: the brave child was the only human being inside the
Capitol. The fight before the gate was over immediately; the enemy shut
out, powerless, one man springing on the back of another trying to
climb the high walls, pressed still harder by us, soon threw down their
arms and yielded. A few certainly, despairing of grace, or despising
it, spurred their horses from the steep path into the abyss below. The
gate of the citadel of Juvavum flew open from the inside, and young
Hortari sprang into his uncle's arms; this youth of the Bajuvaren had
won for his people the Capitol of Juvavum."

"Hail to the youth Hortari! The minstrels will have him in
remembrance!"

"Hail to the youth Hortari!" sounded loud through the wide halls of the
Basilica.

When the joyous cry had died away, quarrelling words were heard at the
farther end of the building.

In the apse behind the altar, two, flushed with wine, were in loud
strife.

In a chest containing Roman memorials, which the zealous Johannes had
taken away from his flock, in order to wean them from their pagan
superstitions, the two men had found a small, beautifully-carved marble
relief, representing the three Graces tenderly clasping each other.
They had seized the piece of sculpture; and screaming and shouting, now
dragged and pulled each other through the church till they stood before
Vestralp and Helmbert.

Then one of the disputants let fall the marble and flashed his short
knife against his opponent, who immediately dropped the plunder and
seized the hand-axe in his girdle.

"Halt, Agilo!" cried Vestralp, seizing the arm of his fellow tribesman.

"Stab _Romans_, if thou wilt, not Alemanni," shouted Helmbert, and
struck down the knife of his countryman.

"Well! You shall decide," cried both disputants with one breath.

"I saw it first," cried the Alemannian. "I wished to hang it on my
favourite horse as a breast-plate."

"But I took it first," retorted the other. "They are the three
fate-spinning sisters. I should hang it up over my child's cradle."

"The strife is easily settled," said Vestralp, picked up the three
Graces from the floor, took the axe from the hand of the Alemannian,
aimed well, and cut the relief exactly through the middle.

Helmbert seized the two pieces and said:

"Forasitzo, Wotan's son, who is the judge in Heligoland, could not have
divided it more evenly; there, each of you has a goddess and a half.
Now go and drink reconciliation."

"We th