ving mountain rifler--

"Ambition! power! we sow but the sand," whispered satiety.

"Vainglory is a sleeveless errand," murmured the spirit of the
flagellant.

Yet he gazed half-fiercely at his priestly adviser, when suddenly his
gloomy eye brightened; the inutility of ambition was forgotten;
unconsciously he clasped the arm of the joculatrix, who had drawn near.
His grip was like a gauntlet; even in her tense, strained mood she
winced.

"The fight is not yet lost!" he exclaimed. As he spoke the figure of a
knight, fully armed, who had made his way through the avenue of tents,
was seen swiftly descending the hill. Upon his strong Arabian steed,
the rider's appearance and bearing signaled him as a soldier apart from
the rank and file of the guard. His coat-of-arms, that of the house of
Friedwald, was richly emblazoned upon the housings of his courser.
Whence had he come? The attendants and equerries had not seen him in
the camp. Only the taciturn armorer of Friedwald looked complacently
after him, stroking his great beard, as one well satisfied. As this
late-comer approached the scene of strife the flanks of the guard were
wavering yet more perilously.

"A miracle, Sire!" cried the prelate.

"But one that partakes more of earth than Heaven," retorted Charles,
with ready irony.

"Who is he, Sire?" breathlessly asked the young girl. At her feet
whimpered the blue-eyed page, holding to her skirt, all his courage
gone.

But ere he could answer--if he had seen fit to do so--from below, out
of the vortex, came the clamorous shouts:

"The duke! The duke!"

The master of the mountain pass heard also, and felt at that moment a
sudden thrill of premonition. The guerdon; the quittance; could it be
possible after all, the end was not far? He could not believe it, yet
a paroxysm of fury seized him; his strength became redoubled; wherever
his sword touched a trooper fell.

But like a wave, recovering from the recoil, the soldiers of Friedwald
broke upon his doomed band with a force manifold augmented; broke and
carried the flanks with it, for the assaulting parties to the right and
left were dismayed by the strength unexpectedly hurled against the
center. The bulky Flemish, the lithe Spaniard, the lofty trooper of
Friedwald, overflowed the shattered line of the marauders.

"Duke Robert!" and "Friedwald!" shouted the Austrian band.

"Cowards! Would you give way?" cried the free baron, striking among
them.