young warrior in a jingling suit of
mail, "Totila is clever at the lance. But black Teja throws still
better; he can tell you beforehand which rib he will hit."

"Pshaw!" grumbled Hunibad, an elderly man, who had looked critically at
the performance of the youths, "all that is only play. In bloody
earnest the sword is the only weapon that serves a man at the last,
when death so presses on him from all sides that he has no space for
throwing. And for that I praise Earl Witichis, of Faesulae! He is _my_
man! What a breaking of skulls was there in the war with the Gepidae!
The man cleaved through steel and leather as if it were dry straw! He
is still more valiant than my own duke, Guntharis the Woelfung, in
Florentia. But what do you youngsters know about it?--Look! the first
arrivals are coming down the hill. Up! let us go to meet them!"

And now people came streaming in on all the roads; on foot, on
horseback, and in wagons. A noisy and turbulent crowd filled all the
plain.

On the shores of the river, where stood most of the tents, the horses
were unharnessed, and the wagons pushed together to form a barricade.
Through the lanes of the camp the ever-increasing crowd now streamed.
There friends and acquaintances, who had not met for years, sought and
greeted each other.

It was a gay and chequered scene, for the old Germanic equality had
long since disappeared from the kingdom.

There stood near the aristocratic noble, who had settled in one of
the rich Italian towns, who lived in the palaces of senatorial
families, and had adopted the more luxuriant and polite customs of the
Italians; near the duke or earl from Mediolanum or Ticinum, who wore a
shoulder-belt of purple silk across his richly-gilt armour; near such a
dainty lord towered some rough, gigantic Gothic peasant, who lived in
the thick oak-f