-

'Your brother served in the armies of Rome when our people were at
peace with the Empire. Of his household and his possessions this is all
that the Romans have left!'

She ceased, and for an instant the brother and sister regarded each
other in touching and expressive silence. Though, in addition to the
general characteristics of country, the countenances of the two
naturally bore the more particular evidences of community of blood, all
resemblance between them at this instant--so wonderful is the power of
expression over feature--had utterly vanished. The face and manner of
the young man (he had numbered only twenty years) expressed a deep
sorrow, manly in its stern tranquility, sincere in its perfect
innocence of display. As he looked on the child, his blue
eyes--bright, piercing, and lively--softened like a woman's; his lips,
hardly hidden by his short beard, closed and quivered; and his chest
heaved under the armour that lay upon its noble proportions. There was
in this simple, speechless, tearless melancholy--this exquisite
consideration of triumphant strength for suffering weakness--something
almost sublime; opposed as it was to the emotions of malignity and
despair that appeared in Goisvintha's features. The ferocity that
gleamed from her dilated, glaring eyes, the sinister markings that
appeared round her pale and parted lips, the swelling of the large
veins, drawn to their extremest point of tension on her lofty forehead,
so distorted her countenance, that the brother and sister, as they
stood together, seemed in expression to have changed sexes for the
moment. From the warrior came pity for the sufferer; from the mother,
indignation for the offence.

Arousing himself from his melancholy contemplation of the child, and as
yet answering not a word to Goisvintha, Hermanric mounted the waggon,
and placing the last of his sister's offspring in the arms of a
decrepid old woman, who sat brooding over some bundles of herbs spread
out upon her lap, addressed her thus:--

'These wounds are from the Romans. Revive the child, and you shall be
rewarded from the spoils of Rome.'

'Ha! ha! ha!' chuckled the crone; 'Hermanric is an illustrious warrior,
and shall be obeyed. Hermanric is great, for his arm can slay; but
Brunechild is greater than he, for her cunning can cure!'

As if anxious to verify this boast before the warrior's eyes, the old
woman immediately began the preparation of the necessary dressing